Friday, October 6, 2017

Listen, Attend


Our work, our relationships, and our lives succeed or fail one conversation at a time. While no single conversation is guaranteed to transform a company, a relationship, or a life, any single conversation can. Speak and listen as if this is the most important conversation you will ever have with this person. It could be. Participate as if it matters. It does.
- Susan Scott


We spend much of our lives in conversation. We converse with our partners, our children, our parents, our workmates, our neighbors, everyone around us. How well we attend to the other person is often another story. We are often chatting while doing something else. Anything else. Driving. Watching TV. Making dinner. Texting. Listening to music. Watching for our stop on a bus or train.

People make a big deal out of young people (in particular) texting or being on social media rather than communicating face to face. In truth, some of those texts or social media conversations are very intense. The participants are attending closely to what the other is saying. Some of those conversations are skimmed and content or context missed. But that's true in face to face conversations as well. We're alive inside our own personal thoughts, actions, reactions, but not necessarily to what the other is communicating.

Each conversation we have with each person who is in our lives is important, significant in its own unique way. Conversations are about ebb and flow, the back and forth give-and-take of interactions. When we are distracted or focused on something other than the person with whom we are communicating, we miss cues to the deeper message behind their words.

We all want to feel heard, to be heard, to have another respond to us as though we are, in the moment, the most important person in the world. In truth, in those moments of deepest communication, we are that important. In order to receive that focus from another, we must be willing to give it. We must be willing to slow our pace. We must be willing to stop our attempt to 'multitask' and attend to another person. Listen. Attend. It's important.

How many times have you walked away from a conversation with no recall of its content? or its context? What has distracted you during your most recent conversation with another person? and the one before that? When was the last time you felt, thought or believed that another person was not paying attention while you were speaking to them? How did you feel? What can you do to keep your attention in your next conversation?

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Aries Full Moon 2017


©2017 ML Monroe

Wow! Time is certainly moving more quickly every day. Wasn't it yesterday, I wrote about the Solar Eclipse?

Are the two events related? Short answer: of course they are. Everything that has followed the Solar Eclipse is related to it.

The Solar Eclipse brought strong, sometimes subtle, sometimes strong, changes for everyone. The Aries Full Moon brings the time to face whatever obstacles stand in the midst of our life. Then it gives us the light and power to move through and past them as needed. First, though, it requires our surrender of the obstacle that lives within.

Sometimes Aries pulls us into a confrontation mode. We want to battle everyone. What this Full Moon calls us to do is feel deeply into that confrontation to uncover what part of it is assertiveness and what is sheer aggression. We need to shed the aggression and focus on the assertive. Since this Full Moon is happening in conjunction with the Sun sign of Libra, we have the opportunity to draw from that sign to work positively on relationships ~~ not simply charge at and crash into everyone and everything.

Much of what is happening in our world reflects the Shadow. This Full Moon shines a light for us to explore new ways to consciously voice our emotions, to own our wishes, hopes and desires, and to bring honest, open communication into our relationships. It is time to fully grow into and express our true selves, to bring that part of our beingness into Light. We also are in a time where we focus on our place in the Divine Plan.

The proximity of this Full Moon to a Venus-Mars alignment adds a flavor of intensity and passion. There is opportunity and danger as well as both fate and freewill concerning those strong emotions. Though the Aries Full Moon is generally impulsive about moving forward without a backward glance, this one is inhibited by a sulky Pluto in Capricorn and a hesitant Mercury in Libra.

The Aries Full Moon illuminates our need and desire for balance in every aspect of our world. Watch carefully what it brings into illumination for you.

What can you do about violence? in yourself? in your world? How can you create relationships in beauty and remain true to yourself? How do you disagree with others without violating them or yourself? How do you find and maintain balance? How do you break through the learned fear of showing your true self?