Chapter 1 of The Heart of Sacred Listening
From the bottom of my heart, welcome to the pre-release of my book The Heart of Sacred Listening, The Key to Transforming Your Relationships, Your Work, and Your Life. If you’re new here, visit the Table of Contents to catch up on previous chapters.
I open my book with a beautiful quote on listening, followed by Chapter 1.
Part I
Awakening Your Sacred Listening for Others
The Gift of Heart-Listening
Kokoro-to-kokoro
Heart-listening and compassion are interwoven in such a marvelous way that they create a circle of caring. One gives rise to the other, and in turn is the result of the other. When we listen with the heart we begin to feel compassion in a new way, and when we feel compassion we also discover ourselves listening with the heart more spontaneously….
…The Japanese have a special phrase to describe this kind of heart-listening. They speak of kokoro-to-kokoro, which means “heart speaking to heart.” For them it is the most powerful form of communication because it is centered in love, and it is infallibly effective. They describe its effect as similar to a stone dropped into a clear pool. It sends out ripples in ever-widening circles, until the farthest reaches of the shore are touched by its gentle waves. Heart-listening sends out waves of love that wash away the waste of negative emotions and usher in a new energy of compassionate caring.
Heart-listening is rare mainly because we have not understood the importance of it. We thus do not take time to learn this beautiful and powerful art. Yet there seems to be a universal longing for this kind of communication. We want to be heard and understood by others at the deepest levels of our being. We want to be responded to with compassion. We all want to be in touch with the wisdom of our own hearts and be able to share this caring with others.
Wanting to learn this kind of listening is its essential prerequisite. By wanting, we open our hearts to the experience. It is not an art that is easily acquired. It demands discipline and attention and self-reflection, as well as the courage to take new risks. But the rewards are incredibly great for us and for those we touch with our listening.
The gift of heart-listening is, ultimately, the gift of our highest selves, and like all true gifts, one that enriches the giver as much as the receiver.
Andre Auw, Ph.D.
“The Gift of Heart-Listening,” Chapter 2
Chapter 1
Who Am I?
The Question that Opened My Life
It was December 1972. I was twenty-seven years old, sitting in a banquet chair in the ballroom of the Jack Tarr Hotel in San Francisco with two hundred others for a program that I had heard could transform my life. The handsome man at the front of the room, a man in his forties with brown, somewhat curly hair that spilled onto his forehead, had a booming voice and a charismatic presence, and was leading the program.
I had spent the previous year taking weekend workshops at the Esalen Institute, an innovative Center for humanistic psychology and personal development.
I had to do something. My identity crisis had started the year before.
Now, something amazing was happening in my life, and I wanted more of it.
Since graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1968, I have been teaching high school English in a middle-to-upper-class neighborhood in the hills of Walnut Creek, California. There, I started a school within the school and won an award for Innovative Development from the California Teachers Association. I loved my job, and I loved the students.
When I was twenty-one, I had married a man who was Jewish – all part of what my parents expected me to do (and, of course, twenty-one was the perfect age). Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I would get married when I was twenty-one.
He was perfect. He fit all the pictures. He had the right credentials. I had met him as a sophomore.
He was handsome. He had a great sense of humor. He was artistic. We had bought a home in the Montclair Hills, with money I had inherited from my mother’s passing. She had died of cancer when I was 16.
We had a living room with a fireplace and a deck, looking over the pine trees.
Life was perfect.
Well, not THAT perfect. And I knew it. I didn’t want to know it, but I knew it.
One night, he didn’t come home. And the next night he didn’t come home. And, then, the next night.
We were not content in our relationship anyway, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.
Six months later, we got a divorce – quite an amicable divorce. Once the initial crisis passed, infidelity confirmed, we remained friends. That crisis ultimately became the opportunity my soul was longing for – to break free and go deep.
The Chinese ideogram for crisis is the same ideogram for opportunity. That certainly was the case here.
Bob and I are still friends, all these decades later.
However, at the time, I felt like a tsunami of I am not loved sweep over me from my past, my present, and all of my future. I felt ungrounded, at sea without a lifeboat, lost. I don’t swim well, and metaphorically, I was drowning, tossed about by surface waves of turbulence.
Worst of all, I didn’t know who I was without the role of wife.
It was a surprise to me to find myself so lost, without the roles, without the ways I had been defining myself.
I had been a wife, a teacher, a good girl, a daughter who obeyed her parents, and a good student. However, I realized now that those were only roles, distinct from who I was.
That critical, crucial, essential question, “Who am I?” became a guide for my life.
At first, I felt like a child lost in a thick forest of redwoods without any escape routes. Later, as I began to explore, inhabit, and live in that question, it became inspiring, enlivening, and a source of passionate living.
As I began to journey inside that question, I realized that many other people were living in the same question.
You might be living in that question.
I devoured books I had never read before. Ram Dass’ Be Here Now was profound, awakening. So was Alan Watts’ The Book. So was Adi Da’s Knee of Listening, and Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi and Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. All freed up my thinking, opening me into new territory to explore, think within.
I began journeying every weekend to the Big Sur coast, four hours away. I looked forward to my weekly pilgrimage to The Esalen Institute. This remote, burgeoning institute for Human Awareness, personal growth, and self-exploration is a place outside of time, a space on a high cliff where the waves beat on the rocky shore below incessantly, like Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, like ever-present themes of mystical, musical magical wonderfulness. I heard the waves in the background, constantly – at night, on walks to the hot baths, on the trails, and in my sleep.
I relished being with transformative teachers, philosophers, and psychologists.
I immersed myself every weekend in workshops: Gestalt Therapy, Aikido, Rolfing, psychodrama, sensory awareness, meditation, and Tai Chi. It was magical, wonderful, delicious, and divine.
And the question. “Who am I?” started to become more and more exciting. I met so many other people who were living inside that same exploration. The question shifted from being housed in fear, from feeling “lost and alone on some forgotten highway,” as John Denver’s song goes, to being exciting, to being opening, to being a path to waking up.
Sitting in that chair, in that hotel room, with the charismatic founder of est in front of me, with his booming voice, and straight talk, was the next step in my path.
With many of the other participants sharing their own stories, I was moved. And I felt safe. I was seeing things about myself I had never seen, and I was having insights, realizations.
I wanted to give myself a full-blown immersion, more than just weekends, a giving of my life over to the exploration. I wanted to profoundly devote myself to the inner work, to “acquiring” self-awareness. I wanted to see the patterns that were holding me back that I didn’t even know were holding me back. I wanted to wake up!
I wanted to take a full year’s leave from teaching.
I wanted to give myself the blessing of a life filled with exploring that question, meeting others on the path to “Enlightenment” or “Awakening,” finding my purpose, and living a life of meaning, passion, freedom, and joy.
As I contemplated taking that leave, I suddenly heard an inner, admonishing voice say, “You can’t take a leave of absence because Daddy won’t let you.”
I knew I couldn’t. I just couldn’t see or act on that possibility because Daddy wouldn’t let me.
The Voice was harsh, punitive, angry, admonishing, severe, and fear-based.
“Huh?” I argued to myself. I’m twenty-seven years old. I am an adult. I can do what I want with my life.”
A dialogue ensued.
Well, it wasn’t a dialogue. It came back to one repeating admonishment, like a hellish mantra: “Yes, I know, but Daddy still won’t let you.”
“Daddy won’t let you.” “Daddy won’t let you.” “Daddy won’t let you,” echoed down dark hallways of my mind.
Chapter 2
My Dad and I: From Fear to Love
The “Old Ferryman,” transporting pilgrims to Inis Caeltra, the Holy Island, on Lough Derg, in Ireland, On his way and nearing that island. Metaphorically speaking, I, too, was on my way
This is a 2018 photo I took of “The Old Ferryman,” whose little boat transported us to Inis Caeltra, the Holy Island, on Lough Derg, during our “Turas D’Anam,” or “Journey of the Soul,” to Ireland in 2017. Here, he nears the island, with his pilgrms in tow, just as I had begun my own journey.
May my book, like the old Ferryman, transport you to your own land of deep listening, where you can hear the Sacred in others.
I am so grateful you’ve joined me here to start this journey into my book, The Heart of Sacred Listening. I would love to hear your thoughts; please leave a comment if you feel led to.
If you think of someone in your life who would appreciate joining us on this journey, share this Chapter with them.
Remember: the Introduction and the first four chapters are free for everyone. Afterwards, you’re welcome to continue reading this pre-release version of The Heart of Sacred Listening by upgrading to a paid subscription ($6 monthly / $60 annually).
My bookshelf had all the same books on it at that period of time. Very curious about that passing mention of sitting with the charismatic founder of EST. And what a powerful note to end that story on, with that ball and chain of an inner parent voice around your ankles.