Crickets (2)

I was just out with the crickets again and now the crickets are inside my head instead of outside.

I've been pondering a metaphor that isn't quite finished but starts like this: things inside your head can interfere with things outside your head--that stuff we call 'reality'.

Like this: inside my head I think "Joe is a jerk". So when I encounter Joe out in what we call 'reality', he shows up to me like a jerk. It takes lots of evidence to the contrary to overcome the stuff inside my head even though Joe, out there, might be a kind, gentle, sweet soul.

In the workshop I lead we call the stuff inside your head "listenings". It does damage to the way we normally use the word 'listening', but the workshop is designed to play havoc with your assumptions. We say "listening isn't something you DO, it's something you ARE." We talk about the already, always listenings that we are. We don't condemn our listenings that we are--in fact, we are quite neutral about them and don't even care "where" you got a "listening" about young black men or strong, aggressive women or gay people or old people or people who don't seem as smart as you are. It doesn't matter to me as a leader of the Making A Difference workshop where you 'listenings' come from. You might find that interesting to inquire about, but I don't care. All I want you to do is 'notice' your 'listenings' and how they may be limiting the possibilities you have in what you do and who you can be. I don't think you can ever get rid of them but there is this: if you notice them, "you HAVE them". If you don't notice them "your listenings HAVE you." The difference between those two states of being is remarkable.

We tend to think of ourselves as some sort of 'recording device', taking in what is happening around us. I would contend that we are, instead, 'projection devices' and what we think of as "the reality OUT THERE" is what we have projected upon it in large measure. So, what happens 'outside our heads' is dominated and formed by what happens 'inside our head'. We need external 'crickets' so we can see the crickets in our heads are simply that--IN OUR HEADS--and not what's out there at all.

Is this making sense? I'm asking you to ponder that much of what you think you are 'observing' about life is what you are actually 'projecting' on life.

That request and that pondering can be a source of freedom and possibility if we can acknowledge and notice it.

Recognition is the beginning of ownership.