The Gift of Listening
“With the gift of listening comes the gift of healing, because listening to your brother or your sister until they have said the last words in their hearts is healing and consoling. Someone has said that it is possible to “listen a person’s soul into existence. I like that.”
—Catherine De Hueck Doherty, Author
Listening is, indeed, a gift.
Have you ever been with someone who was so present for you, so there with you, so “in your shoes,” so to speak, that you had the experience of being fully known, fully received, fully appreciated?
Being with Baba Muktananda, who I wrote about in my post, “Love Is,” was like that for me. Each time I was with him, in person, I was held by his warmth, his humor, his love. My whole Being was at peace, and happy, Happy with a capital H. Some have called it Bliss.
Baba always used to say, “God dwells within you as You.”
So, you don’t have to be in the presence of a Saint to experience yourself loved. And I don’t mean through affirmations, either, though for some that might work.
And you, yourself, can even be that space for others. I know it sounds weird. However, it’s accessible. It’s a space of no judgment, no criticism, no expectations. It’s a space of Being There, with nothing going on. Just appreciation for, care for, and dare I say it? Love. Full Presence. It’s where we naturally come from – where we are, already, when we are being our full, authentic selves.
“We're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience,” Teilhard de Chardin tells us.
Being human, however, means we are given a body when we come in to this world, to take this journey, this path, this mountain climb called life…. the quest to discover who we are. And all during our path walking we are given tests along the way, tests which essentially allow us to address a central question: are you asleep or are you awake?
Through much of my life, I dream walked through life.
What do I mean by that?
I thought I WAS my reactions. When anger got triggered as a response, I thought I WAS my anger. When worry came up, I thought I WAS my worry. It consumed me, inhabited me. When fears showed up, they grabbed onto me and held me in their maniacal clutches, sometimes for days. They affected my sleep; they affected my mood. They affected how I was with myself, how I was with others, how I was with the world. I had no freedom to move, to create. I was imprisoned by my own fears.
And then, at a certain point, I discovered it was I who had to let them go. That I was bigger than they were, that I didn’t have to be at the effect of them, smaller than them, tossed around by them, consumed by them.
There’s a wise and ancient story of an apprentice who begins to study with a master. He asks the master what to do with all his emotions. The master puts some salt in a glass and says drink the water.” The apprentice does. The master says, “How did it taste?”
“Bitter,” says the young apprentice. The master then leads the apprentice to a lake and puts the same amount of salt in the lake. “How did that taste?” asks the master. “Delicious, and pure,” says the apprentice.
The master says, “Be the lake.”
I first read a version of that old story in Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening.
Here’s another way to create a life-giving relationship with your reactions:
If you can, remember a time when you were a child, and you’d lie on your back on the grass in your backyard, perhaps with a friend or perhaps by yourself, and you’d playfully enter into your imagination and identify what the shape of the clouds look like?
“Look!” You’d say to your friend, “There’s a lion!” Oh, look, he’s changing into a beach ball, and now look! It’s turning into a great blue heron! And now, look! It’s two whales kissing! Wow!!!”
But do we do that? NO!
NO! We have a reaction that has, somehow, suddenly gotten triggered, really quite automatically, and we don’t let it go by us, like clouds in the sky. We say, looking at the cumulous cloud of anger, “Anger? Let me grab a hold of you!” And we pull it in, and hold it tight to our chest.
“Fear? Okay, I am yours!” And we become smaller than our Fear, who swallows us up like a Great, Ugly, Dark Behemoth from the Deep.
“There’s an ‘I’m not worthy enough’ cloud! Let me dance with you for the rest of my life!”
We identify with those reactions rather than let them go by, like clouds in the sky….
And, once we’ve noticed those reactions, allowed them, accepted them, recognized them, observed them, and become aware of them, something extraordinary happens. We are free! We are no longer identified with that reaction. It no longer has its gluey tentacles wrapped around us.
We are FREE!!!!
You’ll have to practice this, like a discipline, to have a direct experience of what I am talking about.
All those words are interchangeable – accept, recognize, notice, catch, become aware of, being mindful – they all mean the same thing.
Once we are aware, we make a shift. We are no longer identified with that survival-based entity known as ego or mind. We are Awareness itself. The state of Pure Presence. The Light of Consciousness.
At that point when we are free, we are free to be—to simply be present, with nothing going on.
So now let’s shift the map to communication, to listening to another.
Let’s say you are being with another person. And they say something that triggers a reaction from you: "I’m not worthy.” you say to yourself. Or “Why are they wearing that? That looks stupid!” or “That reminds me of the time that I….”
Once we become aware of emotions, or our internal chatter, that has gotten triggered (Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh calls it “Radio nonstop thinking”), we can choose to shift our attention over there to them.
And then what? What comes next? You get curious. Not as a strategy, but REALLY. You create being curious, authentically curious—like you are out to discover something about the other person, you are out to climb inside their world, you are out to understand them, their thinking, without judgment.
And, you are simply fully and deeply present where you can “hear” them – not just their words, but their hurts, joys, sorrows, their experience underneath their words. You are “there” with them, 100% with them, with NOTHING going on with you. And if some internal dialogue starts up like “When are they FINALLY going to stop talking?” or “I know what you could do about that to fix your situation,” or “I think that’s SUCH a bad idea!,” you notice that, catch that, and BE THERE to receive the whole of their communication. “Until” as the author and contemplative Catherine Doherty says, “you have heard the last words in their heart.”
And, if you listen deeply enough, you can listen for the Divine, the Universal Spirit, in them. If you are listening for That, you begin to hear their wisdom, their courage, their magnificence, their beauty, their Gold, the precious, unique Being that they are.
I didn’t say it would be easy. Listening — creating real communication — is a discipline and takes both practice and commitment on our part. If we are lazy, and just let the mind have its way with us, no communication. And without communication, we have nothing.
And there is yet a third way: Welcome your reactions. Embrace them. Invite them in. The 13th-century mystic Rumi says “This being human is a guest house.”
Let his words grace our inner homes with peace.
This Being Human is a Guest House
—Rumi
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture. Still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Opportunity:
I invite you to sit with this poem. What do you see?
I also invite you to engage with this post, perhaps reading it a few times, studying it, and being with it.
You may want to reflect on what I have said here, read it over a few times, and perhaps even share it with some friends who you think might benefit.
And, to make this real for yourself — that’s all that counts, anyway, you might want to engage in the practice or discipline of transporting yourself from Radio Station NST (non-stop thinking) through the Wormhole of Awareness to Being the Lake.
…like clouds in the sky…
I would love to hear from you if you’d like to comment.
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