To Listen

 

What does it really mean when we ask people “to listen”? What is it that we want to receive exactly? If you were asking me to listen and I started giving you advice, would you feel that I had done what you asked? If I were to say how you should or should not be feeling given the context? If I felt like I have to resolve the situation you find yourself in? Although, all of these are commonly used and well-intended ways of communication, when mentally experiencing these scenarios I feel an impulse to move away. It is like I (as the person that asked) was not heard, and perhaps I might even start to think that the way I feel is not quite “right”. In all of these instances I (as the listener) would have rather denied your existence by an act of unconscious self-importance that will separate your experience from mine. Can you see how this process becomes a way for my self-actualization rather than answering your call to dwell onto the question you were contemplating? I will have found a way not to see you as you are in all your complexity, but to assume that you are feeling like I imagine my self feeling in such a situation.

In my opinion, I would not have really listened or I would have done it superficially. I would have ignored the importance of your unique experience and reduced you to something like a binary system consisting of 0’s and 1’s. In doing so, I would be assuming that I can download what you said through the words I heard in my ear and that my brain would render a perfectly similar picture to the one you were experiencing. That seems quite absurd to me.

What happens when we use words? We are compressing a highly complex plethora of information and experience into concepts and verbal communication ways agreed up on by a certain culture. No matter how skillful we are in the art of language, when we use words we shall always lose some of the complexity of what we are trying to communicate. It could be seen as loss of energy when transporting or transforming it (mostly through generation of heat). If we were to precisely measure and compare the amount of energy input in one end of the wire and output on the other end, the input would always be greater. Similarly, if we were to only use words for our communication, then the listener would not receive the same amount of information as the speaker intended. Furthermore, when we perceive this information we analyze it through the concepts and subjective experiences available to us, which highly likely will never match perfectly between two individuals. Is what I understand with “nice weather”, “a clean house”, “clean dishes”, “good food” the same thing that you understand with those phrases? How many of our misunderstandings and conflicts rise from simply having different conceptual understanding of things?

Open heart listening. What does that mean? One of the first characteristics would be to look at the other person as a whole human being with their own experience and plethora of concepts which is never separable from the potential conversation. To do that, we need to let go of the idea that we know better or that we need to fix or change something about this person. We need to let ourselves feel the interconnectedness of everything. How you and I are connected in some invisible ways that are hard to explain. It is to listen to how it is to be in the world as the other person. It is like being there in the experience of the other. If the other is sharing how they are walking by the sea, can you be there and walk by the same sea side by side and perhaps even hold hands? Can you feel how the sand is moving through the gaps between my toes? How I’m shivering as a sudden wave splashes cold water on my feet? Can you really hear what the speaker is saying and even feel it yourself? It will be more than just words, the essence of each of us will always shine through every experience we are having. There is all that complex plethora of things that we cannot really communicate by words alone. How much can we experience the same thing? Poets have a talent to use language to paint a picture of what seems impossible to be communicated by words. How do we perceive poetry? What happens within us? Do we download the words and then project them into our minds? Or are we spoken to in some other, subtler way? To practice open heart listening we need to open our heart space and soften our belly. We must be impressionable, we need to remove our armor and let others be closer than two meters apart. We need to allow other people to lay into us as in a meadow and see the shape left by the other once they get up. We need to allow the speaker to be like a poem that speaks to us in that subtle way. Most often during our life we have created an armor around us and learned that keeping a distance is the safest way to survive. And it is true. It definitely has been. My invitation is for you to double check, if the way you appear in the world and the way you listen to the world is aligned with where you want to go in life. It might be that some of the existing patterns are no longer serving the cause you stand for, but they are still ruling your way of being. I invite you to practice awareness and when possible to open up to the heart space.

It could be that open heart listening is a path towards true empathy. If you could really feel the state of the other and be with them in their experience before you make any judgements, how would it change your views on people? Maybe, if we were put in the place of any human being in the history of the world with identical up-bringing, genetic, social and spiritual background, environment etc. or if we were that person – we would do the same things they did. This applies to the most honorable heroes and the worst villains alike. An interesting food for thought. How does this apply to the way I am in relation to: my partner, my family, my relatives, my co-workers, my boss, someone that has wronged me, politics?