: Christine C. Williams
: The Listening Project Lessons of Life, Love,& Listening to God
: Wisdom House Books
: 9780996366304
: 1
: CHF 4.80
:
: Esoterik: Allgemeines, Nachschlagewerke
: English
: 176
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
The Listening Project tells the true story of a woman who decides to make an unusual and quirky deal with God to become a better listener. What starts out as a step-by-step business model approach to learn about listening to the Divine voice within, soon turns into a far more personal and unexpected journey of loss, grief, healing, and love. An inspiring and at times irreverent book, The Listening Project makes you laugh, cry, and think about the many opportunities we have to hear God in our daily lives, especially when life gives us hurdles too big to jump on our own. As the author shares her experiences and lessons learned, readers are encouraged to explore their own unique spiritual approach to life, the ways they listen to God, and the inherent human challenges and rewards of hearing and following Divine guidance.
I sit in the quietest of spaces deep within myself. I am surrounded in my home office by flip chart pieces of paper that contain notes of events and insights from the past three years of my life taken from almost one thousand pages of journal entries. How odd to see one’s life so exposed; even in the privacy of my own home I am filled with trepidation. And even more strange, what would possess me, the even keeled, steady person that I am to take on such a task?
The truth is I made a deal with God. I don’t know if deal-making with God is allowed. There seem to be some very definite “rules” on the Other Side of what the Divine and all the angels, guides, and deceased loved ones can and cannot do for those of us who still reside in human form. Perhaps it is better said that I made a contract with my higher Divine Self, but then we get into that whole language barrier thing. I’d prefer to keep it simple.
A personal discovery came before the God Deal. Somewhere along life’s journey, I finally figured out that I was most happy and really at my best when I felt the presence of God within me—that I could take almost anything life tossed my way or jump any hurdle if I could just feel God. I have to admit that experiencing the presence of God is a pretty nebulous thing and highly individualistic. Most of us don’t have a formal definition. We just know it when we feel it—that we are in the presence of something far greater than ourselves and that it feels pretty darn good when it happens.
So for me, I was sort of decent at the periodic presence of God thing; meditation, prayer, journaling where I consciously and non-judgmentally turned inwardly, occasional retreats, spending time in nature, and frequent gratitude for the many blessings in my life. But the continual presence of God in my heart that actually feels like a steady hum, well, I just wasn’t there yet.
I heard a wise teacher say, “the pull to the future is stronger than the push from the past,”1 and I think that was true for me. I had been off kilter in recent years, giving up so much of my inner world to outward activities. My consulting business was going full speed ahead. I was literally crisscrossing the country facilitating workgroups in the healthcare and information technology arenas on a non-stop basis. My volunteer activities were up, my elderly parents needed support in their dying process, and I was bursting with the day to day activities of just managing the “stuff” of life. Very importantly, there was time spent building and maintaining relationships with my husband, family, friends, animals, and riding my beloved horse, Pony Joe.
These were good things. But while “living life to the fullest,” I was feeling like a