Are you listening?

One of the things that I love best about summer is sleeping with my windows open. When I am home in Ireland, I don’t always feel that I can do this, as I live in a town and in a single story house. I mean, who knows what marauders are out there at night? Things are different at the cabin in Canada. There are more trees than people and somehow this feels less threatening.

Not only do my wide open windows help while the weather is hot (and it’s been hot), but they keep me connected to the soundscape (and smellscape!) that is layered, textured and quietly alive. All around me I hear the call of the white throated sparrows at first light, the buzz of mosquitoes an hour before darkness descends, the level and speed of wind as it blows through the trees, the smell of sun soaked pine or alternatively the damp forest floor. I don’t need a weather app or clock as it feels like the forest is always communicating to me. If I pay attention, it tells me what I need to know.

This makes me wonder about everything that we have handed over to technology- our sense of time, weather, direction, even the awareness of the changing seasons. We have apps that tell us when it’s raining, notifications that tell us when to stand up and move around and watches that tell us when to breathe. These tools are useful. I use some of them, too. However, somewhere along the way we have become less versed in the language of the natural world.

Mindfulness is not always about sitting on a cushion with our eyes closed. Sometimes it is as simple as opening a window. It’s noticing the quality of light, the sounds of dawn, or the feeling of air against bare skin. It’s remembering that the earth and all that is around us is communicating to us and has been long before we invented screens to interpret it.

Nature is constantly offering us quiet invitations to pay attention. Perhaps we don’t need more information. Perhaps we simply need to listen.

The next time you have a moment or two, open your window. Sit awhile and listen. Or maybe go outside without your phone. Pause  and notice what you experience without needing to judge or pin anything down. The world is speaking. Can you hear it?         

-Jane

Click here to join us at the Sanctuary’s online community meditation on Tuesday mornings at 10am. All are welcome- no experience required 😊

Click below to do a meditation called Listening to Each Moment:

Click below to hear the dawn birdsong outside my window- the long melodic whistle is the white throated sparrow- if you listen closely enough, you also hear the mosquitos: