This blog pretty much centers around the concept that health and healing can't be separated from relationship; relationship being the container that holds all healing and therapeutic collaboration. This idea of relationship depends on a deeper listening, also called Active Listening or Therapeutic Listening. There are several versions of what this is. There is an actual teaching structure to learn: ActiveListening. There is another version that includes an awareness of body language. In addition, my own sense of this includes individual and collective energy awareness.
The problem with spelling-out and structuring something as natural as listening, is the danger that the structure and learning of it becomes mechanical. It doesn't take into account the unknown moments and energy cues, the subtle energy exchanges that can't be qualified nor quantified. Mechanical is the antithesis of what Listening is. Most of these teaching models do emphasize cultivating "awareness", awareness being mentioned as an almost aside in the methods. But awareness seems to be the crux of listening (and hence, the center of most understanding); awareness is dimensional and requires a commitment to engage more of oneself. Most of these methods include sounding back word for word what another person has said. This is helpful for the other person (they hear their own words back and know they've been received) and it's helpful for the "hearing" person as well. That particular "parroting" tactic if primarily used in an attempt to listen, can be (in my experience) trying especially if it is done automatically and mechanically. Nevertheless, it is not a bad first step in relating.
Like most things, one can be instructed to learn listening skills. Also, as in most things, a foundation in skills involving knowledge is partial until an understanding ensues. An understanding transpires with a lot of practice. A practice which not only includes the foundational skills, but a building of attention, awareness, humility and patience. And also importantly, a curiosity. Curiosity is an imperative part of the process because, once curiosity is absent to another's manifestation (or your own in the engagement), humility goes out the window and judgement moves in. At this point, the delicate, multi-dimensional act of listening becomes something else closer to reaction.
Active listening isn't something we do with our hearing organ (ears) alone. It includes all of me. It actually means to have an active attention, something none of the skill-building methods mention. Probably because an active attention is challenging to cultivate and involves parts of oneself that are new to that activity. How do we become practiced in awareness? How do we build a layered and more acute attention?
All practice starts with oneself. The Active Listening literature calls for allowing for silences and empty space in exchanges. So it is with oneself. Many people cultivate this through meditation, taking time to sit quietly, which activates other more subtle parts of oneself that become witness to what goes on when one is sitting still, sensitizing, breathing more fully. These more subtle parts don't get a chance to be "practiced" unless these quiet moments are allowed. They don't come forth readily without that room being made ready, the presence of a more expansive and spacious territory that often is accompanied by acceptance and empathy. Meditation and a relationship to our own nature is not a cultural more in this country (although may be becoming so). If it was culturally more "usual", perhaps these practices would be built into our lives and our neighbor's lives. But they are not, so instigating it in oneself can be a struggle without a community's support.
Another aspect of a deeper listening which is not mentioned in Active Listening literature is the fact that listening is a dual action. It's an attention on oneself as well as on another. Practicing being with oneself while taking in tone, words and general energy of another is tricky. It's a bit like riding a wave. You're with yourself one moment, than in the next moment, find you have dipped down into the wave's tunnel (lapsed attention), in danger of becoming attached to something the person you are listening to has said or indicated energy-wise or in body language. It's a dance of energetically moving back and forth, finding the alignment between oneself and another. And to further complicate things, there are always the inevitable distractions. Other noises and movement present as well as the reactions that occur in oneself and the other. It's usual to be taken by all or any of these things. Our bodies are lightning rods to energy sources, extremely sensitive to the smallest manifestation. Listening becomes complex. Attention is tenuous. This practice is dependent on the renewing of the curiosity place in oneself, the place that is interested and intrigued by the small and opaque, by the contrasts and paradoxes without getting caught up or attached to them.
Because listening is complicated and layered, to try listening experiments with inanimate objects or animals before intentionally taking on other human beings can be helpful. Sitting quietly with objects or pets and watching/listening to the play of energy, thoughts, associations going on within oneself and the thing's response, simplifies the listening experience. Feeling into the life and nature of the thing that is more simple than human beings, gives us a chance to experience this deeper listening in ourselves, to ourselves and to another. Exploring a sensitized energy exchange in this circumstance is helpful in building a stronger awareness, attention and listening capacity in oneself.
To practice "listening" with and to inanimate objects might seem an eccentric thing to attempt. But everything has materiality and all materiality has energy and therefore its own truth. Doing this sort of exercise with say, a door knob, is revealing. The door knob has an energy of its own and has been influenced by people energies (touch). From a sensitized place, its materiality speaks (subtle) volumes, its energy is noteworthy. Giving an object a quiet attention creates an interesting relationship to it; the nuanced "listening" factor revealed.
