Manifesting Protocol Step 4 ~ Listen

Physical & spiritual sensing 

What does it feel like to simply Listen? You may call this meditation or mindfulness, reflection or contemplation, even daydreaming.

Deep Listening enters through our physical senses (hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch) and our spiritual senses. These include the “clairs” like clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognizance and others. They might be known as  inner sight, a still, small voice, Divine guidance, inner knowing, heart wisdom, chills or frisson and spirit messages.

This Manifesting Step* reveals the vastness of resources within and around us, building on the previous Step: Appreciation. When we quiet the usual busy-ness of our lives, an astounding richness of information and insight can arise in our awareness.

Essential Art of Manifesting 6-Step Protocol

Listen is the fourth step in the Essential Art of Manifesting 6-Step Protocol. While it can be helpful to learn them in order, these Steps are not limited to linear use, but more like steps in a dance that can take us backward, forward, side to side and even around in circles and spirals. This gives us a chance to slow down and create room for the energies arising within and around us, rather than endlessly rushing to do things and accomplish goals. We can mindfully inhabit the whole landscape of our lives from Vision to Celebration, skilfully craft the journey and enjoy the ride.

Listen beyond hearing

Hearing with our ears, or receiving information through any of our senses, is just the first step toward powerful understanding in our Manifesting practice.

For instance, our ears are finely crafted to sense vibrations, yet it’s our brains that actually hear or translate those vibrations into sounds. Our brains take in all the information from our senses and begin to make sense of it, but this is just the first level and much of this information goes straight into our subconscious.

In order to really Listen, or be consciously aware of what we’re receiving, we need to pay attention. By choosing to focus on the sensory input coming to us, we engage with it and choose from the vast, perhaps infinite stream of possible ideas to add to our experience.

Listen with your heart and body as well as your mind. Logic is often highly overrated as complete understanding and truth in itself. Without engaging our emotions and sensations in discernment, we’re serving a system rather than that system serving us, whether it’s scientific, religious, political, business or any other system.

When we Listen within, to our unique body, mind, heart and soul, we can gain insight into our own state of wellbeing, motivations, needs and desires. This helps us center in our own optimal wellness, our Vision and Intentions, instead of automatically reacting to external expectations, people or events.

First, we simply witness, just notice what we’re hearing or sensing. This slows down the rush of habitual judgments, assumptions, conclusions and responses. Just noticing becomes a mindfulness practice in itself, as we release our observations from this emotional baggage and conditioning, and learn to behold something without all the weight of our previous experiences, beliefs and biases. 

We don’t need to be completely objective. Manifesting practice brings our Vision into form through more specific Intentions; Appreciation of our resources, support, experiences and opportunities; aligned Action; and Celebration all along the way. We have a purpose, and this informs our Listening practice. 

With practice, we become sensitized, more skilled in the multiple languages of our several senses. This can be rewarding, and also potentially overwhelming. Discernment allows us to sort through the looming information overload and choose what serves our priorities.

Listen with loving Intention and discernment

Listening is not just a passive, neutral activity. We filter what we hear and choose what we Listen to, and this is vital for Manifesting. 

Listen through the filter or lens of your Vision and Intentions. Is the channel you’re tuned into supporting your Manifesting practice, both with its content and its tone? Manifesting is powered by not just our thoughts but more deeply, our feelings. A source may have valid information but feel totally out of alignment with the energy you want to bring into your life, so you are free to skip it and find what you need somewhere else.

Listen with love instead of criticism, openness rather than cynicism and discernment instead of assumption. When you start to apply these filters mindfully to yourself and others, you’re curating your energy into greater coherence, which eases and empowers your Manifesting process.

Manifesting is not like achieving “smart” goals with every step known and planned, maybe even forced. It’s okay to explore and feel scattered while you’re starting to Listen. You’ll begin to notice patterns, and get into the habit of filtering and sorting what you take in according to how well it supports and aligns with your Vision and Intention. Discernment says “Yes, please,” and "No, thank you,” rather than “good” or “bad.” 

Most of us could use less judgment and criticism and more curious, open inquiry and mindful observation, starting within ourselves. Notice how you talk to yourself and apply this approach of Listening with love for yourself, for your Vision, your intention. Listening with love builds on the practice of Appreciation in the third Step.

Cultivating a network of trusted advisors can be helpful to your Listening and therefore your Manifesting practice over time. Choose carefully, and always take responsibility for your own outcomes and experiences, and you’ll find you can trust people to be who they are and to offer you what they can. This isn’t always what we’re hoping for, and that’s okay. It’s helpful to have a range of perspectives instead of expecting one person or point of view to hold all the answers for you. Explore and cultivate.

How does Listening help us Manifest?

We Listen during all the Manifesting Steps, in order to be constantly calibrating our awareness and actions, bringing our Vision and Intentions into being for our optimal wellness and success.

Primarily, we Listen for guidance in our Manifesting practice and process. Divine guidance can come through prayer, meditation or divination with tarot or oracle cards and other tools. We may receive clues or nudges through intuition, synchronicity and serendipity. We also do the blessed mundane human work of research, conversation, journaling. These are just a few examples, you can use as seed prompts for your own practices.

We also Listen for feedback. Keep checking in with our Listening practices to make course corrections in our ongoing Manifesting process through all the Steps. I think of these pingback responses as guardrails that help keep us on the road.

We’ve already been Listening in order to create our Vision, commit to our Intentions and use Appreciation to establish our foundation, and now we can go deeper into those resources and into the meaning and power of our Manifesting practice.

If Vision is the chosen landscape, Intentions create a dedicated map, Appreciation is a joyful inventory of our resources, Listen clears the windshield, checks weather and road conditions, zooms in on the map, takes in the landscape and gives the okay to Action.

Listening before acting makes our Actions intentional, aligned with our purpose and priorities.

The fourth Reiki Precept

The Five Reiki Precepts include a teaching around our work, purpose, practice and behavior. Often it’s translated from Japanese as simply “work hard” or “be honest,” but I feel there’s more nuance and power with a broader view.

This Reiki Precept is all about Manifesting. It brings our attention to our practice and purpose, our work and activities - not only what we do, but also how we do it, energetically. Listening is just as important as acting, self-care is just as valuable as serving others. Soft work is just as important as hard work in Manifesting since it’s a process of personal transformation and not just checking things off a to-do list or punching a time-clock, though those things are valuable too. We’ll get to them in the next Moon cycle with the fifth Manifesting Step: Action.

Challenges

It may feel uncomfortable to just Listen if we’re used to being in Action all the time or feel pressured to be busy. That’s the medicine of this step! Action without mindful Listening often comes from our subconscious, instinct or conditioning. Learning to Listen skilfully requires us to also process what we hear. 

While we need to be discerning about taking advice from others, what we take in is increasingly affected or even generated by AI, and it’s getting harder to tell what is or isn’t. I try to avoid AI because of the environmental destruction and impact on other creative humans. I also find it unreliable and I prefer to know my sources. I have friends who love it and find it useful. What’s your experience?

We may be tempted to listen to authorities with credentials, power or lots of followers on social media, those with louder voices or bigger platforms.

When we accept input without evaluating it carefully we may even receive information that is technically correct, but not guiding us on our best path to Manifest our chosen, cherished Vision.

We may simply not trust ourselves to know what’s best, even for us. The challenge is not only to Listen, but to receive and discern what we find, and to use it in our Manifesting practice to effectively create what we want to bring into our lives. This is one of the most precious gifts of learning to Listen.

It may be hard to slow down, scary to open ourselves to something new. We may feel guilty for not being busy, daydreaming, wasting time. We may get nervous when we settle and quiet ourselves if we’re not used to it. Uncomfortable things may arise. That’s okay, you can handle it, and there is support available. You’re welcome to reach out to me if this is tough for you.

Listening is a practice, not just an activity. You’ll get better at it and more comfortable with it over time, especially if you practice it along with the other Manifesting Steps, including Appreciation, so you’re setting the tone and not just opening to whatever comes.

On the other hand, we may love to Listen and want more time than our schedule seems to allow for meditation, leisurely walks in Nature, brainstorming, writing or sketching, reading or podcasts, discussions, classes or research.

In the next Step: Action, we’ll take a look at some tools to help us craft our schedules and to-do lists so they are sacred tools rather than weapons to bludgeon ourselves into endless scurrying and exhaustion.

Try this simple, powerful practice

1. You can begin by witnessing things more intentionally during your usual days, building up that muscle of Listening. 

2. Then you may notice a quiet moment here or there you can devote to just Listening. It might be as you awaken in the morning, your last moments before falling asleep, even a minute of privacy in the bathroom, a short walk through a parking lot, or home to your own front door.

3. Finally, you can set aside moments every day to just Listen, either by increasing the time you noticed yourself doing it already or by creating new times in your routine when you practice Listening in certain ways like meditation, journaling, sketching or observing Nature.

Here are some prompts for journaling or contemplation:

What moments in your day can you notice yourself Listening? 

What moments can you create that are dedicated to just Listening? 

What form does this take? 

How do you feel when you just Listen? 

How does this affect your Manifesting practice?

Manifesting Moondays 🌛🙌🌜

Join me for Manifesting Moondays, an online Manifesting practice circle, every Monday 7-8 pm EDT.  We start with a brief centering meditation and discussion on the Essential Art of Manifesting 6-Step  Protocol. Then for half an hour we work independently on our own Manifesting practice, whether in meditation, journaling or other ways that help you Appreciate and Manifest. Finally, we come back to share and support one another. And it’s all charged with the power of Reiki. 🙌

If you have feedback or suggestions for Manifesting Moondays, please let me know. I love to Listen to you too! 👂

Sharing Reiki with Clarity & Confidence class starts 5/13

If you’re a Reiki practitioner at any level, you are welcome to join this unique class dedicated to learning to both communicate about Reiki and offer hands-on sessions with greater comfort and competence. Register here or email connect@essentialarts.net for details.

Bonus fun ~ word play! ✍️

Etymology & related words

“Listen” is related to leer, hear and fame

This word has an ancient Indo-European root “kleu-” meaning “to hear” with interesting variations like:

• Greek “-kles” meaning fame, as in Herakles

• Old English before 900 BCE “hlystan” meaning to hear or hearken and “hlysnan” to listen

• Old Saxon “hlust” meaning ear, hearing

*Conscious capitalization

I capitalize Manifesting, Intention and the other Steps in the Manifesting protocol to show that they are specific to this practice and not the general terms.

Happy Manifesting!

Dawn

Dawn Hancy, Reiki Master Teacher, Coach, Retreat Leader

Wedding Wellness Whisperer