[MUSIC]
So with deep listening, there's a quality of presence where there isn't a lot
of selfing, a lot of activity of interpreting, judging, reading into,
preparing... There's just openness and
receptivity, there's no controlling of anything. But as you know,
it's rare that we are listening in that kind of an openness.
There's a lot of static usually, because we're somewhat in a trance,
where we're projecting, you know, what we think is being said and
where we think it's going to go, and we're being influenced by our wants and
our fears about the conversation. So, what I'd like to do is just,
let's move in a little closer to what goes on when we are in conversation,
but our listening is somewhat blocked. And if you break it down to wants and fears,
when we're in communication and we're not conscious of it, there's a whole
layer of wanting that creates static. And you might think of even, you know,
just scan a recent...for recent conversation with somebody. You might
have something in mind where you just spent five, ten minutes with somebody, and
just notice were there wants there? Did you want that person to
experience you in a certain way? That's one of the basic wants we
have usually when we're talking. Did you want that person's approval? Did you want
the conversation to go in a particular direction? Did you want to
prove something? Did you want to fix the person or accomplish something?
Do you see what I mean? There's all these layers of wants we...that are usually
there. And the truth is, and it's just like any other spiritual practice,
that if there's a goal... If we're striving for something to happen...
To make an impression... To have something go our way...
To persuade... Whatever... That striving interferes with presence,
with really recognizing and hearing what's truly there.
Some of you might remember the story of a student entering a monastery, and
he's really eager to experience enlightenment. And
he asks the abbot, you know, How long will it take it me, you know,
to experience like total satori? And the abbot says, Ten years.
And then the guy says, Well, what if I work really, really hard?
And the abbot says, Twenty years... Hey wait a minute...you just said ten years.
For you, thirty years... [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] But you get the idea that,
if we're in a conversation and we're trying to make something happen,
that gets between us and listening with an awake heart. And it's
the same thing as when there's aversion. Aversion's a flip side of wanting.
What happens when you're with somebody, and you're talking, and
there's aversion because they're making you feel insecure about yourself?
They make you feel like you're being judged or criticized. And how many
have had that experience of your partner saying to you these magic four words,
We need to talk... What happens? You get tight. Are you really going to listen?
It's hard to listen when we feel hurt or
offended, when we feel pushed away by what another's saying, we shut down.
It's hard to listen when we feel insecure about having the right response.
We want to sound intelligent, or like we know what's going on. Then it,
then we get tight. It's hard to listen when the other person's not connected with
themselves, and they're speaking, when they're not speaking from realness, or
we get distracted. You know, we get pulled all around by this complex
mix of what we're wanting to have happen and what we're not wanting to happen.
So, and just to say that sometimes the wanting and the aversion doesn't have
anything to do with the other person. Sometimes we're in a conversation and
we're not listening because we really want to go and get something else done, or
get some food, or be talking to somebody different. Or we're in a conversation and
it's, our aversion is not to do with that person. What's going on in that moment
is that we feel like we don't have enough time. How many of you have
experienced that--you just can't quite listen because I don't have enough time?
I feel that so often. So, I thought I'd share with you a story that
really impacted me on this front.
I've mentioned here a number of times a book I love called Tattoos on the Heart.
This is Gregory Boyle... So, Gregory Boyle's a Jesuit priest who
works with gangs in Los Angeles, the most violent parts of Los Angeles.
And he'd create work programs for them, and a whole lot,
a sense of community, a very, huge amount of healing he's been responsible for.
So, he describes one morning that he's completed mass, and
the next thing he has is a baptism to do. So, he's got a little time between
the two. So, he goes into his office. He's got like about ten minutes. And
a few minutes in, a woman walks into the room. And her name's Carmen,
and she's a heroin addict, gang member, occasional prostitute. He says,
She's often seen defiantly storming down the street, usually shouting at someone.
So she seats herself and jumps right in. And he's got seven minutes, and so
this is what he describes. I need help,
she launches right in, brash and something of a no-shit sister.
Oh, she says, I'd been to like 50 rehabs. I'm known all over nationwide.
She smiles. Her eyes wander around my office and
she studies all the photographs hanging there. She multi-tasks and
her inspection of the place doesn't derail her stream of consciousness rambling.
The family will arrive for the baptism in a few minutes. I went to
Catholic church all my life, she says. Fact, I graduated from high school even.
Fact, right after graduation's when I started to use heroin. Carmen enters some
kind of trance at this point and her speech slows to deliberate and halting.
And I have been trying to stop since the moment I began.
Then I watch as Carmen tilts her head back until it meets the wall.
She stares at the ceiling and in an instant her eyes become these two ponds,
water rising to meet their edges, swollen banks spilling over. Then, for
the first time really, she looks at me and straightens. I am a disgrace.
Suddenly her shame meets mine.
For when Carmen walked through the door, I had mistaken her for an interruption.
So you understand... That when we have that...that mantra,
I don't have enough time...
What happens to anything that comes up? It becomes an object out there that's in our
way. What happens to listening? We're not there for it.
I want to name one more most basic level of fear that interferes with listening.
And I alluded to it. And that's the fear of not being here. That rather
than listen, because listening requires really letting go of ourself agenda,
really kind of emptying out. We're preparing to reassert that I'm here.
It's like that desire we keep having to say,
I'm here, I exist. We keep having to put our existence out there,
and listening's the opposite. It's almost like saying, Okay, let it go.
Make space for whatever is coming through. So we're preparing. We're uncomfortable,
and we don't know who we are when we're not planning our response.
There's a strong tendency to want to assert a self who knows somebody.
This is the fundamental self-sense holding on to itself.
This is why listening is so profound. That when we really begin this practice,
it goes right to the heart of a path of liberation.
It's no different than when we're just sitting and practicing, and
listening to what's going on inside us.
It requires putting down our evaluations of what we're experiencing, our judgments,
our interpretations--which means we're putting down our self-sense and
just letting life be as it is... Liberating and challenging... So?
The key to this very sacred art of listening is to not control or
direct what's going on. Not to pursue our wants, not to avoid our fears,
to recognize what's going on inside us, but to stay...and we're not trying to
control another person. Here's my, pretty much my favorite description.
This is Mark Nepo... To listen is to lean
in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
To listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
Take a moment, if you will, just to pause and
close your eyes, and perhaps bring to mind one person that
you'd like to deepen your capacity for listening well.
You might bring to mind a recent occasion of conversing and,
without judging yourself, just to notice. If you are asking the question,
Well, what's between me and listening with an awake heart?
What might have been stopping you? Was there
an agenda where you wanted something? Maybe approval or
cooperation... Or their understanding...
Was there aversion in some way?
Some fear of judgment? A feeling of not enough time?
How did you control the experience, if you weren't just simply listening?
Did you get distracted into your own thoughts?
Did you try to steer the conversation? Plan a response?
Imagine for a moment if you were re-doing...
What would your intention be?
How would you sense your own intention around listening?
Just using your own words... What do you wish?
To listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
The willingness to discover, to understand more deeply...
Yeah. So when you're ready, feel free to open your eyes.
So the gift of this path of really
deliberately deepening our capacity for
listening is that we spend more moments where we're resting in our
true nature in a full awareness that's not centralized around self.
That's open, sensitive, engaged... And for
the other it creates an atmosphere of love... And listening,
offering our presence is the deepest expression of love.
It's such an invitation for another person. It makes it safe for the other
person to unfold and to blossom. And when somebody listens to us, without judgment,
with that openness and that sensitivity, we unfold in that presence.
One of my favorite descriptions of the power of listening is to imagine that our
essence--this creative spirit that all of us have--is like a fountain. And
that it's the source of the fountain, and it's for all of us,
that same pure awareness, intelligence, love... It's all the same for all of us.
But when we haven't been listened to, that creative source,
that fountain kind of dries, it shrivels. When it's listened to it thrives.
It really flows. So, but when we haven't been listened to,
and when we don't listen to ourself, it kind of drives up and
it gets clogged. And then what we express is kind of murky,
or vague, or confused... Sometimes you'll talk to people, or
you'll find yourself speaking in a way where you're really speedy or nervous, and
there's no silences, and there's no real connection with what's there.
And that's because you haven't had that much of that atmosphere of real listening
presence given to you, or given to you...or you haven't given it to yourself.
So it happens for a lot of us, and sometimes all of it'll come out,
when there's that clogged-upness, when we haven't really been listened to,
or when we don't listen to ourselves... All that'll come up...out is
more superficial talk, kind of nervous, prepackaged stuff. I think we
all know about that. We know when we're in that state, when we're stressed and
not in touch with ourselves, when we can sense it for others...
Those are the times when, instead of being connected,
there's kind of hijacked by the part of us that is wanting to prove, or
protect, or defend. So we are living from externals... Really, what's expected,
what we should be saying, not communing from the depths.
So listening, when we offer that to each other, is, it invites that
creative fountain to begin to flow again. It offers a space for
inner truth to unfold itself and really shine through.
But just to say, it takes patience, both offering listening inward, and
to others, because sometimes, initially, there's kind of muddy waters. And
we need to kind of include that, and give space for that, so
something pure and clear come forth. Does that make sense, that it would take time?
It's an amazing gift that we can offer. Even just a little bit... Even with
somebody that we don't know we're not going to spend much time with...
Just offering that space, something begins to happen. This is Thich Nhat Hanh...
He says, Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve
the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening.
You listen with only one purpose--to help him or her to empty his heart.
Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness...
You're still capable of continuing to listen with compassion.
You just listen with compassion, and help them to suffer less. One hour
like that can bring transformation and healing.
So what are the basics in this training?
It's really the same as when we meditate. How we set our intention... Okay,
when I go back home and I'm with my partner, or with my teenage son, or
with my father, or whatever it is... I plan to listen
to really see if I can let go of all the interrupting static and
just be there. And then, it's very helpful to have an anchor.
To have something to keep coming back to, your physical sensations in your body,
or your breath... Something just to say, I'm here, I'm here.
And a commitment to be willing to notice whatever the resistances are, so
as you're listening, you're notice you're judging. Or as you're listening,
you noticing unpleasantness, and not wanting to be there. So
a part of you just names it and forgives it. It's okay. We have to be open to
recognizing what's going on inside you or you can't truly be listening to another.
And then I find the self-coaching is...it's a really brilliant approach,
if there's sometimes just a few words that you remind yourself of... Like sometimes
I'll just say, There's plenty of time--even if I don't believe it.
[LAUGH] Really. Just saying it, because some deep part of me knows it's true.
You know, my neurotic ego itself, that wants to always get more done,
doesn't believe it. But there's a deeper place that knows that if I
can really pause, that there's some timeless presence there...
That that's where everything that I cherish is possible...and I'm
really pausing when the ideas of a future and a past just start dissolving.