Listen Beyond Words. See Beyond Acts.

It can be hard to turn down the noise. And as long as we let it thunder overhead, beside us and beneath us, it remains all we can hear. It encompasses us, engages us, enrages us. It refuses space for anything other and it becomes all we know, drowning all else out. It tells us what to think, how to act, who to be. It is the sound of our own raging heartbeat thumping in our ears, stirred on by the will of others over thousands of years. The angry screams and venomous bile of those we oppose. Our pain, our suffering, our wounded selves, screaming louder than the screams of the rest.

But in this cacophony, we become deafened. Blinded. We hear only the war. Only the guns. Only the history and the hatred and the baggage we must carry day after day after day. The oppression and the offense, the cruelty and the bigotry, the obligations to our tribes and factions. Our pain, the pain of our people, of our kindred, and the slights of our enemies.

Our weariness and obligation weighs down on us like the pack of a soldier who has been marching through the mud for weeks, onwards to battle in a war that can never end. What little fuel we have left in the tank is reserved for our aggressions and our resentment, our duty to honour everything we have been told to hold dear. Everything we identify with. Everything we cling to in order to gain some sense of self in an otherwise senseless world.

So much noise. So dizzying. Suffocating.

But listen. For a moment, take a rest from your screaming and the screams of the world around you. Ignore the constant yelling of your wants, of your demands to be heard, to be recognised, to be identifiable, and listen. Listen to what’s being said beyond the angry, begging, pained words that fill the air. Listen beyond the constant thrumming of the machine. Listen beyond the panic and the chaos, beyond the vibrating battlefield. Seek out and find the silence.

Because when the dust settles and the smoke clears, you will maybe, finally, possibly, be able to hear the answer to the questions you’ve been asking for months, years, or generations.

Let the rumble of the guns become distant. Let the roaring engines idle. Let the piercing screams of judgement and injustice subside. And in the pause, find yourself in a quiet place.

Stay here for a moment. A breath or two. And when the ringing in your ears subsides, listen. Listen to the wind of change as it brushes past you and dances with the leaves. Listen to turning of the earth. Listen to the fear that exists in others reflected in yourself. Listen to your heartbeat echoing in the chest of every single other that stands behind you, next to you ahead of you and facing you. See your anguish in the anguish of your enemy.

Listen for the answers. What do you want? Where does it hurt? How can we make it better? 

In the silence of this moment, let the answers come. Without judgement, without demands. With no need to be right. Let the answers come. And listen, as you would wish to be listened to. Hear yourself in others, just as you might hear the breeze sweeping through the grass, or the owl in the night, or the rain on the grass. And in the quiet find calm and peace.

Listen to sighs of relief as the tension lifts away. Listen to the sap rising in the trees, from the roots to the sky, preparing for new growth. Hear everything, know yourself, recognise your face in the faces of those who share the earth with you. And be. Free.

And when you have reached beyond the silence, beyond identity, beyond division, into the space that’s quieter still, that’s where the clarity of intrinsic truth lies. Here we are all the same energy. Vibrating. Shifting. Transforming. Outside of form and time.

And now, from this place, let your actions grow, truthfully, nurturing, indefatigable. Cleansing and healing. Building. Bringing peace to your heart and all hearts.