The Door Opens Through Relationship

Dearest you,

Something rather wonderful happened this week.

On Thursday night, I was a guest on Coast to Coast AM, a late-night radio program Don and I have listened to and found fascinating for years.

The range of topics is rather vast: the paranormal, scientific mysticism, spirituality, astrology, integrative medicine—and sometimes things that are a little scary! Sometimes we tune in. Sometimes we tune out. Quite intentionally.

At any rate, I was thrilled to have been on Coast to Coast.

And there is a story behind how I got there.

My friend and astrologer Leslie McGuirk has been a guest on Coast to Coast for ten years—at least once a year and sometimes twice.

She recommended me to the producer, Tom Danheiser—and the door opened.

Why did the door open?

I’m not entirely sure. But I would say it had a lot to do with relationship.

During our first conversation, I shared with Tom the Steve Martin story about “going to the Bahamas.”

There is an old comedy skit with Steve Martin and Teri Garr in which Teri Garr is a patron in a very shi-shi restaurant. She gives Steve Martin, playing “The Absent-Minded Waiter,” a long and complicated order. Somewhere in the middle of listening to her, he simply...goes to the Bahamas.

That is a story about how we don’t listen.

Tom LOVED that.

And then came one of those wonderful little synchronicities: Lisa Garr, one of the Coast to Coast hosts whom I particularly enjoy, is Teri Garr’s niece.

Imagine that!

And then, as if that weren’t enough, I told Tom how much I had loved going to the old theater in Everett, Washington, where I saw one of the live Coast to Coast events they occasionally produce with George Noory. C. Crane, one of their longtime advertisers, was there with its wonderful radios. I remembered the whole evening. I loved it.

Well, Tom LOVED hearing that, too.

Why?

Because he is the person who works so hard to produce those live shows.

There we were.

I wasn’t trying to impress him. I was sharing things I genuinely loved—and discovering, as we talked, that some of them mattered to him, too.

Relationship.

Anyway, it didn’t take long.

I was in.

And then, a few days before the show, something else happened.

Tom called me. I called him right back. He wanted to know whether I had ever been on Coast to Coast before.

“No,” I told him.

We got off the phone.

Two minutes later, he called me back.

He wanted to tell me what a great subject I had.

He had just been trying to communicate with someone who wasn’t listening to him. He couldn’t get the person to hear what he was saying.

And suddenly, there it was again.

Listening.

The very thing we were going to be talking about Thursday night had just shown up in Tom’s own life.

He told me not to worry about having enough opportunity to talk about my book and my work—that George would give me plenty of time. He told me I was going to have a great time. He explained that he would be there with me on Zoom throughout the program.

And before we hung up, he said:

“Say hello to Leslie!”

I did.

Leslie’s response made me laugh and touched me at the same time:

“We are a great team. Tom likes you!”

And then, in the wonderfully empowering way Leslie has, she told me that people would feel my energy over the radio. That my passion would come through.

And finally, the astrologer in her had the last word:

“Remember this is all part of your destiny!”

Destiny.

I smiled when I read those eight words in my text.

And then Thursday night arrived.

I was nervous at first. I had prepared. Oh, had I prepared! I had stories in front of me, and had thought a great deal about the questions George might ask and how I could bring the heart of Sacred Listening into a two-hour radio conversation.

And at first, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with myself. I stumbled a little. I began telling the story of my father—one of the foundational stories in The Heart of Sacred Listening—and right in the middle of it, we went to a commercial break. A long commercial break! I texted Tom, who was there with me during the broadcast, and asked whether George would let me finish the story. He assured me he would, and George did. But something had been interrupted, and when I returned to the story, it didn’t quite have the same punch.

I noticed something else, too. When I tried too hard to tell a story the way I had prepared it, I wasn’t always completely present. When I simply knew the story and allowed myself to tell it extemporaneously, it came alive.

And then the callers came.

Something shifted in me. Suddenly I wasn’t talking about Sacred Listening anymore. I was listening.

One caller spoke passionately about President Trump, his language, and what the caller longed for in a leader. I listened to him and then realized that the question really belonged with George, so I handed it over.

George laughed. “You’re giving it back to me, eh, Amba?”

“I sure am!”

And George responded beautifully. He spoke about being old-school, about not liking that kind of language, and then remembered being twelve or thirteen years old when John F. Kennedy was president. He spoke of Kennedy as someone he could look up to, a statesman.

When he finished, I told him how much I appreciated what he had said. And I appreciated what the caller had said, too.

Nobody had to be made wrong. Nobody had to win. There was room for people to speak and to be heard.

Another caller told me that he had ADHD. I invited him, first, to let himself be all right exactly as he is, and to become interested in his own experience rather than beginning with the assumption that something about him needed to be fixed. I also shared something I have observed over the years: that people with ADHD can have extraordinary creativity and originality, and perhaps there was something there for him to explore—not simply a deficit, but a gift. He seemed deeply touched by that.

And then a woman called and began telling me about her father.

Her story sounded remarkably familiar. “Why is this A not an A-plus?”

She went on to tell me that she became a lawyer and ultimately a conflict mediator. And then she said something else. Others had suggested that she write a book, but she had been a big “No.”

And now she is going to begin writing one.

I got so excited for her!

Somewhere in the midst of those calls, I think I discovered the answer to one of the questions I had been carrying into the evening:

Could I touch, could I connect with, the hearts of people I couldn’t see?

Yes.

Absolutely.

And perhaps they could feel me, too. Some of the callers told me they were inspired.

At the end of the program, George asked me to “stay in touch.” He mentioned that this was my first time on the Coast to Coast. He told me I had been a “wonderful guest.”

That meant so much to me because one of my intentions going into the evening had been very simple: I wanted George to be glad I had been there, and I wanted the people listening to leave the conversation inspired. I also wanted them to leave with something they could actually practice—to begin taking responsibility for their own listening and catching themselves in their reactions.

And then this morning, Friday, I heard from someone I had worked with at the Stanford University Department of Public Safety in 2018. He had heard me on Coast to Coast and found his way back to me. He wrote about the difference our work together had made in his life, and how glad he was to see that I was now carrying the work out into a much wider world.

Eight years later.

Relationship.

Perhaps that happened.

But here’s the funny part.

When the show ended, I gave myself about a B. I knew the places where I had stumbled. I knew some of my stories had been too long. I knew the moments when I had been thinking about what I wanted to say rather than simply being present.

And then, sometime between two and four in the morning, I woke up.

There was my own voice in my ear!

Coast to Coast was rebroadcasting the program.

Imagine waking from a sound sleep and hearing yourself coming out of the radio!

I lay there and listened. By then, the callers were on, and something surprised me.

I could hear myself.

I was there. I was listening. And it sounded good.

I had to smile.

Perhaps Sacred Listening also includes being willing to listen differently to ourselves.

So I think I’ll raise that B.

Maybe an A-minus.

And perhaps Leslie was right. Maybe people really can feel something over the radio.

And another door opened that night as well.

In preparation for Coast to Coast, we made The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening available a little earlier than planned. Its official public launch is September 9, but Substack subscribers and Coast to Coast listeners are being given early access beginning Wednesday.

Which means the door is open now to you.

As a subscriber to Awakening Heart, and, particularly, a paid subscriber, for which I am very grateful, you are someone who has chosen to come more deeply with me into this exploration of listening, presence, transformation, and what it means to live an awakened life.

So, I invite you to check out/ explore the opportunity of “The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening” for yourself, which is 50% off for a limited time.

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And what, if anything, did I discover about Leslie’s word: DESTINY?

Perhaps destiny isn’t something we recognize while we’re living it. Perhaps we simply keep listening, with an awakened heart, for the next door that opens—and walk through.

I began this story wondering why the door to Coast to Coast opened in the first place. I thought it had something to do with relationship.

Now, having walked through that door, I think I know.

The doors open through relationship. Relationships we have, relationships to be created, and relationships we don’t yet know are in our future. And listening, as I said last night on Coast to Coast, seems to be the magic key to unlock that door.

With enormous love and gratitude,

Amba