Chapter 2 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.
Chapter 2
My Dad and I:
From Fear to Love
I came to a full stop. Werner Erhard, the “trainer,” or leader and founder of the program, was asking us to look and see what story we were living in with respect to the issue we were dealing with.
My story about my dad was clear to me: He is a controller, a manipulator, old-fashioned, out to make you do whatever he wants you to do.
And I had plenty of evidence for that. I was sure of that. There was no question about that. I had seen that all my life.
I had plenty of evidence.
As a student, if I came home with 5 A’s and a B, he’d scowl, “What about the B?”
As soon as I came home from school, I had to spend two hours a day practicing piano, even when I didn’t want to. For eight years.
My other friends were hanging out in the afternoon. I felt sorry for myself, like a victim of my parent’s demands. After all, though, “I was a good girl.” And I would not dare go against their wishes.
My senior year in high school, I fell in love with someone who was not Jewish. My parents did not want me to see him. I saw him anyway. While some of the things we did together, they knew about it, some they didn’t. They weren’t happy about that relationship at all, at all.
I always had a curfew of 10:00 p.m., even during my senior year of high school. I remember that my best friend Naomi once had a “make-out party,” when several couples get together and they all “make out” – an old term for kissing. Naomi’s parents, quite liberal, were at the back of the house.
So, there we were, the lights way down low, and Johnny Mathis’ “Chances Are” was playing on the phonograph. It was around 10:00 pm.
There was a loud thump on the front door. Very loud. We all straightened up. Naomi stopped the record. She turned the lights up. She opened the door.
It was my dad who came to take me home. He was angry.
I was embarrassed and humiliated.
Now, back to the est training, eleven years later.
Werner asked us to do one thing: run a movie of our lives, examining all the evidence that proved I was right about the story I was living, that validated my own listening, so to speak – that my father’s intention was to control me – and find another interpretation or another narrative that accounted for the same evidence (without changing the evidence) but came into a story that served and empowered.
To drop one story and invent another.
I did that. I played that movie over and over and over and over again in my mind. I was dedicated to seeing something new. I was committed. I was sweating. I was uncomfortable. I just kept seeing a dad who was out to control my life. I just knew that I was right about him.
And then, suddenly, I had an epiphany.
I realized that if I had led the same life my father had – I had grown up where he had grown up, had the life experiences he had, been enculturated the same way he had, seen how to succeed like he did, having grown up in another generation – the generation he grew up in, I would have been exactly the same way.
And that all he really wanted, out of his love for me, his only daughter, who he had virtually raised by himself since I was 12, as my mother was dying from cancer for four years during that time, was to contribute to my happiness.
My brain exploded.
Everything looked different: my relationship with my father, my relationship to the world, my relationship to myself.
I felt like I had just made a slight turn in the kaleidoscope of life from “all he wants to do is to manipulate me” to “all he wants to do is contribute to my happiness,” and the shapes and colors of my life were all different.
My heart opened. I wept.
The world was born anew.
Let me give you a little more background:
My father was born in Ukraine, in a little Jewish “shtetl”—a small village—south of Kiev. He had three brothers and three sisters. His father held a leadership position over transportation into and out of Berdichev, which was on the main train line. Because of his position, he had some prominence in the town. He was murdered along with other leaders by the Cossacks. The two older brothers immigrated to Canada and the third brother to Los Angeles. My father immigrated with his mother when he was 14. The three sisters were all married and stayed in Berdichev. During the Depression, Dad lived with one of his brothers in New York, in the garment district, doing hard work for a living. His life had been difficult.
Eventually, years later, he was accepted into the Illinois Institute of Technology, working hours, while studying to earn a Mechanical Engineer’s license. His experience taught him that education is everything, that having a serious work ethic matters, and that focus is everything.
His wife, my mother, faced cancer twice, which was a huge struggle for both of them and, of course, her suffering impacted my world. She ultimately died of cancer after four years of suffering when I was 16.
Now he was a single parent, to me —a strong, high-spirited, and headstrong only daughter, who was resistant to him most of the time. I did not want to listen.
Yet, all he wanted was to contribute to my happiness and prevent me from suffering. He wanted me to have a good life, a successful life, a productive life.
That realization – that there was a different way of looking at it all – allowed me to create an entirely different set of eyes and ears. Compassion opened and brought me close to him. The world had changed suddenly, and so had my relationship with my father.
Suddenly, I was freed up. At the same moment that the refreshing, purifying rains of revelation washed through my mind and opened my heart, I also realized that I would be taking a year off from teaching. I had no question about it.
I was free.
You might say that I listened to my father in a different way, or that I had a different father. A different life.
He went from being a man who only wanted to control me to being a man who wanted, more than anything, to contribute to my happiness.
I didn’t need to resist him, if I could listen for his contribution to me. I could climb into and consider what he sees through his point of view. I could be open, instead of closed.
In one instant, the world shifted from adversary to partnership, from scarcity to abundance, from fear to love. That’s called transformation.
Coming June 18:
Chapter 3
Transforming My Relationship with My Father: The Gift of Heart Listening
I am so happy you are joining me in reading my new book, thus far. As you might be able to tell, I am very excited about it and the process of writing and revising it. Some people have been beta (first) readers and have given me excellent feedback, which I will be incorporating over the summer. Endorsements, as well, have begun to come. Here is one of them.
I recommend this book to anyone seeking to live a fulfilling life. Throughout The Heart Of Sacred Listening, Amba’s radiant spirit and hard-won wisdom touched, moved, and inspired me. Her writing is both clear and poetic, and reading her book is like sitting down with your best friend for a conversation that, like Amba herself, is as heartwarming and fun as it is difference-making.
~Sandy Robbins
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). Chapter 5 will be released to paid subscribers on July 6th.
Amba, so beautiful, even more so each time I read it. We live in our stories, don’t we. And, as you’ve helped me to see, as soon as we are aware of our story, we become empowered to change it and transform ourselves.
There’s no better illustration of this than you with your father. Thank you for this 🙏.
Best of your stories I have heard so far. Very moving, so real, and instructional. This is the achievement of a lifetime you describe, because once you've seen past one version of your own limiting stories, they all lose their unchecked power to imprison us in disconnection.