Week 1 : The Art of Winter Listening

Hearing the whispers of Divine inspiration

Fantasy Landscape

Greetings, dear Winter Dreamers,

Slowing down and taking time for reflection can bring deeper discernment into what has happened over the year. This understanding can lead to new insights and possibilities for the coming year. It is powerful to stop, be still and listen to our inner voice that the ‘busyness’ of our lives can so often drown out. This sacred spaciousness is what a Winter Dreaming time gifts us.

This post is the first of the five-week Winter Dreaming Journey I invited you to last Friday. In summary, I will offer guidance on the following steps of the Journey for the next five Fridays.

• Week 1, beginning today, we will craft an overarching Winter Listening question,

• Week 2, beginning Friday 15th, we will look back over this year and remember the highlights and lowlights of the past 12 months.

• Week 3, beginning on Friday the 22nd, we will decide what we wish to let go of from 2023 and what we want to take forward into 2024.

• Week 4, beginning Friday 29th, dream out ahead to gather the intentions for 2024 that capture our passion and imagination.

• In week 5, beginning Friday, 5th Jan, we will seek ways to nurture these Dream Seeds, ready to plant them come spring. 

Please note I will host an online call at 5pm GMT each of the next five Sundays. During the call, we will explore together the insights we are gaining from each stage in this Winter Dreaming Journey.  If you wish to join our Winter Dreaming call, please email me, and I will forward the link to you.

So let us begin:)

Our Winter Dreaming commences by listening for an overarching question that will guide us over the next five weeks and beyond. It is what I like to call a ’Soul Question’. One that encourages us to listen for the whispers from the Divine. In an inner space, we are calling into our awareness what our Soul wishes to convey during this time of Dreaming. This type of listening is a contemplative practice that comes from the ground of perceptive silence. 

Over the next week, I invite you to take little segments of time throughout your day to come into stillness. Pay attention to your breathing as you do this, and welcome in the spaciousness you feel.

Image by Jayyycubbb

Let the image above help you to settle into this stillness and inner silence. Know that you are preparing an inner container to let insights enter easily through a portal from the extraordinary. From that awakening to the present moment, this portal opens realms beyond our everyday experience. When we maintain this inner stillness, then inspiration can flow through the doorway into our awareness. It is pretty magical how this happens.

Crafting an Evocative Question

As you feel yourself settling into this quiet time, begin to let a question bubble up. Consider starting the question with the phrase ‘what is needed.’ When you put these words at the beginning of a question, you signal an openness to receive and a heartfelt intention to respond to the guidance coming to you.

Being in nature is a great way to find your question, but it is not the only way. You can sit quietly in a chair and meditate. You can also use free writing to let thoughts and imaginings flow and see what comes to you from there. Whatever you decide to do, say to yourself, ‘I am seeking my dreaming question,’ and then wait to see what is revealed.

There is no right question; you will know when it arrives. I find my body relaxes, and a smile appears. I encourage ou to trust your soul connection.

Winter Campfire

I thought you might like the poem below called ‘The Winter of Listening’ by David Whyte. It is an evocative reminder to relax and let the inspiration of the Divine wash over you. Enjoy!

The Winter of Listening

No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning red in the palms while
the night wind carries everything away outside.
All this petty worry while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious inside us does not
care to be known by the mind
in ways that diminish its presence.
What we strive for in perfection
is not what turns us into the lit angel we desire,
what disturbs and then nourishes
has everything we need.

What we hate in ourselves
is what we cannot know in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.
Even with the summer so far off
I feel it grown in me now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years listening to those
who had nothing to say.
All those years forgetting how everything
has its own voice to make itself heard.
All those years forgetting how easily
you can belong to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow difficulty
of remembering how everything
is born from an opposite
and miraculous otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that otherness.
So let this winter of listening
be enough for the new life
I must call my own.

David Whyte, from The House of Belonging.