Learning to Listen Well
Listening may be the most intimate thing we can do with another person without touching them. Slowly, I am learning to listen well.
Some people think listening well is waiting for another person who is talking to take a breath so we can interrupt. We may understand listening as an opportunity to think about what we want to say next.
Listening well is more than not speaking. It is listening on a deep level. Not merely hearing what someone says, but connecting with who they truly are.
Listening Well is an Intentional Relationship
When we listen well to someone it involves our entire selves: body, mind and spirit. It is a dance which combines being open, paying careful attention, and being our true selves.
As we learn to connect with other people, we become more aware of how to connect with ourselves in deeper ways. Learning to listen is gaining new insights and understanding into ourselves. It is beginning to understand all the truths of the world which are beyond words. Growing more comfortable and accepting of ourselves and of others, we learn to listen for deeper truths.
It goes beyond being good at reading people, beyond accommodating them. Listening well is opening ourselves to the selves of others.
Being honest and open, especially with ourselves, is a prerequisite for listening well. It is impossible to pay attention and be open to someone else when false selves are distracting us.
If we cannot be open and pay attention to ourselves, how can we expect to listen to someone else?
Listening well includes letting go of all of the other things that distract us and opening ourselves to one person. We can only listen to one person at a time.
Learning to Listen Through Practice
There was a time when I thought I was a good listener, but I was not. I could ask people questions and get them to say what I wanted them to say.
When I was introduced to a contemplative practice of listening to sacred stillness, I began to appreciate learning to listen well.
Developing a practice of listening to the sacred stillness within me and all around me taught me what listening could be. Learning to listen to the wisdom of spiritual life showed me how to listen to other people, and how to listen to myself.
A contemplative listening practice was not about analyzing or organizing the ideas of spiritual life, but about being open.
Our practice is about recognizing and paying attention to the spiritual life which is already all around us and within us.
Being Present
Listening well is being present to someone in the moment. It is, in many ways, the opposite of impatiently waiting for them to finish talking. Listening is not guiding them strategically to where I want them to go. Listening is about sharing our true selves in the present.
We cannot listen well to what someone has said in the past, or to what they will be saying next. Listening well happens in the present. We are drawn into the awareness we live and listen in the present moment.
Listening is the first step on the path to becoming who we can be.
Beginning in Stillness
Before the spark of creativity, before the flash of insight, before inspiration strikes, before we begin working, we are in stillness. Stillness is where our ideas and inspiration come from.
I was not always comfortable with stillness. It was something which needed to be filled with talking, or with music, or other random sounds. I am an extrovert, and felt the stimulation of sound give me a boost of energy.
Sound took my attention away from my own sense of emptiness, my own lack of depth and interior life, my own sense of being lost. I did not listen, because the sound in my life gave me other things to which I could pay attention.
Benedict’s Listening
In his Rule, Benedict envisions and supports a way of life based in listening and stillness. The first words in his Prologue are, “Listen Carefully.” He urges leaders to listen to everyone in the community. He encourages everyone to listen deeply, to listen “with the ear of your heart.” The days in Benedict’s community are filled with listening and stillness. At nightie community observes the Great Silence.
Benedict wrote to people who are intentional about their interior lives, and who intend their communities to reflect those interior lives. Monks tend not to seek distractions or stimulation outside themselves. They recognize the depth and passion within themselves. Their focus is on strengthening their lives from the inside out.
As I began to develop contemplative practices, I came to recognize the power of stillness. It is a source of rest and refreshment.
Stillness is also the place where we can best listen to ourselves and to other people.
Seeking Opportunities to Listen
One of the most striking aspects of New Camaldoli Hermitage is the stillness. It is more than the absence of talking and other noise. When we spend time in stillness there is no need to figure out what we are going to say to anyone. Layers of interior distractions can melt away.
It has been a challenge for me to learn to appreciate stillness and listening. I tend to be a focused person, and my initial approach to stillness and listening was particularly focused. I translated “openness” into a hyper-vigilance, straining to hear the tiniest breath within myself. In many ways, I was avoiding being open by being so over-sensitive.
I thought listening to sacred stillness was a struggle to catch everything; holding on, not letting go.
As we learn to listen well, we learn to appreciate the pauses, the stillness between words. We learn to interpret all of the nonverbal ways we communicate who we truly are.
Who is learning to listen well to us today?
When have you listened with the ear of your heart this week?
[Image by Orange_Beard]
Greg Richardson is a spiritual director in Southern California. He is a recovering assistant district attorney and associate university professor and is a lay Oblate with New Camaldoli Hermitage near Big Sur, California. Greg’s website is http://StrategicMonk.com and his email address is StrategicMonk@gmail.com.
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