Hear

Just like with See, with Hear we have both Hear In and Hear Out

To sit in a HEAR meditation, your object of meditation will be the experience of hearing, the instruction is simply to focus on hearing, and when you attention wanders from hearing, to simply bring it back to Hear Space without judgement.

I find Hear meditation to be really useful if you find yourself in the less than perfect meditation conditions.  We’d all love a nice quiet zendo or tucked away meditation nook to practice in – but what if all we have is an apartment on a busy street?  Or on a bus?  Or even in a waiting room?  Then we can turn all that noise into our meditation, instead of using it as an excuse for not meditating!

The idea is to wait in conscious awareness (like a cat at a mousehole) until something in Hear Space captures your attention, and then note and label it either Hear In or Hear Out depending on which it is.  Some people note each time a new Hear experience comes up, others get into a rhythm and note at the bottom of each out breath whatever is capturing their attention at the time.

Just like with See meditation – the rules here are fairly fluid, and there’s no real “doing it wrong” unless you aren’t doing it!  In between labels you might be drawn to other sense areas – seeing or feeling – which is fine.  You can note other areas as Rest or None, as you’re experiencing a break from Hear space.

If for whatever reason you are drawn away into thinking, planning, memory or fantasy – all you need to do is bring your attention back without judgement. Over and Over and Over again.  It’s no big deal at all, and happens frequently even to the most experienced meditators.

Hear Out

Easy!  Hear out is exactly what it sounds like – all the noise that’s happening in your environment at any given time.  I actually find myself often using Hear Out to build concentration, and at this point in my practice I prefer a meditation space with some noise.  I was once on retreat with a zendo that was so deathly quiet I actually had a harder time settling into my meditations than normal, and found myself often going to meditate outside just to have some ambient noise to use as my object of concentration.  I live on a busy street, and will keep my window open during meditation to hear the sounds of the cars.

So, when you notice a Hear Out sensation, simply note “Hear Out”.  We aren’t paying attention to the content of the hear out, which is easier said than done.  You might find a noise annoying or loud or unpleasant, or even pleasant – but the idea is to attempt to not get caught up in your emotional experience of the noise.  Even a car alarm will simply be “hear out” as long as it’s holding your attention.

In the meditation “Note Everything” you can then move into noting your physical or emotional reaction to that sound in your body

Hear In

Hear In is a good one, and super important – especially for those of us who are anxiety prone, or love to overthink things!

Hear in is the narrator in your head – it was once described to me as “That Morgan Freeman Character in your head” to be precise.  They are incessant at often keeping a running track of what is happening at all times, what you should do, where you should go, and constantly evaluating how you feel about things.  Also, they loooove planning and daydreaming.

Most of us have a physical location in our heads somewhere where that voice exists – and in a random quirk of human consciousness – we are actually able to observe that voice with awareness  (the “who” that’s observing that voice is a whole other question!)

So for Hear In, you sit and wait for the arrival of a Hear In narration or thought.  All verbal thoughts qualify as Hear In.

Again, we are not interested in the content of the thought or hear in experience, we are only interested in noting that a hear in experience has happened.  This is part of the practice, since with hear in it’s very common and easy to get pulled off into content.  This is totally fine, but as with all of these techniques, you just bring your attention back to Hear space without judgement when that happens.

Sit & Watch What Happens

So when we focus on Hear space, we might start seeing interesting things happen.  I find that out of all the See, Hear, Feel spaces, Hear is the one that most frequently ties into the others.

I often find myself hearing something outside (Hear Out), and then having a thought about that thing (Hear In), or some other chain of events will happen.  It’s great to notice how these spaces interact with one another!  I’ll go into that even more with the Note Everything practice.

As concentration builds you might notice other interesting physical experiences – but with anything that comes up, just note it as a rest from Hear space, and go back to Hear with awareness.

Don’t take it Personally

As I mentioned earlier, Hear can be a real trap for getting sucked into thinking or trapped in a cycle of craving/aversion.  This is why it can be such a powerful object to take for meditation.

Hear provides a great tool for practicing the fine art of not getting carried away.  It’s easy for overwhelming sounds or thoughts to hook you into their content and carry you off and away from your meditation practice.

If this happens I want to reiterate yet again that it’s TOTALLY FINE and happens to everyone.  This is a challenging thing to do, which is exactly why we do it and exactly why it’s so important.

We want to be able to deal with aversion (loud sounds), and difficult thoughts skillfully off the cushion, and sitting with the intent to do that for 15 or 20 minutes will lead to our ability to do that skillfully off the cushion as well.

Like many things, it’s a training, and you’ll notice with time and dedication that your ability to “not take it so personally” will improve with time.  Then you can spend your energy just focusing on the thoughts that really matter, instead of everything all at once!