Musings - A 'Time' Perspective

It's 10 pm and I pick up my personal diary to write in.  I had this feeling I hadn't written in there in a while, like a few days for sure.

I flipped the page back to see how long, and was so so surprised to find that I had actually written just yesterday. I couldn't believe it, I even did a check on whether I'd got my dates mixed up. But no, it was correct. I had after all written yesterday.

So what was that? 

I paused to wonder how and why. The realization was interesting. It wasn't just about being in the flow. The perspective of time, and of being had altered.

Between yesterday morning when I'd written and now, I'd done two, so to say 'interviews'. One was with my mom and then one with Poojari uncle (haven't yet published).  And I realized I'd somehow slipped into their lives for big chunks of these two days. Talking to them, making the emotional connect, listening to them, going through the notes, writing it out. I'd actually stepped into their lives. I'd left mine behind.

And I guess Diksha being out of town only aided, there was no life of detail that had demanded my attention. I had seamlessly shifted. 

I'd recently read Scott Peck, 'The Road Less Travelled', and something he said suddenly took on a whole new meaning. I quote from his book:

"True listening requires total concentration, and requires a tremendous amount of discipline. It is the temporary giving up of the self, setting aside ones own thoughts, frames of reference, biases, opinions and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, stepping inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually an extension and enlargement of oneself, and new knowledge is always gained from this. And since it involves a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. 

Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener connect into each other more and more. A duet dance of love happens.

The energy required for the discipline of setting aside the self, and focusing total attention on the other is so great that it can be accompanied only by love, by the will to extend oneself for mutual growth"

To go back to my realization.....it is about the layers at which this can happen. The mutual growth works at different layers. It's not just in the doing or the knowing, but also in the being. Almost a literal expansion of consciousness.