Ever wondered what it means to communicate? What is it that you’re trying to say and why? Not the words you’re using but the underlying meaning of what you’re trying to convey. Wikipedia defines this as: “meaning “to share” or “to be in relation with”, is “an apparent answer to the painful divisions between self and other, private and public, and inner thought and outer world”. As this definition indicates, communication is difficult to define in a consistent manner, because in common use it refers to a very wide range of different behaviours involved in the propagation of information.”
I know people nowadays tend to think of communication as a means to say what they want or what bothers them and forget that it’s a two way conversation, mostly ignoring the other side’s opinions or feelings. We all see it every day as social media platforms take bigger parts in our day to day lives. I mean, how easy is it to type your comment and ignore the replies? We all probably have done it, but to listen is a greater challenge, to really want to hear the other side’s voice, as you agree to let go of your ego for a change, and not just your own.
There’s a catch, of course, you can’t really listen to others until you learn to listen to yourself. But what does it even mean to listen to yourself? It means that until you learn to quiet down the million voices that are constantly ravaging through your thoughts and create a barrier of white noise you can only hear a small part of what’s really going on inside your head, or outside of it. This white noise doesn’t let you focus, doesn’t let you think or hear clearly, it makes you react only according to your emotions and judgements, affects every tiny aspect of your life and you don’t even know it’s there. When you get pissed off about something tiny and can’t let it go, when you’re in the middle of a test and can’t seem to focus or have a total blackout, when you can’t remember if you closed the front door of your home or where are the keys, it’s all because of this white noise.
It doesn’t take several decades of meditation to notice the differences, only a few brief sessions and you’d feel it, five minutes in the morning and five in the evening. As I wrote before, there are many kinds and colors of meditation which makes it hard NOT to find one that suits you personally. Again, there’s a catch, no one but you can tell you which one works best for you. I can probably help you with the tools and the knowledge of various meditations but I can’t tell you what will work for you, as most people these days expect to get, the easy answers. It’s a shift in perspective from receiving the answers from outside of you to receive them from the inside.
After you get rid of that white noise, even only part of it, you’ll be amazed at how well you can listen to others or how much clearer everything becomes, how well you can communicate for a change and how well people around you react to it. But it all begins with you and your willingness, your desire, to go through with it.
Need some help with it? Come talk to me.
Thank you for reading.
