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More of A Listener

eric mccarty
2 min readAug 26, 2022

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More of A Listener — Headless Now — Prose Poetry — Moca McCarty Photo — Misty Listening

More of a listener:

usually it’s the first few words, and they always seem a gift to me, gently appearing and inspiring me to follow their lead towards whatever theme will come to mind. Writing is really the art of listening, requiring a high degree of patience and being able to simply wait in silence for words to make themselves known. I am really more of a listener than a writer, as the writing only happens after long moments of sitting quietly and allowing words to reach me.

they always do.

it’s similar to meditation, being more of a listener to the mantra’s subtle vibration than I am active in the role of repetition. The mantra really repeats itself and I am carried by its sounds to the point of stillness, just listening now to the vibrations play through silence. It’s no longer an act of meditation as it is a merging of sound and listener to a single instant of belonging to the moment’s silent hold. Really, meditation is the art of disappearance, as the listener becomes nothing more than the silence that they hear beneath the play of every sound.

and it’s to this that the first few words have led to, appearing from silence with a message from their home, reminding me that I am more of a listener than I am anything at all, or more truly still, that I am the silence that is heard. Words never quite capture the essence of this…

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eric mccarty
eric mccarty

Written by eric mccarty

Writer, prose poetry, meditation teacher and lifetime student

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