Conscious Listening
In WA we lived along the coast. Most mornings, my Bishon Frise Bella and I would run/jog/walk along the coastal promenade. Being well trained, Bella faithfully ran behind me without a lead. One morning our morning run/jog/walk was slightly later than usual and by this time several coffee shops along the promenade were serving breakfast. I had already reached the end of the boardwalk and was on my way home before I realised Bella was no longer behind me. Bella had become distracted with offers of food and affection from the morning coffee shop patrons. I whistled and she came bounding towards me straight away. There were so many smells, sights, and sounds, so many different people calling for Bella’s attention. Dogs’ sniffing powers far exceed that of humans. They can notice 1 particle in 1,000,000,000,000 other particles. One in a trillion parts is half a cube of sugar in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Can you imagine the smells and sounds calling for Bella’s attention - the smells of bacon, food, other dogs, other humans? Yet, amidst the chorus of noises and invitations it was only my voice she responded to.
I often reflect on the experience of Bella hurdling towards me in joyful obedience in response to my whistle. How was it that Bella could discern my off-tune whistle amidst the cacophony of smells and sounds that she could otherwise have responded to? Bella’s experience of hearing my voice amidst the calls of so many other distractions could be a metaphor or a reflection on our experience of being human. In the same way that a trillion scents and sounds pull Bella’s attention, so too is our attention as humans pulled in many different directions. How do we as humans know which whistle to respond to? How do we discern the safe and authoritative voice that will bring us safely home amidst all the other sounds and scents that demand our attention?
I suggest that there are inner and outer competing voices that demand our attention. There are inner sounds that may say things like: Be perfect. Hurry up. Please me. Be strong.
Other inner voices may be quite critical, judgemental, and harsh. They demand that we feel ashamed of ourselves or insist that nobody really cares about us. The day of judgement is something to look forward to for the gracious and generous God would never judge or criticise us the way we judge and criticise ourselves.
Outer voices that distract us may include the ubiquitous and insidious nature of how technology and media infiltrate us. More and more we are becoming aware of how the algorithms are designed to ensnare us and infect us in ways that are not helpful for our well-being. Like the advertising industry, social media hijacks our psychology and weaponizes it against us – for profit.
Other outer voices that call for our attention may also be the expectations that people place on us, wanting us to be a certain way or do certain things that we may not necessarily want to do. It is often hard to put boundaries in place to protect our own inner freedom.
Beneath all these voices that demand our attention like the trillion scents demanding a dog’s attention on a walk is the One Voice. The One Voice is the voice we most need to hear. This One Voice says “you are my beloved. On you my favour rests.” It is the voice of the Good Shepherd. To live in tune with this Voice is to live in the eternity of the now. It required effort for Bella to learn to trust my voice. Likewise, it may require special effort for us to tune into the One Voice of the Good Shepherd: a strong determination for deep listening, solitude and sometimes silence.
I suggest that Jesus himself may also have experienced what we experience, the challenge to discern the one true voice amidst the army of voices that demanded his attention.
Our John 10 reading is on the Feast Day of Hannukah. The Feast of Dedication commemorates the re-dedication of the Second Temple following the Maccabean Revolt. You may already know that the Maccabean Revolt was a guerrilla type rebellion of the Jewish people against the Seleucids. Antiochus Epiphanes had launched an aggressive attack on the Jewish people expecting them to worship an image of himself and other pagan idols that he had placed in the Jewish temple. Led by the Maccabean brothers, the Jews won their independence from the Seleucids in about 134 BCE.
The Feast of Dedication remembers the victory over Antiochus Epiphanes and the Seleucids. As the Jewish nation continued to celebrate the Feast of Dedication, they looked forward to a Messiah that would overthrow all their enemies and overcome the Roman rule. Against this backdrop Jesus is interrogated; are you the Messiah we long for? There is a sense of impatience and disappointment in the question. In other gospels the disciples of John the Baptist say to Jesus “are you the Messiah or should we expect someone else?”
Jesus was not the type of Messiah people expected him to be. What might it have been like for Jesus to live under the burden of the varying expectations people had of him? I wonder what it may have been like for Jesus to listen to the voices of these competing demands. Some voices wanted him to initiate a violent overthrow of their oppressors. Others wanted Jesus to announce God’s anger. Amidst these competing demands and voices, Jesus tunes into the One Voice that reminds him that he and God are one. The non-duality of this unitive consciousness is the new life, the eternal life, that Jesus experienced and wants us to experience too. The spiritual genius of Jesus is the experiential knowledge of his utter unity with God. The Good Shepherd can lead us from a life of emptiness to a life of fullness. Following the example of Jesus, we too can tune into the One Voice that calls us home amidst the assault of other stimuli demanding our energy.