The Age of Listening: Why Information Isn't Enough Anymore with CJMiller

In this episode, CJ Miller explores how the overwhelming flood of information in today's world is calling us into a new stage of human development: The Age of Listening.

Drawing from Paul Baker's Integration of Abilities, CJ traces the evolution of human communication—from the Storytelling Age, to the Gutenberg Age of books and external authority, to today's Information Age, where knowledge is abundant but discernment has become essential.

Rather than simply collecting more information, CJ suggests that our greatest challenge is learning to listen intentionally. True listening is not merely intellectual. It includes the wisdom of the body, the heart, intuition, feeling, and conscious awareness.

Using his creative philosophy of Align. Listen. Create., CJ explains that creativity—and life itself—begins by first aligning with the greater field of Creative Intelligence. Instead of constantly telling life what we want, he invites us to become quiet enough to hear what life may be asking of us.

The conversation explores:

• Why information alone no longer leads to wisdom.
• How intentional attention can transform the way we experience the world.
• The difference between listening and defending our beliefs.
• Why intuition, feeling, and embodied awareness deserve a place alongside reason.
• How creativity becomes a practice of participating with life rather than controlling it.

Ultimately, this episode is an invitation to move beyond reacting to the endless noise around us and into a more grounded, compassionate way of living—one where we align, listen deeply, and create from the intelligence already flowing through us.

"The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear." — Rumi

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Spiritual Artist Podcast. This is Chris Miller. I invite you to join me as I interview artists from a variety of disciplines. We'll share powerful stories and lessons learned while making their art. So I've done a lot of work. You know, I've been doing this for five years now, and I finally realized that my message was a little too complicated on YouTube. So if you don't know this already, I want to remind you, I've split my channel. I've created a new channel called Spiritual Artist Creates. And if you go to that channel, you'll see instructional videos on painting. It's been very well received. In fact, I was right exactly about my supposition. YouTube cannot accept us being multi-level people. They want to throw us into a specific category, and their algorithm only works if they can promote you to that one category. Do you hear that? What that means is they couldn't understand that I was a spiritual person and an artist at the same time. I could either be spiritual or I could be an artist. So I've divided it. And now when I post an instructional video, they are sharing it with the world. Guess what? My first video is now at 46,000 views, and I talk about color theory. So you should check it out if you haven't already, if that's your thing. And then recently, just this earlier this week, I've released a video on how to start an abstract painting. And it is already up to 3,000 views or almost and climbing. And it's being very well received because I was right. YouTube only shares me with painters and artists. But you, yeah, you know you guys who have been following me on the podcast, I know what you like. You like wonderful discussion, interviews of people that are thought leaders, spiritual leaders, creative people, how they work, how they think, their thought process, their mindfulness, their consciousness. And that's what this podcast is all about. It's about the consciousness of the spiritual artist. And ironically, when I first came up with that brand, the spiritual artist, I want you to understand I was talking about the spirit of you, the consciousness of you, the place of you before you create. So now you can find both. You can find me helping you out with how to hold a brush, how to mix colors, how to start an abstract by following Spiritual Artist Creates on YouTube, or you can follow and keep following my old channel, Spiritual Artist Align and Listen. Align and listen. So let's unpack what I mean by align and listen and how I think this is so relevant to today. I have this framework that I've been working on for years at my retreats, and I keep refining how do you approach the creative process? How do you approach the canvas? And I analyzed how I worked, when I worked the best, when it wasn't successful, and I realized a couple things. I had to align myself first. What do I mean by align? Well, I think there is this field, this creative field that surrounds us, it flows through us, it's in everything, it's in the entire universe. But I believe that we are only individualized expressions of that field. And so we don't have access to all of that knowledge. We only have access to the knowledge within. But here's the catch: we can connect to that higher field, we can align with that field, and then we can get inspiration, divine ideas, guidance, things that tell us where to go, what to do next. My whole principle is stop telling the field of intelligence what you want. Start listening to what it wants for you. Let me repeat that. Stop telling the creative field of intelligence what you want. I want a red convertible. I want a big house. Start waiting for it to tell you what you need. Maybe you don't need a red convertible, but maybe you need a reliable, sexy sports car. Don't lock yourself into the material idea when there's the conscious idea so much bigger. When you want something that I want a car that makes me feel good, I want to focus on the feeling space in order to create. And so when you focus on the feeling space and say, I want a car that makes me feel good or attractive or sexy, then the universe can provide all sorts of solutions. But if you tell the creative field of intelligence explicitly what you need, it has to be read. You limit the options. Now that's just a very basic overview. So let's talk about it. You align first. The most important thing is to just calm down, listen to the noise around you. Just be quiet. You align your energy to the world around you, to the beauty around you. Notice the things around you that are already in alignment, nature, light, the scent of flowers, the beautiful sounds of birds. When you notice that, you align. And then here's the catch you listen. You listen for what it wants to tell you to do. I can't tell you what that'll be. Because it's going to be personal to you. It's going to be something you need to hear. And then you have the option to create. You don't always create when you hear something. Sometimes you just take it in. Sometimes when you listen, it's just Chris, little CJ, just enjoy the world. Look at the beauty today. Take an hour and just sit outside on the deck and feel the beauty of the world. That's what happens. So it's not always create, but oftentimes it is. So let me tell you something I've noticed lately, and I want to share a story. Some of you know this. I was very influenced by Paul Baker. He was a theater director here in Dallas, and he wrote a book called Integration of Abilities. The book is a little hard to understand, but his method is wonderful. And what he says is that basically we are a multi-component human. Tell that to YouTube, right? We're a multi-component human. We have our heart space, we have our body, we have our feelings, we have our emotions, and we have our thoughts. They all come together. They all come together. And Paul Baker wanted to teach you how to integrate those abilities. And something I read in his book, I went back and flipped through it and digested it again. He talks about the age of development in human history. So I'm going to share this with you because this is something to think about. Watching how society, and we are all part of this field of society as well, because the creative field of intelligence is within the society around us. And we have to work within that as well. He talks about for many thousands, thousands of years, maybe even longer, the storytelling age. That was when man shared his knowledge through story. They would sit down by the fire orally sharing stories, myths, and rituals. Most of this wisdom was shared through lived experience and it was remembered collectively. This is a wonderful trait because it kept people united. And it was meant for a man that was isolated, you know, a small group living in North America, a small group living in South America, some group living on an island. And the storytelling age was an excellent way to hand down the knowledge and the intelligence that you need to survive from one generation to the next. And that is why it lasted so long. It lasted for so long. Now, the negative about the storytelling age is that because you're only getting the knowledge of your own community, you don't necessarily gain from the knowledge of another community. In fact, you might even be biased against another community. So what happened? What happened to change the storytelling age? It was something that was an advancement that I learned being a journalism major, the Gutenberg Press. When they developed a machine that could take the written word and not only print it, but mass quantities, print it in mass quantities, it shifted the society of man and humankind. Excuse me for using the word man. How about humankind? It shifted that. Suddenly we had books that we could read. And you didn't have to be limited by your knowledge of where you lived. You could buy a book, or you didn't have to be limited by the knowledge of the people you hung around with. If you were in a specific faith, or if you were in a specific part of the United States, you didn't have to limit yourself. You could buy a book that someone wrote on the other side of the United States or in another country, and you could understand and gain knowledge. So you relied on this to seek truth. You would go back and say, well, here in the book. And what happened was the Gutenberg Age set up a fact age. There was truth and untruth. And it began the whole age of what is true and what is untrue. And we relied on that, and we've relied on that till very recently. We're still relying on that. What is truth? What is truth? And it's very tricky. Why is it tricky? It's tricky because we went into the next age of development for humankind, the information age. And most of us have lived through it. It's something that started in our lifetime, or we bore or just recently born into it. Suddenly you can hold a device in your hand and it can tell you stuff that's going across, going on across the planet. I can see what people are doing in Iran or Africa or China. I know what everybody's doing, and I'm getting flooded, flooded with information. And this is the challenge we are at right now. It is kind of at first, I remember, you know, so funny. I remember back when I used to fax stuff over. When I started my business years ago, I would fax information over to my clients. There wasn't even email. I know some of you young people are going, what? There wasn't even email. You either picked up the phone or you faxed the data over to someone. And suddenly they came out with this thing called email. And I could talk to people digitally without going out and driving across town and visiting them. It was great. We all embraced it. This world wide web gave us access to information in an unprecedented amount. But there's always a negative side to everything. There's a positive and negative. Because then, and we found this out recently, we're now getting flooded by information. An endless list of data coming in through social media, constant information, information. And you can see that. You can see how that has changed social media because I'll be honest with you, I'm not using social media anymore. I'm pulling back. I don't use Facebook. I've pulled away. Instagram's the only one I still go to. And even then, I'm starting to open it up and I see post after post of forced messages on my trail. I mean, paid for advertising, things I don't want to hear about. Fear-based things, things about the end of the world, things about politics, things about abuse. I can't, I can't even tell you some of the horrible things I've seen on TikTok. I've got to stop looking at it. I think that's what we're all feeling. And I think we've really hit the wall in the last five years. I think COVID might have been the cusp of it, but now we're really hitting it. How do we, how do we, how does the human, how does the human deal with this? What deal with this flooding of information? And I've decided that we are about to, if we don't, we're in trouble. We're about to go into a new age. And I'm gonna coin it the age of listening. Yeah, right. Imagine where did where did Chris come up with that word? Align, listen, and create. Information now is limitless. The essential human skill becomes learning to listen to it intentionally. Intentionally. Early on when I started The Spiritual Artist, I talked with my husband, Terry Martin, about acting, and he talked about what's called intentional attention. It's in my book, The Spiritual Artist. We have the choice to intentionally put our attention on something. That's what's being called for in the listening age. There's levels to this. We are asked to intentionally listen. And that means you can't just listen anymore quickly. You can't just, oh, what's that? What, what, and just suck it in. You have to look at everything with doubt. Everything. Everything. You have to listen for the truth within. This is tricky. This is really tricky. Because we we can't know from a post or from a new, even an even an article written by a what we used to think was a reputable media source, because it seems like they're all biased and all crazy in different ways. But we can thin through it. We have to learn to be intentionally intentional attention to what we're hearing. And we have to listen. What is listening? So this is where, you know, this long story for me to talk about what I talk about when we paint is it applies to what we talk about when we live. How are you listening? When you paint, you learn to put the paint down and then you listen to it. What does it want next? What am I hearing? What do I feel? I want you to remember that. What do I feel? What is my intuitive sense? We have to start learning to trust our intuition. I know all you people that are fact-oriented are going, what? You want to go back to the Gutenberg age and you want to pull out your book and say, but this is what the truth is. It was written in this book. Or this is what the internet says. Ah, those days are gone, my friend. We have to listen with our own intention, our own intuition. We have to be the judge and the jury. We have to be the person that the final line. We can no longer even begin to even listen to the people in our family or our friends. Have you noticed this? When you go out with your friends, if someone is pushing something, you can tell right away, right? If one of your friends is pushing their belief system on you, and it happens, you can feel it. I want you to listen to the feeling in your chest. You'll know it. Next time, right after this podcast, when you go on and go out into the world, listen for the next time you feel someone infringing on your belief system. The first time, it could be a post, it could be a newspaper article, it could be a radio announcement, it could be your best friend, it could be your partner. When they start pushing their belief on you, you can listen. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying to protest. This is what's interesting about listen. Listen is not defensive. True listening is not protesting, it's just listening. Listening carefully. Your job is not to counter it. So when I say listen, I don't mean defend. I'm gonna say that again. When I say listen, I don't mean defend. When someone steps on your value system, you just, oh, interesting. Be curious. Be curious. That's interesting that they said that. I wonder what that means. I wonder what that means about them. I wonder what that means, if it's true or not. Maybe I should research it. I wonder what that means about me. Do I believe it? And most importantly, how do I feel when I hear it? Do I recoil? Do I run into drama? This is the age of listening. Welcome. You could say I heard it here on the Spiritual Artist Podcast. We are now in the age of listening. And that listening is not just your intellect. I want to share that with you. This came from my painting. I realized that when I paint, it's not always coming from my thought. I don't consciously use red. It's almost on a body, a somatic level. I just feel it. I feel the need to do red. There is an intelligence to our entire body, not just our brain. We've gotten that all wrong. That comes from the Gutenberg era where we put all the respect on the brain. We've got to get back. We've got to go all the way back. And maybe you know, in a sort of weird way, maybe it is going back to the storytelling age. You felt the story. All those myths, all those parables, they have a feeling space to them. There is a knowledge in feeling. Sometimes it didn't even matter if it was a wacky story about a giraffe or or some weird character because it's the feeling that we learn from. So when I tell you to listen, and when you start watching for people and learn to listen to the world around you, it's more about not defensive, not judging, not saying this is right or wrong. Just listen. Hmm. Could that be true? And be and step into a place of curiosity. Into a place of curiosity. I love this quote. It's a roomy quote. Okay, there's several of his, by the way. Listen with the ears of tolerance. See through the eyes of compassion. Speak with the language of love. That's so good. I'm gonna read it again. Listen with ears of tolerance. That means when someone steps on you, notice that they're they're pushing their belief on you. But be tolerant. Just be tolerant and go, hmm, isn't that interesting? See through the eyes of compassion. Perhaps note why they might feel that way, where they're coming from, who they are, how the world might appear to them that way. But be the eyes of compassion. But most importantly, speak with the language of love. They are a reflection of you. Everybody you meet, everybody you know is a reflection of you. We are all one. We are all connected. All these little sparks on this planet are just different aspects of your own personality. So approach it with the language of love. How can I be love for this person? How can I say, you know what? I understand that you believe that way about blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's it. You don't even have to say more. You don't have to say, but I believe this. You don't, you don't have to prove it. You know, right? You have a knowing within you. Your intuition knows what is right. Listen to your knowing. You know the truth. It's on a level in your gut, in your heart space. It's physical. You know the truth. You can detect it. Haven't you ever done that? Haven't you ever gone to a party and meet someone? And right away, you know, I love this person. They just raise my vibration. I went to a uh physical therapist here in Dallas. I highly recommend if you want a referral, let me know. I met this man and his wife. And in the first five minutes, I turned to them and said, You guys have the most incredible energy. I didn't hear what they were saying. I didn't judge who they looked, what they look like, what ethnicity they were, how old they were. I felt them and I knew they were good people. They cared about my health. They cared about me getting better. They were truly sharing what they knew. So that's the language of love. Approach everyone like that. And there are times when you might meet someone that is grating against you. You immediately go, oh my gosh, I don't want to be near this person. Well, you don't have to tell them that. And you don't have to tell your friends that. All you do is say something polite. Well, have a good day. Wish them love. Wish them love. I hope you have a great day. And then walk away. Move away. That's all you have to do. You don't have to push. We have this society every day. I got to post it. I got to let them know how I feel. I've got to tell them. I've got no, we don't. You don't. You don't. You have to trust that they will go back and they will go and trust their own listening. They hopefully will. Maybe not. Some people never do. But when you go into the age of listening, this is about empowerment within you. It's about knowing and acknowledging your truth. Right? We become conscious participants in reality rather than just consumers of information. That's what's happening in the listening age. We're no longer just consuming. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I guess it's true. I guess it's true. Now you can go. Is it true that this vaccine will help me? Maybe, maybe not. Is this true that this shot will help my dog when I go to the vet that I'm being told to do? You're gonna have to stand out. It's a scary place. I'm gonna tell you this. It's not easy to enter the age of listening. It's scary. There's nobody to back you up. You can't go tell 10 people and have them repeat back to you and make you feel better. You have to trust that space within you and know that it is true and know that it is good, and only act on your own. Act with the truth and the knowledge of rightness on your own and trust that the field will let it all flow out, that the creative field will let it play out in the best possible way. Okay? Kind of a long winded conversation, but I wanted to share it with you because it so much aligns with what we do when we go onto these art retreats. I ask people to start getting quiet and aligned. First, you align. So I'm going to repeat that. If you feel that something triggers you, more often than not, you weren't aligned when you read it. So if you go on online or you watch the news and it triggers you, you're probably rushing around. You're probably feeling fear-based. You're probably in a hurry and you're being triggered. That energy is being pulled out of you. Always first. Align. Ah, it's so quiet in this room right now. The dogs aren't barking. I feel really good about what I'm sharing with you. I feel good. No pain in my body. It's a quiet Friday afternoon. I'm excited for the weekend. Everything is flowing nice. I'm excited to see some friends next week. I'm aligned. And now I can read something, something even offensive. And here's the choice flip it. Just flip it. Don't read it. Don't look at it. Walk away. But you don't have to tell it it's bad. Don't carry it with you. Don't carry it on your shoulder. Okay? There's that wonderful uh Buddhist saying where there's two monks walking down the street and or walking down the beach, and one says something to the other, and the other gets so upset, and he walks and they keep walking. And then about a mile later, he brings it up and says, You know, I can't believe you said that. And the first monk says, I put that down a mile ago. Why are you still carrying it? Isn't that a great story? Why are you still carrying it? When we let dialogue run around in our house, our house, our head, we are carrying it. Put it down. Put it down, my friend. So on that, I want to share one last quote that's really important. Sometimes it's about being quiet. And this is another roomy quote that I love. The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. Maybe that's what this new age is about. Not, oh, creativity screaming who you are. Be just be quiet. Do your work. Do your creativity. Be who you are. But you don't have to force it on anybody else. So thank you for listening to this. I want to remind you that yes, I have a new channel. It's doing really well. If you want to learn technique, go to Spiritual Artist Creates. If you just want these kind of conversations where I talk to people and I share my thoughts, stay here on the Spiritual Artist podcast. Most importantly, oh, I forgot one other thing. By book, I released the new coloring book that goes with my book, The Spiritual Parable. The coloring book is online on Amazon. So this is a great practice if you want to practice this align, you know, align, listen, create. You get the book, you read a parable, and you color it. And these are art custom illustrations made by many people that listen to this channel, many artists, friends of mine. You color while you think about the message. What a great way to talk less, hear more. Thanks again for being a follower to the Spiritual Artist Podcast. I hope you have a great weekend. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thanks again for listening to the Spiritual Artists Podcast. Whether you're watching this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or iHeartRadio, make sure you choose the subscribe button so that you will receive updates when new segments are released. Most importantly, be still, listen, and know that you are a spiritual artist.