About five years ago, I started making a special folder for recordings that I thought I would want to listen to again — snippets and conversations from radio shows, the Mentor’s encouragement and clarity in the left hand of two-handed recordings, email class exchanges with the Guide, insights I wanted to remember, etc. I add them to the folder as I make them and start a new folder for each year. I have found that structure to be really helpful, and I listen to those recordings a lot.

Often I’m mostly listening to recordings from the last few months, though, or maybe the last year, because at this point, there are quite a few recordings. So it dropped in a few months ago to start at the beginning and listen to all of the ‘special folder’ recordings, in order. 

I have found it to be a really beautiful experience to listen back to those old recordings. They are basically a map, a record, of my practice over the years. There are recordings I remember well, and others I’d completely forgotten about. But in listening to them, I get to witness all over again the unfolding of my practice and my life, year after year.  

It has also given me a powerful experience of what I project is being pointed at in a recent PracticeEverywhere tweet: “Recording and Listening (R/L) keeps insights alive.” There were all of these insights and pieces of guidance and practice conversations in those recordings that I had been aware of in the past, but they weren’t currently in my awareness, like tulip bulbs gone dormant and sitting under the soil. Listening to recordings about them was like I’d watered them all and put them under a heat lamp. And then there they all were, alive and available.   

It’s a pretty amazing thing to be walking around with five years’ worth of Sangha’s insights right near the surface of awareness. I’ll be going along and something from an email class response from the Guide from three years ago will drop in, or something someone said on a radio show four years ago. I feel rich with insights, buoyed and supported by years of Sangha’s wisdom, courage and clarity. And that feels like something very much worth keeping alive — pressing play, pressing record, participating in the vibrant process that is Recording and Listening.

Gasshō.

Do you have a favorite R/L insight, idea, or practice tool? We’d love to hear it! Send us your favorite quick tip (75 words or less) or submit your idea for a blog post.