Learning To Receive
By Charlotte Selver
This article is an edited excerpt from the newly published audio tape by Charlotte Selver's July 30, 1992 class on Monhegan Island in Maine.
How do you receive the words of another person? What happens when you hear something or see something? Words can become experience. Does it ring a bell in you, so to say, when you say or hear something? Can you communicate with it? Can it become felt to you? So that it is not just words but words becoming experience. You receive.
I receive from you when I hear you speak. I feel your experience, not just what you say, but you - or what is happening with you. This kind of hearing or feeling is something which you have to allow. Where you as a whole container receive. Where you feel in your toes what is being said, and your breathing is there for it, and so on. Everybody has this ability.
We are taught to listen to words and repeat what the person says, the teacher for instance. When I was in school, I got the best grades when I would say exactly what the teacher said. We are learning second or third-hand. We never come to real tasting, feeling, being there for something. I remember very well when I came to Elsa Gindler. I also was filled to the brim with teachings. She rejected me many times saying: 'I don't want to work with you,' because I was so artificial. But then, when I was with her, I suddenly remembered one instance in my life when I was a child. I had a kind of crush on a girl when I was in school who was much older than I. I admired her. I never came close to her, I didn't dare to, but when I saw her, I was so happy. One day, we were looking at something, I think it was a movie, she happened to be close to me. Suddenly she put her hand on my shoulder, and I - it was like an electric shock. I felt it through and through! I was electrified by this touch on my shoulder. I could never forget it. I never came closer to this girl in school but when I came to Elsa Gindler I began to understand what it is to receive. To be there for reception. In that one moment - the hand on my shoulder. Letting it happen to me. It is the same with words we hear. What we usually do, just listening to words and letting them go through our brain, is just the opposite of that.
Be it through hearing, touch, taste or seeing, when the senses are stimulated the whole organism is transformed into a feeling entity - into a sensitive entity. However, this can only happen when the mind is clear. That means not sharp. That means cleared out like when you make general cleaning and you take all the furniture out, and all the dust away and all the dirt and everything, so that the whole room becomes cleaned and open, quiet. This 'radio in our head' becomes silent as you let go of thoughts, and peace can come, when you are more quiet, more open in your head. That is not sleeping or dreaming - it's like when something is really clean, so it's free for reception. And then we have to learn to allow that what is happening inside: the beating of the heart. The coming and going of air. Not creating anything. Letting everything be as it happens and letting it change, if it changes. No expectations, no criticisms, no emotions. Just like a clear lake, very quiet.