There is No Greater Gift than Listening -4 Sharing and Listening

There is No Greater Gift than Listening 

Vol. 4 Sharing and Listening

By Steve Beckow

Posted on March 31, 2024

This fourth and last volume in this series looks at what is most valuable to listen to – a share.

A “share,” as it was known in the growth movement, is a deeper self-revelation than ordinary conversation.  It aims at the person being known to others, at a deeper level than like/dislike.

Deep listening invites deep sharing and deep sharing is what unveils the truth that sets us free.

Here then is a chapter on how sharing equalizes us because, whether we’re a prince or a pauper, we feel the same feelings and probably have many of the same thoughts.

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Download There is no Greater Gift than Listening V4 Sharing and Listening here: https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/There-is-no-Greater-Gift-than-Listening-V4-Sharing-and-Listening.pdf

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All Shares Are Born Equal

March 6, 2009

A “share” happens when I tell the truth about myself. That truth may be a felt truth, a believed truth, a known truth, a perceived truth, etc. What one share holds in common with another is its relationship to the truth – my truth.

I use “shares” as the major tool of my emergence. I use my shares to strip off layer after layer of the onion of self-protection until what is left is nothing but transparency.

I retreat from sharing when I feel my survival, or the survival of anything with which I identify, seems at stake. The more I’m into survival, the less I share, unless I break through (i.e., emerge).

Usually when I haven’t shared, the reason is the same: I fear you. I fear what you will do to me. I fear giving you information about myself. I’m protecting myself from you.

A share is not a download of factual information. It is not a scientific assertion. It is not the “truth” about someone else. A share is the truth about me, from me, to you. Your share would be the truth about you, from you, to me.

My share is neither more nor less important than yours. As far as I’m concerned, all shares are born equal. Shares are the great equalizer. King or commoner, everyone has a truth to tell. I seldom tire of listening to your truth.

A share is only “verifiable by me.” I’m the expert on what I’m feeling inside this rental unit. You may know my habits, my acts, my opinions, but you’ll probably never know the truth for me.

And even if you think you do, whether or not that is actually the truth for me is something only I can say. Even if I lie, I remain the last word on what the truth really is for me.

Where I’m at with my life is where I’m at. It is neither better nor worse than where you’re at with yours. All of us go through the same steps from God to God. Some of us were released as sparks earlier than others. But all travel the same general road to the same specific Destination.

If I’m in Seattle and you’re in Chicago, if my time zone is Pacific Standard and yours is whatever it is, what difference? The same with shares.

Something shared is past. Release comes only from the next share. The value that I receive from sharing is not something I can put in a piggy bank. Yesterday’s share is gone.

Everything now rests on the share of this moment.

I know when I’ve shared the truth because I feel release. The truth has set me free. I know when I haven’t shared the truth because I feel stress. Moving away from the truth has further bound me.

My share, to be of any value, does not rip your face off. Since a share is about myself, staying with myself is one sure way to see that harmlessness prevails. Sharing maximizes harmlessness. If my sharing harms, there is no value to it.

Sharing takes me away from blame-based communication by centering my attention on me. I hear your share. I acknowledge it and mirror it back to you. Then I respond with how it is for me.

After a while, I no longer mind your business. The increasing release I feel from sharing captures my attention.

Hopefully you will no longer mind my business too, but the bigger gain is simply for me to keep on sharing no matter what you do.

Shares have their time and place. The traffic cop and the bus driver may not want to share with me. Air traffic controllers do not share with each other. I wouldn’t want a medic to collapse in tears at the sight of suffering, sharing how it is for him or her.

The President may, on occasion, not want to be transparent for the good of the nation. Not all the world’s business can be conducted through sharing, although an increase in sharing probably wouldn’t hurt.

Emergence is the name of the game for me. Your emergence is what I’m here for (mine too). I am a space to receive your share and in which the truth of mine arises.

https://goldenageofgaia.com/spirituality/communication-sharing-and-listening/all-shares-are-born-equal/

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Download There is no Greater Gift than Listening V4 Sharing and Listening here: https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/There-is-no-Greater-Gift-than-Listening-V4-Sharing-and-Listening.pdf

Steve Beckow

• goldenageofgaia.com/

 

 

Sharing and the Levels of Communication

Sharing and the Levels of Communication

by Steve Beckow

Posted on January 31, 2024

In our quest to contribute to healing the wounds of society, we’re looking at ways of communicating that might work better than what we’re doing right now.

Where it all goes, where it all leads is in the direction of the acceptance and agreement to live by the divine qualities. That’s the matter in short.

Why is that? You should be tired of hearing me say this by now: The purpose of life is to know who we truly are. When we find out who we truly are, God meets God and for the pleasure of that meeting – as if God looked in a mirror – was all of this created.

Being like God – living up to the standard of the divine qualities – brings us closer to God.

Hey, you want your money back? Guess what? Given who you truly are, this is your purpose too.

Besides, you’d be walking out on the greatest show on Earth … or anywhere else for that matter! You’ll kick yourself later!

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The growth movement gave the name “sharing” to communication, of whatever type, that goes deeper than superficial observations and aims at revealing our truth and being seen, heard, etc.

Let me therefore map onto our notion of “sharing” our notion of the three levels of knowledge – or in this case of communication.

I hypothesize the existence of three levels of communication: (A) The intellectual, (B) The experiential, and (C) The realizational.

Intellectual knowledge is an exchange of ideas only, usually spare in emotional content.  The emotional context usually does not draw comment, but is tacitly accepted – enthusiasm, sadness, confidence, etc.

In terms of inner experience, intellectual communication by itself does not usually lift us to higher-dimensional realms. We may ascend to them because our “enlightenment board” on the other side (1) has decided that, overall, this is the time. But our ascension will probably not have been triggered by our intellectual practices per se.

Intellectuality is dualistic. It often gets bogged down in right/wrong, good/bad, which seem to be the highest distinctions that it can agree on.

It invites separation by its very nature: subject + verb + object.  And separation invites egocentrism, the self-serving bias, etc.

I don’t find intellectuality sustaining, personally. Not once we’ve tasted higher-dimensional love.  That new knowledge lets the air out of the balloon of beliefs and feelings that holds our love of intellectuality in place and we tend to fall silent more often.

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Experiential knowledge is more immediate, direct and sustaining.

We feel. We’re aware of how we feel. We respond.

It may be hard to communicate, but other experientialists know what we mean and what we’re trying to communicate. And we bond and cooperate with them in a way that intellectuals usually do not. And we wonder what the intellectuals are all arguing about.

Most people in our society don’t appear to know how or what they feel. As someone once put it, we have a low emotional IQ.

Our society doesn’t seem to reward experiential knowledge as much as intellectual. We’ve become a self-serving society, publicly at least.

And, in my opinion, what serves self-servingness is talking a good game and managing our image.  As I see it, that’s where our energy seems largely to go these days.

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Realized knowledge, such as an “Aha!” moment, is not mystical. It consists of (A) a problem and (B) bliss. Bliss lifts us up to a place of expansiveness and freedom from stress such that what we could not see earlier is easily seen now. Problems become simply situations that one must see themselves through – and does, gladly.

If we don’t have something we’re looking at, when bliss lifts us up, we tend more often to simply sit and enjoy the state.  I never get tired of bliss.

Bliss sustains and rewards us for all life’s efforts. (3) Whatever it took to get us to that place, we express our gratitude to and for.

If there’s more – and of course there is – we need no more convincing, We’re enrolled, Lead, kindly Light.

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We get to choose where on that map of communication we want to locate ourselves. Or we may choose to shift from one to the other.

I need to communicate with you so I remain for the most part in the intellectual. But either during writing, or before or after, I can breathe bliss up again from my heart and refresh myself.

The ability to do that comes with a fourth-chakra heart opening, the most junior of enlightenment experiences.  (4) Remember all of us are angelic and thus we live outside the body beyond the dimensional enlightenment spectrum.

Since I must communicate in a way that’s easily understood, even though I’ve sampled experiences all the way to the Twelfth Dimension, (5) they’ve been toned down, truncated in most cases in that they lacked the bliss which would have lifted me to the realizational level.

Experientialists state that they aren’t understood by intellectuals. Intellectuals state that they don’t know what the experientialists are talking about. And it gets worse the higher up the ladder of consciousness we go.

People with realized knowledge are often unable to communicate their experience or knowledge to those around them. First of all there aren’t words for the experience itself; only its impact on us.

Secondly there’s nothing in the Third Dimensional world to compare higher-dimensional experiences to, except very metaphorically. To illustrate: Realization, metaphorically speaking,  is like a starburst of understanding.

OK, I’ve introduced the two notions. Let me leave the subject there and pick up later.

Footnotes

(1) Usually, our higher Self, the Mother, our archangel, our twin flame, and our guides. See Our Enlightenment Partnership at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Our-Enlightenment-Partnership-4.pdf

(2) I’m leaving aside a brief moment in the Transcendental, which I called “exaltation.” See: The Consciousness State of Exaltation at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Consciousness-State-of-Exaltation-4.pdf

(3) “The reward of all action is to found in enlightenment.” (Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 54.)

(4)  See:

• “Submerged in Love,” March 14, 2015, in An Ascension Ethnography at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/An-Ascension-Ethnography-5.pdf, and after.
• “Activating the Wellspring – Part 1/2,” March 14, 2015, in An Ascension Ethnography at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/An-Ascension-Ethnography-12.pdf, 87-93.

(5) Steve: what dimension is bliss?

Archangel Michael: It is between Eight and Nine.

Steve: And ecstasy?

AAM: Twelfth.

Steve: And what about exaltation?

AAM: Then you have moved beyond.  (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Jan. 20, 2016.) (Hereafter, AAM.)

Archangel Michael: What you are doing, you are pulling the 5th into what you think of as your reality [3rd/4th], the qualities of mastery [11th] without setting yourself apart from the masses [3rd/4th/5th].

You … are teaching others that they can access the mastery [11th] and still be in the Christ Consciousness [7th], in the expanded awareness in the physical form [5th or cleaned-up 3rd] and in the love [7th].  (AAM, May 6, 2013.)

Lord Arcturus: It is highly beneficial – and this is where mutuality comes in – that you would have, not only the intelligence but the perspective of the higher dimensions (it is not a hierarchy but it is different).

And so the perspective say of the ninth dimension is very different than the perspective of say the third, the fifth or the seventh dimension.

Because it is very important that humanity realize, as they are in their unfoldment to a grander plan, that the seventh dimension is not the end of the road, not the be all and end all.

And so, [you having] some of the perspective, the experience, the knowing, the intelligence of different dimensionality is highly beneficial in helping them move into that higher-dimensional anchoring. (Lord Arcturus in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, June 12, 2019.)

Steve Beckow

• goldenageofgaia.com/

 

Productive and Unproductive Communication

Productive and Unproductive Communication

By Steve Beckow

Posted on September 6, 2023

No or Unproductive Communication

When we won’t communicate at all or communicate with blame and shame or other unproductive strategies, the other person tends to clam up. Then the issues and withholds (undelivered communications) start to build up.

If nothing changes or gets better ever, the person may just one day up and leave.

Someone told me the other day of a man who left for soccer practice one day and then suddenly needed to return to get his cellphone. There he saw his wife’s brother moving all her stuff out. This was the first the husband knew about it.

It’s my belief that people who go round and round this unfortunate loop, comforting themselves that them getting back together is the main thing, one day just eventually quit, like the player’s wife. Or find that their partner has just quit, like the player.

Going round and round is wearing and dull. One day we stop caring. Past that, we just want out.

Good/Bad, Right/Wrong

I’d like to focus on one type of unproductive discussion we have which I call good/bad, right/wrong.

One reason why I don’t advise discussing matters from the intellectual level is because they so often devolve into good/bad, right/wrong. And that can become like quicksand, into which we sink … and disappear.

We argue incessantly about factors that aren’t even what motivate us into action.

In right/wrong, you say A and I say B. And we both defend our positions.

But if we switched places, dollars to donuts I’d be saying A and you’d be saying B. All seems to depend on our point of view, our vantage point, where we sit, and not on the truth of the matter.

Again, in our zero sum thinking, if we’re right, someone else has to be wrong. That leaves a lot of bruises and other residue, often festering and contributing in turn to another turn of the carousel.

Discussion seldom gets above good/bad, right/wrong and thus proves fruitless and stultifying. It leads nowhere and simply exhausts everyone. We need to up-level it to the experiential level and focus on how we feel.

Communicating How We Feel

Communicating how we feel is the information the other needs to know regarding whether to act or not. (1) “I’m concerned.” No action. “I’m helpless. Please! Somebody!” Concerted action! Our feelings are the factor that motivate us to action.

Communicating how we feel has other advantages. First, it’s verifiable by me. Only I feel what I feel. And only I know how I feel. It isn’t something that can be messed with. I’m the expert on the subject.

But many people, if I asked them how they’re feeling, might not know what to answer. How would I know what I’m feeling? Where would I look? I don’t know how I feel.

Our ability to maneuver in this territory may be limited at the moment, but I’m certain our emotional IQ will rise dramatically in the weeks and months ahead.

Feedback

Sincerely trying on feedback is also needed. Without our partner being able to deliver feedback, again, the situation might never change.

The ordinary tendency is to rebuff feedback, deny it, contest it, and in other ways resist it. That ultimately leads to lethargy in us and resistance in our partner.

What is lethargy? I’m asleep and I’m asleep to the fact that I’m asleep. In Hinduism, this condition is called the guna or cosmic force of thamas.

If you really observe thamas or lethargy, you’ll see it’s like a blanket that smothers everything but the most basic of actions and interactions.

How do we “receive” feedback? Try it on. Test it out. See if it fits. If it does, own it.

Tomorrow we look at true reconciliation.

Footnotes

(1) On the value of listening, see:

• Are You Listening? at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Are-You-Listening-R5.pdf
• A Manual for Listeners at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/A-Manual-for-Listeners-R3.pdf
• The Value of Listening at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Value-of-Listening-3.pdf

Steve Beckow

• goldenageofgaia.com/