The ancient myths were designed to harmonise the mind and the body. The mind can ramble off in strange ways and want things that the body does not want.*
(Joseph Campbell)

So much of this happens beneath the level of logic and reason. It’s all gut, instinct, memory, sensory information, and fantastically subtle cues. In networked spaces – online, in apps, in games – this all goes to hell. The body is missing.**
(Kio Stark)

Kio Stark is describing what happens when strangers meet.

We can widen this to include connecting with ourselves, with our world and with our god. At the heart of which is listening and generous inquiry.

Listening helps us to find our stories, our myths.

When these are in place, technology may help, but when not, it only get in the way. Jonah Lehrer offers some interesting thoughts about how interaction with our environment changes our DNA:

Our human DNA is defined by its multiplicity of possible meanings, it’s a code that requires context. […] What makes us human and what makes each of us his or her human is […] how our cells, in dialogue with our own environment, feed back to our DNA, changing the way we read ourselves.^

Listening reduces and even removes the barriers between us and our stories, making it possible to hear and capture these more richly:

Intentional silence: Pick a practice that helps you connect to your source.^^

Here are a couple of things to help aid listening: doodling is about listening, slowing down – dawdling to hear more: journaling is a means of curating our story.

(*From Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.)
(**From Kio Stark’s When Strangers Meet.)
(^From Jonah Lehrer’s Proust was a Neuroscientist.)
(^^From Otto Scaharmer’s Theory U.)