The Art of Listening pt 1: How to Listen

So if you’ve listened to any part of this episode, then you know in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about the art of listening, being able to fully hear. In our culture, society in times of today, we’ve become so stimulus driven, that we think it’s all about pushing out content and not being present to the content or a form of communication that’s coming to you. You hear something somebody says and you instantly want to rebuttal but the art of listening and that rebuttal. There’s a stage in the middle called listening that we must begin to perfect. If we’re going to really be present to our environment and respond accordingly, the first step in that is listening. Have you ever sat on a park bench and just taking in the sounds not trying to identify what you’re hearing?

Oh, that’s that’s a that’s a Cardinals whistle, or that’s a Mack truck driving down the road or you know the wisp of the wind is moving at a easterly …. no. Just sitting there listening to the majesty of the world that is before you .Turning off your brain, and just opening yourself to the moment. It becomes liberating, it becomes peaceful. It becomes this engagement with the world that’s deeper than any meditation. Now when we talk about listening, I’m talking about becoming present to your environment. If we can become present to our environment, we break the cycle of our habit of how we listen today. The way that we listen today is with our own projections of fears, anxieties, and desires. Our thoughts cloud, the actual process of listening - decoding, deciphering, figuring out, the waiting for that rebuttal is not part of listening.

There are functions of measurement and analysis. That’s a different faculty and a different stage in this whole process. Listening is uncluttering yourself, and being present to what is being offered to you. It goes against modern nature, it goes against the way that people think and there’s so much benefit with this. Revelation is moving into a knowledge that is already existed. The way that it relates to listening is that people are telling you who they are at all times. Somebody cannot get something over on you if you truly listen. If you truly engage in the moment and listen, without judgment, evaluation, and measurement - you’ll begin to truly hear what’s going on around you. The type of listening I’m talking about is, is a total engagement style of listening, right?

A totally meaning you’re going to be listening with your ears, obviously. But you’re also going to be listening in with your nose and you’re going to be listening with your eyes, you’re going to be listening with your heart and your emotions. I didn’t really understand this personally, until I was in a situation where I was completely immersed in another culture which was speaking a foreign language to me. I spent a lot of time out there knowing that if I was going to get by, I was going to either have to learn this language really quickly, or I was going to have to become present to a whole broader spectrum of communication. I didn’t realize what was going on at the time. But I was learning how to communicate two different layers of communication.

You know, I played basketball every day. And it was easy to learn traveling and, and files and curse words. But there was a subtext to the language. I found myself laughing at jokes spoken in another language, while yet I had no understanding of what was being said literally with the words. I’ve learned that the context of our environment also adds to the narrative of the story of what is being said, I could see somebody went or I could see somebody hesitate. I can see all these different dimensions of communication going on. I could see what was being said. And I could also see what was not being said. And this is part of the story that is actually going on before us all the time.

You know, a lot of people judge what people say, other people judge what people do and how they do it. One of my favorite quotes is from a group named fly union. “I judge other people’s by their action, and I judge myself by my intention” Living abroad and and learning how to community I didn’t understand it till I came back. And when I came back to the United States, you know, a lot of people said, I had a lot more discernment, I was able to just be in conversations or being in situations. And, you know, I wasn’t guessing, per se, because it wasn’t necessarily being literally said by other people. But you’d be able to just read the energy of people, you’d be able to just see somebody and there’d be a hesitation, or they struggle, the final word.

And in that struggling to find that word, you really, really knew that they’re either saying something to get over on you, or they’re saying something that really is so meaningful, that is going to take the precise word to say that, in all this came from a total sense of engagement, a silence being present to what was being presented to me. This enhanced my ability to listen. Sometimes I don’t even feel this process going on. But I know, I’m listening, there’s knowledge of what’s being said. And there’s also knowledge of what’s being omitted. Start listening to some of the people that you really respect and treasure, because they’re telling you everything, by by what they’re presenting, even with a limited amount of information, there is also addition by negation.

This all does a really interesting thing. It also helps you to communicate even better. You really understand more about yourself, once you frame that level of understanding about others. The male versus female communication taught me a lot. I remember, there were some close people to me. And I understood how typically people listen. And it changed the way I communicated. I remember there was a critique I wanted to offer. But I know that people don’t view critiques as critiques, they’re usually listened to in terms of criticism. So it shaped the conversation in a different way. Before I even began communicating, I offer the notion in a nugget that said “I really care about you. I know that I may not have the ability to fully express how I feel, and it may come across, as if I’m trying to rip you apart.

But I love you and, and I don’t want any thing that I say to take the fact that I want the best for you.” ….then I went into my critique. You know what’s on my heart initially. Communicating and listening are opposite sides of the same coin and to learn how to listen is also to learn how to communicate.