Dev Suroop Kaur Khalsa is a Kundalini Yoga teacher trainer and Chief Compliance Officer at Akal Security. She travels around the world and teaches about sound and Naad. She is a recording artist who has produced 10 albums of Mantra music and Sikh Kirtan. devsuroopkaur.com
This video was filmed at her Sound and Mantra workshop at the 2014 Summer Solstice Sadhana.
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Yogi Bhajan said, “It is most powerful when we chant and listen to our sound at the same time. If we chant only, it has half the power. Chanting and listening to the chant at the same time engages the higher consciousness, the circulatory and nervous systems. When you develop this listening power you will be able to analyze what is good for you and what is not, whenever another person talks. It is a very simple way to have knowledge.”
So let’s play with listening. This exercise came into my life in the late 80’s when I was living in California. I’ve been married for 30 years now, but at that point we’d been married for 6 or 7 years. For those of you in relationships you know that there is beauty, and flow, and joy in the relationship and there is also frustration and other stuff.
When Yogi Bhajan was living, you could have a pen pal relationship with him. You could write to him, and he would write you back. It was great. I have a binder with all of these great letters from him. So, I was angry at my husband for some reason I can’t remember, and I was frustrated enough to write a letter to Yogi Bhajan. Then I got a call from one of his staff members which was unusual. She relayed a message to me from Yogi Bhajan, “Sit, and listen to, and name every sound”. The message didn’t say why, or for how long. She told me to call her in 2 weeks.
Because I was living in Southern California it was really handy because we had so many sounds; helicopters, leaf blowers, and traffic. So I would sit there and I’d name every sound. I wouldn’t time it. I would literally just name everything I heard. What I figured over time is that if you are truly listening you are not thinking. If you start to think, you’re not listening. You can’t do both at the same time. So the power of listening to your own voice while you are chanting, the power of listening to your beloved friend, rather than thinking about the next thing you are going to try to say is an incredibly healing way to move through the world.
Two weeks later I called the staff member back. She asked me, “So what’s different?” As she asked me that I had to think of an answer that I hadn’t prepared, and it dawned on me, “Oh, my husband has become a much more pleasant person.”
The assignment wasn’t to listen to a specific person. It wasn’t to listen while you are speaking to somebody. It wasn’t to listen to some specific music. It was, “Listen and identify every sound”. That’s all. That is the key in my book.
Try it for yourself.