Chapter 3 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 am delighted 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, a beta reader, an excellent author herself, who also wrote an endorsment.
"This insightful, content-rich book could not be more timely. If only - oh, if only! - we all had the skillset, and the courage, to really listen from and for the sacred space within each of us, this world would be a very different place.
Hooray for you, Amba, for presenting such time-tested, potentially life-altering learnings and distinctions, and for doing so in your own inimitable style. This food for thought is clearly served straight from the heart.
In addition to your soul-satiating "main course" material, you offer the reader well-chosen side dishes: personal stories, historical perspectives, Your Turn prompts – all with delightful sprinkles of Amba-isms throughout. These rich ingredients combine to make this beautiful book a deeply-nourishing transformational experience. Brava!"
—Nancy Hopps
Author of All the Courage Love Takes: Moving through Crisis and Uncertainty with Grace, Grit, and Gratitude and the Relax into Healing series of audio recordings.
Chapter 3
Transforming My Relationship with My Father
The Gift of Heart Listening
I was excited about this revelation and wanted to get on a plane immediately and see my father. But I didn’t. I wanted to talk with him right away, not wait for a plane flight.
I was going to apologize to him for how and who I had been for so many years, for being resistant to him. It must have been incredibly hard for him, and I wanted to acknowledge that and mend our relationship.
I wanted to share with him what I had discovered about his orientation for my life.
I wanted to tell him I was taking a leave of absence from teaching. Although I didn’t think he’d like it, I was committed to completing whatever we needed to do to make that happen.
Before I got on the phone call with him, I did something smart. I wrote down a prompt for myself on a piece of paper, a question. And I vowed to myself that I would not engage with him unless I could say “yes” to the question. I knew that if I was talking to a controller, a manipulator, things were not going to go well. If I could speak with my dad as someone who was for my happiness, the conversation would work.
The question I wrote down was: “Can you hear his commitment to your happiness?”
I called Dad first thing the next morning. I could hear the phone ringing in his house, the house I grew up in. I was excited and nervous at the same time. “How was the course?” he asked me, early into the call. “Are you sitting down?” I asked him. He said, “No, but I will.”
He knew something was up and that whatever I had to say was something important.
I began with a profound apology, from my heart, and I truly meant it. I
I told him I was sorry for being so resistant for so long during my teenage years when he was a single parent. I could only imagine how challenging that must have been for him. I told him that I recognized that I was headstrong and had my own perspective, which made me feel like he was trying to control me.
I told him that I made a huge discovery – that all he ever wanted was to contribute to my happiness, to see me strong, to support me in fulfilling my potential, and to be the kind of person he knew I could be.
He was still. Quiet. For a long time.
Then, I could hear him weep. He must have wept for five minutes. I hung in there with him. When he could speak again, he said,
“That’s all I have ever wanted for you, Marilyn.” (Yes, that’s the name he and Mom gave me.) “That’s all I’ve ever wanted. And I thought I was going to have to die and go to my grave without you ever, ever knowing this. This has made me so happy.”
I understood his reality: that my Dad thought he would have to die without my knowing the depth of his care and his love.
I realized even more deeply how astonishing that transformation was.
We celebrated a little together, peacefully. We were both happy.
And then, he was ready to say goodbye to me.
I said, “Well, before we get off this call, here’s one more thing.” “Oh? What’s that?” he said, curious, excited, and vitally interested.
I took a deep breath. “I’ve decided to take a leave of absence from teaching for a year.”
All hell broke loose.
“YOU’RE GOING TO DO WHAT?”
I told him again.
“I have heard you say some crazy things, but this is THE CRAZIEST thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
That’s the last thing I heard him say for quite a while. I shut down. My heart withdrew from the conversation. I stopped listening.
And then he started yelling at me. Since I wasn’t listening, I don’t even know what he said. All I knew was that my own, loud, internal voice had kicked in. “He can’t talk to you like that! You are an adult! You are twenty-seven years old, and you can do whatever you want with your life!”
He became for me, once again, “the controller, the jailer, the enemy.”
Angry and resistant, I was about to say, “Hey! I am an adult! I can do whatever I want with my life.”
Then, I read those words on my piece of paper: “Can you hear his commitment to your happiness?”
I knew the answer was no, so I kept my mouth shut.
He kept yelling. I started to give up. “Okay,” my internal voice said, with a sigh of resignation, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I won’t go on that leave.”
In our arguments, I would often take on the role of victim, with him as my persecutor.
I almost said it. I almost said, “OKAY, I won’t go.” Then I looked at my piece of paper and asked myself, “Can you hear his commitment to your happiness?” And I knew the answer was still “no.”
He kept on yelling. I had no idea what he was saying.
I knew I had a piece of work to do.
I knew I needed to let go of the story I had been living in for so many years – one that was so disempowering to me, to him, to our relationship. I knew I had to “shift my listening” to hear his passion, to listen to the “why” behind his being so upset. Whatever he was saying, he meant it, and I knew he meant it. And I couldn’t hear it.
With all my heart, guts, commitment, and desire, I shifted the location of my attention from listening to my own voice inside of me (at this point, it was the “give in” voice) to locating myself with him. I put myself, my energy, my attention, my presence, over there, with him, profoundly committed to hearing his own commitment to contribute to my happiness.
Finally, when I shifted my listening, finally, I shifted my world.
I became another person, and so did he.
I was interested – beyond curious – in what my father had to say to me and in what contribution he wanted to make to me. He was someone who wanted to contribute to his daughter’s happiness.
Suddenly, I was calm and present for whatever he had to say to me without resistance. I could hear his words and his concern for me. I was no longer defensive, protective, resigned, or a victim. I was committed to being contributed to by him, and I listened for his contribution.
A new world opened once I could listen.
So, I asked him, interested, wanting to know, “What is so concerning to you? What are you worried about? What do you see that I don’t see? I want to understand.”
Once I shifted, so did he. He now had a daughter who wanted to hear what he had to say.
He said he thought it might be the right move, but at the wrong time. I was going through a divorce, and my whole life was destabilized. He reminded me that I love teaching and that I love my students. I felt safe and secure in teaching, that this was not the time to invent a new life, to explore, to go on an adventure.
I could understand that viewpoint and how much sense it made – I really could. Had it occurred six months earlier, it would have been good advice, which I probably would have followed.
What my dad didn’t know was that I had already stepped way out. I was in unknown territory and loving it, even if it was not “safe” in the usual sense of that word. I had given myself the opportunity to explore and start to become self-aware. I was looking for those lost keys. Telling the truth to myself about myself was safe enough. I wanted to be out on my own, in the unknown, so I could further explore, awaken, and distinguish who I was and what I was meant to do with my life in this new world, without any familiar structures to confine me or define me.
I shared that with him. And he got it. The energy shifted.
Not only did he understand, but he was genuinely glad to hear it, and he became curious himself. Once he had stopped and absorbed what I was saying, he asked me if I knew what I was going to do next in my life.
I did know.
Back then, John Denver’s Song, “Rocky Mountain High,” was my favorite song. I, too, was 27, and I felt like I had come home to myself. I also discovered the keys to creating a life that worked. And, having grown up in Los Angeles and then lived in the Berkeley area, I had never lived in the mountains. I loved the mountains! My parents used to take me to Yosemite when I was a child, and it was, and still is, my favorite place to go. I had a hunger to live in the mountains.
I told him I wanted to move to the Colorado Rockies
My father was quiet for a few moments.
My father was quiet for a few moments. I could tell he was absorbing that and then thinking about that. When he spoke, he sounded intrigued: “Wow,” he said. “Ever since I was a young boy growing up in the Soviet Union, I’ve always wanted to be in the pine trees, especially during the winter, when it snows at night. The icicles hang from the trees in the morning, and the sun comes up, creating beautiful, colorful prisms on them. That will be so wonderful for you.
Do you think I might come up and visit you?”
A year later, he did visit me. Even in the uninsulated cabin at the ten-thousand-foot level, with only a small wood-burning stove, it was warm and wonderful.
That conversation began my life of freedom, my life of awakening, a life of having the privilege of making a difference in the lives of so many people.
Soon thereafter, I took a forty-day training called Arica, based on many eclectic paths. I became an Arica trainer, continued my work with Est, the educational institution that had contributed so much to my awakening, and moved to Boulder.
The following summer, I met Baba Muktananda, a renowned Indian guru, who gave me my name, Amba. There is a great Hindu legend about her, which I will share with you in Chapter 24 of this book. Baba became an essential part of my life and my awakening.
Let us take a deep breath and stop. At that point, you can deepen your commitment to creating a personal breakthrough in your life by reading this book.
Then, we can begin to explore and discover what happened in the transformation with my father, revealing some essential tools – the brushes and paint – that are foundational, intrinsic, and critical to practicing the Art of Sacred Listening.
And let us do so in a way that you, too, can transform relationships in your own life.
Coming June 25th
Chapter 4
Making This Your Own: Setting Yourself up for a Breakthrough
Thank you for beginning to read my new book, The Heart of Sacred Listening: The Key to Transforming Your Relationships, Your Work, and Your Life. The book will be launched on April 28, 2026.
Until then, if you’d like to take this year to enjoy the book in its serialized format (one chapter released every other Sunday starting in July), make a transformational difference in your life, enjoy three live sharing coaching sessions and Q&A sessions with me through Zoom, around the Heart of Sacred Listening, I invite you to become a paid subscriber.
Fantastic story of real listening Amba. And that last photo carries the full mood of ecstatic human connection.