more on listening

in my previous post, i linked to a sermon on listening to god's will. since, i have read this a few times and extracted two valuable lessons, as i see them:

first, that it is important to listen with our minds and hearts both. the sermon puts it neatly:

Swedenborg frequently identifies why we must discern with our minds and hearts together. Love and truth are needed conjointly. Otherwise, if we neglect the quality of love or compassion, we can rationalize the truth of anything we want. The ecological state of our earth is an example of how our culture's over-reliance on rationality, which is a limited and distilled form of truth, helped to separate individuals from the consequences of their actions upon other living beings and systems. And in the reverse situations of love over truth, a relationship in which a woman chooses to be with a man because she loves him, even though she is aware of his verbal or physical abuse, may reveal the woman's neglect of her inner truth of wanting to be treated with respect and love. When held mutually, love and truth bring about an intuitive understanding that confirms the choices and actions we make in our lives.

does this not simplify everything considerably? in fact, even the spirit of detachment is so beautifully captured in these words - to love always, but to always embrace the truth along with - that must be our goal. but therein lies the task of understanding and discerning love and truth. this may only become possible if we each make an express effort to understand ourselves, and what constitutes love within. when is it that we feel love? that our hearts are filled with love? when are we confident that there is truth in our reason? difficult questions that may only be answered by increasing self-knowledge and self-awareness. a deep insight, nevertheless. and a clear, simple goal to aspire for endlessly.

second, i have often wondered what becomes of our prayers :). is god listening? what about questions that we ask with purity of heart and mind? as i had asked earlier - what constitutes email to god, and how do we ascertain his responses? and if prayer and meditation are the way, still - what determines when we will receive our answers. here is what the sermon says:

Some of us heard a clear idea of this in a sermon that was delivered in this church by the late Dr. Wilson Van Dusen, who was a psychologist, a Swedenborgian scholar, and a mystic. He shared that sometimes after asking a deep spiritual question of the Divine, he would not get an answer for several days or longer. He explained that during this time he knew he was being realigned internally by God; that he was not able to receive an answer given his understanding at the time. He had learned to trust this process--that he could wait patiently and sensitively, and the clarity of an answer would eventually come.