the spine ·the body chakras
16 · Echo
The Listener
the practice
Your ears. The filter through which the world becomes your world.
what it is
What do you choose to keep from what you heard?
the pair
Vishuddha — the listening aspect. The energy throat was about truth expressed. The physical Echo is about truth received. The same faculty — the throat's intelligence — operating in opposite directions. One asks: will you say what you know? The other asks: can you actually hear what's being said?
the reflection
I am a body that knows it filters. That is what I get to keep from this chakra. I am the filter. The world is offering more than I can take in. The body's job is not to take in everything — that would be intolerable. The body's job is to receive what serves what I am. The filter is built in. The state I am in determines what the filter lets through.
This is the body's first humility chakra. The world is larger than my signal can reach. I do not get to know everything. I can only know what my filter allows. The walker who knows this listens differently — not trying to get more, just attending to what arrived.
I will forget. The filter will keep working without my participation. I will return to broadcasting more than receiving, because that is what most of life requires. The body forgives that. The walker who returns to listening — even briefly, even occasionally — recovers the recognition immediately.
Something is opening behind my eyes.
the readings
No reading stands at this vertebra yet.
standing here
passing through
The Walk · The Chakra Map · The Practice Book · The Dances · The Courses · A Strange Voice · A Strange Game · The Three Trees · Bindu Chakras · The Registers · The Moments