To Hear Is To Be Near
How important it is to be heard. It seems to be a deep, even existential, need. How sensitive we can be to the slightest nuances when someone speaks. Before we learned to speak, we learned to hear.
We have all gone through a profound school of hearing and listening before we were born. The wondrous images of the embryo in the womb show that its shape is like a large ear. The ear itself is shaped like an embryo. Is it only coincidence? The ear is always open and receptive. Might it be that it was not only the heart-beat of the mother the embryo was hearing? Does the ear-shaped embryo possibly indicate that the whole human being is listening as a totality? Or, that the human being is “heard into existence”? What depth of hearing that would be!
We can hear outwardly, superficially, or we can concentrate and listen inwardly, with focused attention. Then we absorb and understand more of the imponderable. Maybe there is more than one level or layer or depth to this inner hearing, like listening into, hearing into a wholeness and completeness. Becoming One. How many times does Christ call out, “He who has ears, hear!”. Are there levels of evolving ever deeper, intensifying hearing, of hearing the Cosmic Word?
John the Baptist proclaimed mightily a message that brought about a paradigm shift. To do that he first had to be able to hear, comprehend and become one with this message. Paul, the apostle, also proclaimed mightily a message that changes lives to this day. Both John and Paul first heard. What came to them encompassed the whole being, it enveloped and permeated like a heart-beat. Inner ears opened first, then they could speak.
The Act of Consecration of Man is a school of hearing and listening, for inner ears. Maybe it is not only we human beings that have an existential need to be heard.
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