Tara Brach - Listening to the Song – Part 1

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Listening is more than a communications skill, it is a capacity that awakens our awareness. And given our current times, this capacity is essential if we are to navigate the great divides that separate us from our inner life and others. As we learn to listen inwardly, we begin to understand and care for the fears and vulnerability that ask for our attention.   And as we listen to others, that same intimacy emerges. In this two-part series we examine the blocks to listening and the practices that cultivate this essential domain of human potential. Our focus is both on the transformational power of listening in our personal lives, and also the necessity for deep listening if we are to bring healing to our wider society.    In this talk, Tara explores:              how listening softens distance between hearts and invites deeper connection.              "listening to the song" as a way to honor the essence beyond our roles and stories.               common obstacles to presence—distraction, fear, and agendas that block true listening.              how deep listening can help heal old wounds, allowing love and aliveness to flow more freely.             listening with an undefended heart, willing to be changed by what we hear.  

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome friends. So I'll begin with a teaching story and in this one a master asks his disciples why do we shout in anger? Why do people shout at each other when they're upset? And the disciples thought for a while and one of them said well because we lose our calm and we shout for that. But why to shout when the other person is just next to you?

Isn't it possible to speak to them with a soft voice? Why do you shout at a person when you're angry? And the disciples gave them some other answers, but none satisfied the master. So finally he explained, when two people are angry at each other, their hearts distance a lot. To cover that distance, they must shout to be able to hear each other. The angrier they are, the stronger they will have to shout to hear each other through the great distance.

Then the master asked, what happens when two people fall in love? They don't shout at each other, but they talk softly. Why? It's because their hearts are very close. The distance between them is very small. They can speak softly because they can listen and hear. I really like the story. It really resonates. And perhaps you can feel that when our hearts are close, when we're feeling connected, we can speak softly, we can listen deeply.

And here we are in our current really stressed world and people's hearts are distanced and we know this. So there's a lot of anger and shouting and aggression. It's really the mark of the time, a time with strong men leaders and opposing sides and shouting through social media and in our personal life, the more we're anxious, the more our hearts are distance, we're not really able to communicate in authentic ways and we're not able to listen and hear. So, in my own life, listening is an ongoing practice, you know, because my heart can get

tighter and not so present. And I dedicate to it because it works. It really does bring my heart closer to others when I'm more consciously listening. but it's not so easy. I mean, we all have deep conditioning to get distracted. I watch myself plan on what I want to say or have an agenda in a conversation or feel like there's something else I'd rather be doing

and only be half there. So putting it all down and simply listening with a full presence, it takes practice and it takes intentionality. One friend in our meditation community said, empathetic listening is the hardest thing I've ever practiced. And I've practiced loom weaving, classical piano, tatting, and baton twirling. Impressive. And when we do cultivate listening, it's such a gift. Another friend shared whenever I'm having a tough time inventing to a friend of mine, she always asks if I want her

opinion or if I want her to be a heart with ears. I always appreciate that, a heart with ears. So, friends, it's in this spirit that I've chosen a favorite from the archives. This is a two-part series that is on conscious listening, and in it we'll explore what really keeps us from listening well. And then three basic steps on cultivating the capacity for deep listening, along with practical guidelines on working with all the challenges that come up. I hope it's my prayer that we all dedicate to listening more fully. It's truly a pathway for bringing our hearts closer together, and it's so much what's needed in our world.

Thank you. I'd like to begin with a story. A couple had two young boys, age six and eight, and they were real terrors in the sense that they never listened to anything their parents said, and they wreak havoc all the time, and the parents finally threw up their arms in dismay, and decided that they would get in touch with a clergyman in town who had a reputation of having a strong and steady hand with young people who weren't really listening to their parents. So he agreed to speak with the boys, but he said on one rule was he wanted to speak with them individually. So the eight-year-old went first, and the clergyman sat him down in front of him, and he asked him very sternly, where is God? and the boy didn't make a response.

So the pastor raised his voice and said even more sternly, Where is God? And again, the boy is kind of like didn't have, didn't know what to say. So even louder now with his finger in the boy's face, where is God? You know, at that point, the boy bolted from the room, ran directly home, slammed the door,

locked him in the self in the closet, his older brother follows him in and says, well, what happened? And the younger brother said, we're in big trouble this time. God is missing and they think we did it. This is the trouble we get into when we don't listen, which is our theme. We'll be doing this week and next week on listening because whether it has to do with listening inwardly to our own. own life to our loneliness and our fears and our sorrows, are listening to each other, our listening to our earth, listening to the mystery.

We can't be intimate with our world if we don't know how to listen. And so I want to invite you to really think of listening in the broadest sense. and if you weren't here and for our meditation tonight, you'll find it was recorded, and it's a meditation a bit on the power of listening. One of my favorite stories about listening, and I'm going to take the title of the talk, will be called Listening to the Song. It comes from this story of an African tribe where the birth date of the child is counted not from when they're born by our standards or when they're conceived,

but from the day the child was a thought in the mother's mind, and from that day on, the woman decides she's going to have a child, and that fills her and she goes off and sits under a tree by herself, and she listens until she hears the song of the child that wants to come. And that's when that's the beginning of the child's life and that sense. And then when she's heard that song, she teaches it to the father, who's going to be the child's father. And then they make love and physically to conceive the child and sing the song to the child to invite it in. It's pretty cool.

And then the mother teaches a song to the midwives and old women in the village. So when the child arrives, the women are around her in the midwife, and they sing the song to welcome the child. And then as the child goes up, the other villagers are taught the child's song. And so if they fall down, hurt themselves, or whatever happens, people come and start singing their song to them. And during rites of puberty, the song is sung honoring them. And this just goes through their life, through marriage, the songs are sung. And finally, even when this being's ready to die, all the villagers know their songs.

So when they're lying there that they hear at the very end of their life, the song is being sung to them. So I heard this story probably 30-some years ago. And just I love sharing it with you because whenever I think of it, there's such a level of intimacy of listening to beingness, to who we are beyond our personality that comes with it. So we'll think of these two times of exploring listening together as listening to the song. And it's really the art of receptive presence.

It's like how do we be here in a way that really doesn't block the life that is coming to us? So we'll explore some of the teachings and the practices. and to say, of course, timing-wise, it feels very appropriate that we'd start doing this, you know, formal attention to listening right now. It's such a time of political dividedness and societal dividedness and a lack of listening in our society. In fact, the less people listen to each other, the louder they get and more strident and the more twittering. and it just becomes a cacophony, but nobody's listening to each other. So, if you imagine what it would be like in our society,

if we had people that when they disagreed, knew how to pause and deepen their attention and actually listen, it would be the beginning of truly a healing in our world. So we'll begin by kind of doing a reflection together because I think of listening is not another thing on the checklist of being a good spiritual person. It's a very deep capacity. And, well, I wonder, let me ask you this first. How many of you feel like on some level you're actively working on your capacity to listen? How many is it very in your consciousness?

just raise your hand high so I can kind of look around. Okay, so it's kind of, it's right there for many. Okay. If you close your eyes for a moment to reflect, and I invite you to bring to mind someone you know who's a really good listener, okay? Somebody who's a really good listener. And you might notice, as I ask,

that maybe there's not a huge number that come to mind. But see if you can let one person kind of come forward in your mind as a really good listener and see if you can sense of what are the qualities of that person's heart and mind that really make them good at listening. What's the main qualities that you're aware of that that person has? That allow them to listen. and you can keep on reflecting and open your eyes when you'd like,

but I'd like to hear just a little bit from the room, like what are the qualities if you could just name a word, and if you raise your hand, I'll point in, please speak loudly. Empathy, gentleness, curious, generous, care, care, patient, compassion, focus, exactly, yep. Yeah. Presence. No judgment. So, by the way, these are, this is beautiful because it is that weave. And when you let yourself consider that weave, these are all dimensions of a receptive presence, this kind of openness and not judging and compassion and empathy, the qualities that are there.

And these are the qualities in terms of spiritual archetypes of the bodhisatt of compassion in Buddhism. And every tradition has some expression. But in the Buddhist tradition, Kwan Yin or the bodhisattva of compassion, Bodhisattva as an awakening being, listens to the cries of suffering from all over the world. And as it said that in that listening, there's kind of a shattering open. so into tens of thousands of parts to respond to the world from that care. But the beginning is this incredible presence that is utterly receptive to what's going on around. And so this is what we try to cultivate.

And we'll explore what stops us and how we build it. But first, a little bit of the research on it and so on, which is always so interesting. which starts by saying that 85% of what we know we know through listening. And then we go on to say, but 75% of the time, we're distracted, preoccupied or forgetful or worse. You know, we're in reaction in some way. So we're just 75% of the time. After listening, the average of person recalls 50% of what has been said, and then one hour later, 20%. And the bottom line is that we, on an average, the average person listens at only 25% efficiency.

How many of you were just listening to those statistics? I'm going to test you now. So, the only thing we really need to know is that listening requires us to be here now, and most of the time we're not. were in some form of a trance. An elderly man was wondering if his wife had a hearing problem. So one night he stood behind her while she was sitting in her lounge chair. He spoke softly to her. Honey, can you hear me?

No response. He moved a little closer and said, Honey, can you hear me? Still, no response. Finally, he moved right behind her and said, Honey, can you hear me? And she replied, for the third time, yes. And the reason I like that is,

because another statistic is that when people self-assess on how good they are as a listener, most people evaluate themselves as above average. This is really funny. You know how one anonymous person says we have two years and one mouth, but it doesn't seem to help, you know, we still don't listen. And it's getting worse. And we all know why, right? Technology.

in some ways technology, it impacts our brain in all sorts of different ways. It's such a dramatic change in how information comes to us. And one of the ways is that we get a lot more information poured into us. So we're processing and filtering huge amounts of information way more than ever before in the history of humans. But we're not doing it in a deep, absorbent way. And so the more plugged we in we are to the internet, the more we're in front of a screen, the less capacity to concentrate one person said focus.

We cannot concentrate, we can't stay with and we can't absorb so well. And there's a lot of research on the relationship between screen time and ADHD and other attentional difficulties. and it's kind of intuitive that we can get it, that the more that, and by the way, some of the research really goes right to the level of dopamine, that if we're constantly having all these different stimuli coming at us, we get addicted to a certain level of stimulation. It's very hard for us to quiet down and take in slower information. we get restless, impatient.

It's like nowadays even the microwave for one minute seems too slow, right? But you get the idea. So there are all sorts of signs of not listening well. The main sign in terms of how wills you listen to your own heart is that if you are continually repeating the same, emotional challenges. If you keep repeating the behaviors, the thoughts and the emotions over and over again, it means that there's not a listening attention because the only way we can interrupt, intervene, and heal is with listening. And it's the same thing with others that our patterns

and relationships when we're unseen and unheard, they just keep repeating and repeating. And by way of example, a wife is scrambling eggs when her husband burst in the kitchen. Careful, he says, be careful. You're cooking them too many at once. Too many. Scramble them. Now, we need more butter. They're going to stick. Careful. Now, scramble them again. Hurry up. Are you crazy? Don't forget to assault them. You're always forgetting to salt them. Use the salt. The salt. The wife turns and asks, what is wrong with you? And husband calmly replies, I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving. So we have repeating patterns and then, you know, this is the kind of a lighthearted end

of it, but as we know, when there's not listening between two people, then there's not intimacy. And I can describe many rounds of this, but one not so long ago of a student who described how it's seemingly out of the blue. This is after 30-some years of marriage. Her husband said he wanted to divorce. And they went to therapy to talk about, and she said, I can't believe you did this so, you know, like just so suddenly. And he said, I have been trying to tell you.

I've been trying to get your attention for the last 15 years. You just weren't listening. we need to listen for many reasons and we suffer and others suffer when we don't. So let's look closer at really what keeps us from listening because the bottom line is that every one of us has the capacity in terms of our brain. The frontal cortex is there. We can be mindful, empathetic, compassionate. We can pay attention to what's going on.

But what goes on for many of us is when we get stressed, we get hijacked by our limbic system. And instead of attending, listening, being receptive, we go into reactivity and it blocks our attention. We're not able to take things in. Any agenda you have when you're with another person, any agenda will end up interfering with real listening. You can see it visually when you remember that line that when a pickbock it sees a saint, they see the saint's pocket.

You remember that one? Well, it's the same thing with listening. When you have an agenda, the aperture of what we take in narrows. And I also think of a kind of like the Heisenberg observer effect, that we impact what we're paying attention to, and the more we want it to be a certain way, and we want to control something, we want something to happen, the more distorted it is. And so it's distorted by what we fear and what we want.

So, by way of example, a three-year-old who was really getting into finger painting. And this is how his mother heard him praying. Our father, who does art in heaven, Harold is his name. We over here. We take in things, but we just stored them. And I know that wasn't a great example. I just thought it was cute. So, we're going to be, you know, kind of exploring this. But one thing you can do when you're in a conversation is scan and sense, what am I wanting here? Is there some want I have here? Do I want this person's approval? Do I want to prove something to them? I want to show how much I know. We can't take in who's there when we're wanting something.

The classic story I've told many times is a man is sitting on a bench, and a woman's there, and he had just gotten off a bus, and she said, so, where did you just come from? he's kind of sitting down trying to figure out what he's doing next and he said oh well I just got out of prison and so she looked at him and she goes oh so you're single no wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute cut she said why were you in prison he said I was there for killing my wife that's when she said oh so you're single you I missed a very important piece there for you to get It's one of my favorite of all jokes, but you get the idea. So we have an agenda, and that's what happens.

So let's do a reflection. Just invite you to check this out for yourself. And this would be, bring to mind, if you will, a recent conversation with somebody where you suspect you had a wanting agenda, something with somebody at work, friend, family, and see if you can remove any self-judgment because most of the time are wanting or fearing things. So this is just a matter of getting more awake to it. Be curious. To take a moment as you remind yourself of the conversation. So since what you might have been wanting, did you want to get this person to do something a certain way?

Do you want to appear a certain way yourself? Often we want approval, affection. Sometimes we want a real favor. And as you remind yourself of this, sense into the conversation and see if you can see how you're wanting, stopped you from really having that receptive. listening presence, really being wide open to take in another being. You can open your eyes

when you're ready. Sometimes our agenda has nothing to do with the other person. Sometimes what we're wanting when we're talking with somebody is to be doing something else. It doesn't have anything to do with them. We're wanting to get back to work or to be with somebody else or to have something to eat or whatever it is. William James, this is about 120 years ago, described that we live in this ceaseless frenzy, always thinking we should be doing something else. Can you guys relate to that? Always thinking in some way whatever we're doing is on its way to something else. And that's one of the wants, that restlessness and wanting to be doing something else that actually keeps us from fully being here.

Okay, so there's the wanting agendas. Then the other thing that keeps us from fully listening is when we're in a conversation and there's fear. We're afraid of how that person's going to judge us in some way. We're afraid that they're going to try to take something from us or take our time or in some way hurt us. There's a cartoon I saw that had a... the caption was four words that will make men run for the hells.

We need to talk. Right? So it's, what is the fear there that can sometimes keep us from really listening? We know with children, if we're angry at a child and our anger's coming out at them, it's not like they're going to be able to listen to what we're really trying to say to them. And we know ourselves when we're feeling criticism. How open can we be to really listening? We tense against it.

So, and it's most obvious when we disagree. Like there's a lot of aversion when people don't agree with us. We really, really don't like having other people think we're not right. Have you noticed that? So we tense against it. And can we listen? Not so well. And a lot of times it's as I mentioned a sense of people taking our time.

One postmaster general Edgar Day, he had a strategy that wasn't the greatest listening strategy that when somebody was long-winded with him, he would hang up in the middle of himself talking because who would hang up on themselves, you know? But that was his strategy to get off the phone. and author Carol Mattoe writes, The dying process begins the minute you are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties. So you get the idea that when we have that sense of not enough time,

okay, our sense of in some way aversion or dislike or fear, we don't take so much in. And you might close your eyes and reflect on this too. This is the second reflection. So again, to bring up a recent conversation. And in this case, where there might have been some aversion, you might have been bored or intimidated or anxious about something going on, or maybe it was anxious about something unrelated to the person.

But just notice what happens when there's that kind of limbic hijack and there's anxiety or boredom or aversion, what happens to listening. Now, there's one fear that I'd like to mention that's even more basic than the ones I've named. And that's the fear of not being here, that often rather than listen and really put aside our self-agenda, we keep having to reassert we're here. and this is a more subtle level but we get uncomfortable and embarrassed when we're not planning our response

so you might have noticed how often when people are talking some part of you is already organizing how you're going to respond it's very hard to put all that down because there's some part of us that feels like we don't know who we are we lose the sense of ourself

when we really open our being to just listen. And I'm naming this because as you, hopefully you'll be practicing in the days, weeks to come, and maybe you won't have any real obvious agenda of wanting something, and you won't have any obvious anxiety, but you'll still find that you're rehearsing and planning your response. And then to take even a bigger leap and sense, what would happen if I just didn't prepare to say anything?

I really put it all down. That's when it gets interesting. So you can open up your eyes if you'd like. So these are the ways you can begin to scan and watch your conversations and start noticing what's between you and a receptive presence. Mark Nebo puts it this way. He says, to listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. I really love that. To be willing to be changed by what we hear. That's a real undefended heart. I recently did an interview with Krista Tippett. Some of you might know of her.

a wonderful program on being. One of the things she shared, I was actually interviewing her, which is a reverse for her, but one of the things she shared, I was introducing her about compassion. We're doing a whole process of interviewing a lot of people about compassion. And one of the things she pointed out was the quality or attitude that we approach connecting with each other and the power of, a willingness to be surprised. I just want to offer you that, that with listening, a willingness to be surprised that we really, really are open. So, the training and listening takes 10,000 plus hours,

as with any training for anything that's worthwhile in our lives. It's a real practice. and the understanding is that the quieter you become, the more you hear. It's kind of that simple. And it's not saying you have to be quiet all the time, it's just that once someone else is speaking, that there be an intention to let go of your own processes of comeback or defense or whatever it is or proving or getting and just be open. that kind of quietness. Now, as mentioned, we do get stressed, so there's a training and how to deal with it

when you get reactive. And the first step, and I'm going to walk you through it with an example, but the first step of this kind of training is setting your intention. And I'm going to invite each of you at the end to choose somebody that you want to actually explore deepening a listening presence with. We all have somebody in our life that's like a good person to practice with, safe enough. So the first step is having the intention. And the intention really is towards understanding and connection. We're listening for the sake of really understanding really, who are you? Or what is it that you really want to communicate? What

going on for you. What's your life like? Understanding and connection. So that's the first step. It's just to have the intention that you're going to be showing up in that way. The second step is an inner listening so that when you're with the person you're aware, oh, there's an agenda or there's a reaction. Oh, I'm wanting something. Oh, I'm feeling hurt or I'm feeling confused. So you're aware of what's going on inside, an inner listening. and then the third is offering what St. Benedict calls the ears of the heart to listening to the other, listening with our heart. So I'll give you an example of somebody who is practicing these steps and talk a little bit more and then we'll practice together as a way to close.

and this is a woman who had done some training and deep listening, and she knew she was going to be coming back to where her mother lived to do a professional training for her work, and so she thought her mother would be the person she was going to do deep listening with. And so she made arrangements to stay with her mom for 10 days. This is the longest visit since she had left college, So this was a really big deal. Now, her mother was a well-known writer, very wealthy, successful, brilliant and narcissistic woman.

And all who knew her would kiddingly refer to her as the center of the known universe. And her mother treated everybody's kind of orbiting satellites. And she loved to have audiences to regal with her stories. She was a great storyteller. Her other daughter, who also lived on the other coast, never spent time with her because as much as she was entertaining for people close in and her family, it wasn't always such a great experience, as you could imagine.

So this woman, Kate, went to stay with her mother, and she knew it was going to be hard because her mother was so self-centered and it also brought up a lot of stuff like I don't have a mother who really can pay attention or care about me. But anyway, during their time together, she really practiced listening. And what she did was she would feel resistance and judgment and resentment and unimportant. And she took the time whenever that would came up to, she'd bring mindfulness to her own

experience. And at times when she wasn't with her mother, she'd bring so well-combed. kindness to feeling, I just don't matter, those kind of feeling. So she really did do that you turn and do inner listening. And when she was able to do that, the more she was able to do that as a couple of days went by, the more she was able to actually be there and start really paying attention to her mother with that kind of inner inquiry, what's it like for you? She said at first it was hard. She had a panicky sensation. She said, like I would drown if I didn't get away. Because that's what it can feel like when people are really narcissistic

and talking a lot. And she said, and if I didn't find a space, find a way to get some of my own space to be suffocating. She takes up so much room. But then she found ways to keep a sense of humor about it and keep taking care of herself on the sidelines. And then she started coaching herself. And I'm going to come back to this because it really helps to coach yourself when you're listening. And she would say, now what is happening? My mother is talking. I am quiet. There is time.

There's endless time. I hear it. I hear every word. And what is beyond the word? I hear who she is. Those are the kind of coaching messages. And she said it got easier to listen and hear what was behind the words. And this is the deal that people speak.

and there's something behind the words that really wants to be heard. So she began to hear behind the words desperation, as if her mother was saying over and over again, I'm here and I matter, I'm here and I matter. That's what her mother was saying. And as she took in her mother's pain, it helped her soften her own heart. And through her own presence, she kept communicating, I'm here, you're here and you matter to me, and I'm right here. Her mom started to relax.

And Kate knew this because there were longer pauses between the stories and the commentary. Her mother sat back in her chair more. She looked out the window. She slowed down. She seemed more reflexive, reflector. Several days before she was going to leave, her mom began to tell her that she felt alone and unappreciated. And Kate responded. in this really sincere, gentle way. She said,

Mom, it's because you don't listen to people. Now, her mother froze, but you didn't get defensive because Kate had been so truly present. She'd become a safe person, a trustworthy person. She had offered just uncritical sympathy and been there. So this wasn't an attack. It was a caring reflection of truth. So our mother said, okay, please tell me, I need to know more. And Kate told her, she explained how it had been for her sister and for their dad and now for her stepdad. When you don't listen, this is I'm reading from what she told me, when you don't listen, people feel like they don't matter that they're not known. And it's true, you can't know them if you don't listen, you can't be close. And Kate described her mom looking at her with

this understanding that pierced her heart and something changed. It might have been that the pain of alienation had broken through her defenses or something, or maybe it was just her time, but she started to listen. And this was both during the last couple days, but then after she had left, after her sister actually made a visit and said, for the first time my life, it felt like it was a real person to her. I existed. And it was most poignant with her husband. They started actually doing things together again, that it stuffed at like the long dinners and the walks that had ended shortly after they got married. So Kate's mom was no longer speaking to demand the world's attention and she was beginning to connect. I'm sharing this story partly

because it was a tough one and even though there was a big change, things went back and forth and so on, but for Kate it was such a wake-up of the potential when you really offer a deep attention to someone else, how much they can change. And one of the images that I love when I talk about this that it reminds me of is imagining that life or spirits like this fountain and it gets clogged with unprocessed hurts and fears when we're not listened to. When we're not seen and listen to, the fountain gets clobbed. We can't process. We can't express who we are. We just don't feel we'll be received. And so we start ignoring and pushing away our feelings and they just, the flowing aliveness stops. But when someone starts listening to us, the debris

that's clogging the fountain gets unclogged. It begins to dissolve and the fountain's free to flow. And it doesn't happen all at once, of course. Some of the wounding and the clogging has been going on for years. But that's the gift we give to each other. Is that when we hold a presence for somebody without judgment, as one person named is so important, empathetic presence. It gives, makes it possible for some of that debris to unclog and for that person who the real spirit and soul is to come through, that natural vitality. So we learned to coach ourselves some. One woman described her messages to herself in coaching. She said, it's his turn. Just listen. Slow down. Pay attention. This is what he needs. Just over and over again. It's his turn.

Just slow down. We need to coach ourselves because we forget. We all forget. This is Ticknat Ham. Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose to help them empty their heart. Even if they say things that are full of wrong perceptions,

full of bitterness, you're still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help them correct their perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don't interrupt. You don't argue. If you do, they lose their chance. You just listen with compassion and help them suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing.

Now, for some of you might be thinking of people you know and how incredibly, painful and harder it would be to do that kind of listening because you would feel yourself you are being violated. And so I want to reiterate the three steps. And one of them is to have the intention to seek understanding and connection. And step two is to do the you turn and sense where you're feeling in some way hurt or reactive and bring as much kindness and compassion to that as possible. And it's not like we can be with just anyone and have them for an hour saying and doing anything. It has to be safe enough. It has to be that we have enough boundaries and taking care of ourselves. But when we can show up in that way, when we can just put it all

down and just be there and let someone say what they need to say and just listen, there is something very priceless and beautiful that becomes possible. And I just want to take a few moments before we're going to practice together, but just to say that we're focusing right now and listening to each other, listening to our own hearts and each other, but it's just kind of listening that is necessary if we're going to be able to respond to the most vulnerable beings on our planet, If we can't listen and sense where the suffering is, we won't respond.

This is how Gary Lawless puts it. He says, when the animals come to us asking for our help, will we know what they're saying? When the plants speak to us using their delicate language, will we be able to answer them? when the planet herself sings to us in our dreams, will we be able to wake ourselves and act, listening to the song? So for now, we'll bring our intention to listen to the song with another being in our life,

someone that we feel like we'd really like to offer more of a human attention to. So you might sit however is most comfortable and let this person come to mind that you'd like to explore practicing, deep listening with. And you might tell them or you might not and see what you feel most serves, but more listening from the heart with the ears of the heart. You might begin by examining how listening has been going so far with this person. The inquiry is really what has been between me, and really listening with an away cart, what stops me.

And see if you can, without any judgment, just as we did earlier, sense into how you might have gotten pulled off from listening, whether it's because you are wanting something, approval or cooperation, whether it's been the fear or version, maybe a sense of not enough time. Sometimes what gets in the way is a sense of hierarchy, a sense of being more important or less important, superior or inferior.

Sometimes it's that subtle level of needing to assert ourselves, just to feel that we're there. When we're not listening, we tend to be in some way controlling the experience, steering the conversation or getting distracted in our own thoughts or planning our response, you might sense how might you have controlled the experience on? And sense your intention, what makes this important to you, your intention to deepen your understanding of what's true for the other person, your intention to connect, to really have more intimacy. And for some you might sense this as the bodhisattva's intention to really be present

with an open, undefended heart. And maybe you can imagine a situation that could come up at the next day or a few days where you'll be with that person. And imagine before moving into the situation, having some sort of an anchor, maybe your body or your breath. So you can kind of stay present as you're with them. And before moving into this situation itself with them, sense if there's any inner listening that will help you, anything that you might sense could get stirred up, any anxieties or wants that you just bring some kind attention to inside you. So you've done some inner nurturing.

You've taken care of your own heart song. Freeze you up to be with them a little more. And then imagine moving into the situation with them and being with them and them speaking. And you, with your intention, to listen with an unbefendant heart, and perhaps maybe some coaching, some inner coaching that will help you to stay right there. Like simply, there's time and what's behind the words?

Let yourself imagine into the goodness of creating a healing space with your listening. The goodness for them, the goodness for you, the sense of we that emerges when there's a listening presence. And as a way to close this reflection, just come into a state of listening right now, to the sounds that are right here, let there be an inner quietness. So you can relax back, just be this silence that's listening. A receptive listening presence opens us to intimacy with our whole world. We can hear that a bit in this closing poem called Birch by Anne Emerson. choose one low-hanging leaf, heart-shaped, still attached to Mother Birch, and listen to all it has to say.

The sound, its slender veins make, turning light to sugar, the excitation of wind, water sipped through the straws of branches up from the packed black well of roots, how it and its sisters communicate, with birds and how it refracts the sun in your eyes searching for the right thing to say and when. The cue will be obvious when it's your turn to speak. Its palm will fall upon yours face down, the lines sentences touching, the breath of your hand then whispering the language that green understands. Thank you for your listening presence. Namaste.