Unaware of being under the spell of our own thoughts, we listen out of concepts we make up about reality instead of directly seeing what’s going on. As our awareness of our cognitive shortcomings and blind-spots grows with maturity, we see our own habitual judgments, and bypass our generalizations by questioning the validity of them. Hence if I attend to reality from a different source, it emerges without my thoughts participating in what it can be, it is unfixed, and pregnant with limitless potential!

As we become more open minded and making room for what’s here in current reality, we open an even greater capacity to draw forth our undefended hearts as a listening space. We listen empathically. We see the world through others’ eyes and draw out a nobility in ourselves as we allow the world to change us.

But there’s another level of listening—the generative or altruistic listening. This mode of listening is to be completely present to what wants to emerge. This posture toward current reality is one of trusting our open will. As we attend to what’s here and now and bring ourselves into presence, the future unfolds for us as we live forward. What often arises from such a spaciousness given to what’s here, is a sense of destiny, as if something were standing in need of you.

Integrity is to hold this space of formlessness, of nothing for long enough to awaken the sacred project within you, it’s all there, if you just stand still, and listen with your entire being, head, heart, and hand.

Many of us go through life unaware that our fundamental orientation to life limits and traps us. Life programs us as we’re brought up to react and respond to stimuli in the circumstances imposed on us. We take our cues from what’s happening. We then set out to improve upon the quality of our responses and reactions, hence the human potential or self-improvement movement. This sounds all find and dandy, except for one challenge: it doesn’t position you to create what you want.