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So, listening, like any other training
- sometimes described as 'deliberate practice' - it takes 10,000 hours plus some
to really shift into that trait
of receptive presence, okay...
And there are three steps, when we're stressed, that
help us to come back home to our potential, to listen well
and the first step we've just touched on, which is to have the intention.
It makes a really big difference to enter into an engagement
with a conscious intention to be present, to listen.
The second is the capacity, when you're engaged,
for an inner listening, so that you're noticing what's going on inside
that might be stopping you, when you're noticing the interference or reactivity
because if you try to ignore it you just won't be there for the other person.
So the first thing is intention, the second is a kind of inner scanning and listening
and the third is then opening, that receptive presence, to another
so that you have what St. Benedict calls "the ears of the heart"
that you're really listening with an awake heart to who is here.
So I'll give you an example of
this process so you can practice it more with those in your life
and there was one woman who had come to a workshop with me and we had
explored one of the pieces was listening and
she decided that she would practice with her brother;
the family would get together once a year, extended family,
on a vacation and her brother was a professor of economics
he had done so for decades, and she found him very
self-absorbed, he kind of dominated conversations, very opinionated...
and she got really
she dreaded it, she dreaded the time, she usually tried to find any excuse
to leave the conversations.
So she figured: "Okay we're gonna be together for a week: good time to practice."
And, so that she went with the intention and at first
it was very, very difficult, she described how difficult it was,
and her brother would talk incessantly about himself for going to diatribes about
child rearing or world affairs and
so there was no room for anybody in the conversation
and that's when she'd typically exit but she stayed
she used her breath as an anchor and that can be helpful, to have an anchor or something
that says: 'Okay be right here it's okay you can be with this..."
while he would be speaking, she'd do a bit of that inner listening in order to
recognize what was going on inside her; recognize and allow that there was
frustration, there was impatience, she felt a lot of judgment toward him,
she felt that aversion, like "I don't exist", you know, when he's speaking...
And so
her way of that inner listening was to notice all the aversion and say 'yes' to it
and by saying 'yes' to it, what I mean is not 'oh, this is great' but
'this is reality, it's okay...
it's just what's happening' - this is the weather of the moment, the inner weather...
So she would feel all her reactions and just say 'yes' to it,
and that'd help her relax more and then pay better attention.
So this is step three now: she started deepening her attention to him
and she coached herself to stay curious
she would mentally whisper to herself: "Okay so what's really happening here?"
There's time... What's behind his words, like who's really there?
Can I hear who he is?" That kind of coaching, to deepen presence.
And as she listened, she began to feel her brother's need for attention,
his need to feel like he mattered, that he was interesting to people
and she could feel his insecurity.
So, when she could let that in, that's when her heart softened
and it kind of softened it to a full listening presence;
she found herself able to rest in that listening presence.
So after a few days, a very interesting thing happened for her:
he started confessing to her that he was really agitated,
this was right after summer break and he had gotten his
performance evaluations which, as you know, now students are very, very active and
very public and posting everything about everybody and so his eval was not really good
especially compared to a lot of the more dynamic interesting
teachers that would draw people out - he didn't know how to draw people out,
so they found him kind of pedantic and boring - which he was...
so he's telling her this and, you know, he's talking about it and
then at one point he said something she didn't expect, he said: "I'm not the person I want to be."
and his eyes were wet, and she said: "Well who do you want to be?"
and his response was: "Someone who can
connect and engage and interest these young people, you know...
The world's a wreck and they need to understand what's going on and be able to
be part of what's going to change our systems around..." So they started talking
and she asked him what, you know, got in the way and
started asking about listening, whether he, you know, what he did to bring them out
and he had just never flipped it; it was all about that and not about this,
so it was like this light bulb went up... So the day that
they left, they parted, he had a whole lot of gratitude he said,
you know, how much he needed her and he said: "You've been just so here for me
and you've reconnected me with my purpose."
Now, what she had done was non-judgmental listening
and what she had done was give him a space so
he could unfold through his habitual patterns
and then start speaking from a deeper and more real place.
And one of the ways that I love to think about this
is a metaphor that our life and spirit is like
it's like a fountain that, when we haven't been listened to,
it gets clogged with the unprocessed hurts and fears
and the more we push away, our painful feelings the more they impede that
flowing aliveness... So when somebody starts to listen to us
- this is what's so beautiful -
the debris starts to dissolve and the fountain can start flowing.
When we listen to each other,
we allow the other person to come from a deeper place and speak from more authenticity.
When we don't listen, all we end up giving each other is the shallows,
do you know what I mean?
So she made space for his fountain to start flowing
and he started off, you know, in his habitual way and it was really hard to endure,
but she stayed.
Thich Nhat Hanh, wonderful Zen master, teacher,
says: "Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person.
I call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose:
to help them empty their heart.
Even if they're saying things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness,
you're still capable of continuing to listen with compassion because you know
that listening like that, you give the person a chance to suffer less.
If you want to help them correct their perception you can wait for another time;
for now you don't interrupt, you don't argue,
if you do they lose their chance.
You just listen with compassion to help them to suffer less.
One hour like that can bring transformation and healing"
So one of the deep motivations in listening
is to understand, to connect,
and also to give a space for another person that's truly a healing space.
Rachel Naomi Remen is an author, a physician, a very wise woman,
and she tells the story about one of her colleagues who was a
physician in an East Coast University and
he saw patients in his office
and one of his patients was a homeless woman and she would
all her possessions fit into two carts and
she would come once a week to their session and the way she'd get up
the steep hill to the clinic he worked in was she would latch the
shopping carts alternately to parking meters with a belt;
first she'd tie one and then wheeled the other to the next meter and uphill
and then go and get the first one - so that's the way she brought her
self and her possessions to the clinic. So he saw her once a month on a Wednesday,
her speech was sometimes rambling, her clothing was eccentric,
and as the story goes this deeply kind and respectful man wasn't at all
troubled or distracted by this, with his usual grave
courtesy, he welcomed her into his consulting room,
listened to the details of her difficult life and did what he could to ease her burden.
After he'd been seeing her for some time he became aware that she
sometimes came to the hospital on days that he was not there.
The clinic nurses were puzzled by this at first
as she seemed to know in some mysterious way that it was not her day to see the doctor.
After talking with her, they determined that she simply wanted to go to his consulting room.
Once she was there, she didn't go in
but would stand on the threshold
and slowly and deliberately place her right foot inside the empty room
and withdraw it again and again.
After a while, she'd be satisfied and go away.
The places in which we are seen and heard are holy places;
they remind us of our intrinsic goodness and worth,
they give us the strength to go on. Eventually,
they may help us to transform our pain into wisdom."
So we're talking about really the three steps
that if we engage with, helps us to listen
with that awake heart. The first one is that we really intend it,
that that matters to us; the second is to have the capacity for that inner listening
so we can sense our reactivity so it doesn't control the game, okay...
and third is to open up our attentions, in a way
that truly is saying: "I've got the time; this moment counts.
I'm listening: who's here, who's really speaking?"
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