Tara Brach - Listening to the Song - Part 2 (2017-03-01)

Episode Date: March 4, 2017

Listening to the Song - Part 2 (2017-03-01) - Listening is more than a communications skill, it is a capacity that awakens our awareness. As we learn to listen inwardly, we begin to understand and care for the life that is here. 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. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really matters. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. A minister told a story that I liked of who's giving a sermon and there were two teenage girls in the back kind of giggling and goofing around. So he decided to do something about it so he kind of in a stern voice said there are two of heard a word I've said. And that, you know, that quieted them down. And then at the end of the service, she was out greeting people and there were three or four adults that came up to him and said,

I'm so sorry I wasn't listening. And I'm sorry for falling asleep and I promise never to do it again. And it shines a light for all of us. I mean, we all know how much our minds wander off and how often we really aren't listening. And so tonight is our second in a two-part series on really what I've described as listening to the song or that kind of deep listening that listens even behind the words to the life and the truth that's here in the moment in ourselves and in each other. And I've been thinking that, you know, for the next year, two years or whatever, our whole path was let me deepen that listening attention.

Let me really listen to what's true inside me. Let me really listen to those in my circle. And let me listen to those that seem different and that I don't agree with. Deep listening. It might be the best heart medicine that we could have for our own freedom and for our whole society. So it's in that spirit that I really invite us each

two sense, so where's my edge on this one? And where can write in my life I begin listening more? So we'll reflect together because we know when we hear reports, whether it's for many of us that have been in 12-step groups, or in therapy or with a really good friend or whatever, we know the power of it. We know what happens to us when someone really holds that space of listening. and it's a gift. So we'll explore together and I asked last week for anyone that had questions

and I got a handful of questions and I've woven them into some of the content of what I'll be speaking about. But one of them I thought I'd right begin with just to acknowledge that most of us think thinking is a really good idea and most of us have a real resistance

at least some of the time and one person wrote I sometimes don't want to listen to anyone, not to their worries or grief, not to their successes or their next vacation plans, not to anything at all. So I wanted to name up front that if that's the state of mind, to not add a should, like I should be wanting to listen, I should be a good listener, but to then listen to that, to then say, oh, so that's what's happening right now, that's the experience of the moment. not to make it wrong.

So we don't do what we do with so many domains in our life and turn listening into another place of judgment and should. Listening is something that as we get drawn to it, it's a total gift to our inner life and to each other. And if it's done in that spirit, it works. And if it's a should, it just creates contraction. So there's something about saying, oh, this resistance, this belongs to.

Can I listen to this and sense what's underneath it? What's going on? The theme that I keep coming back to in my life is that as much as we want to be a certain way for others, over and over again, the starting place is to check in first and bring a wise and kind attention to what's going on inside us. And I call this the U-turn, that we may be listening to another person

and thinking we should be open and non-judging, but the judgments are there. We'll make the you turn and just listen to the judging place. Don't make that wrong, you know? Oh, okay, that's what's going on. So you can't go wrong. All you do is keep making that you turn and listening inwardly to what's going on

and you will find that if you've listened to your inner life in a really kind and clear way, that listening presence will naturally extend to others. So let's look a bit at where this happens. And the beginning is to say that it's as profound a meditative capacity as any in the world. And we think of listening as a skill, but it's actually an expression of an evolving consciousness. We have to be quite awake and quite still, really empty out that kind of selfing that keeps referencing back to ourselves. It takes a real depth of attention.

It's like you can't listen to music if you're eager to get to the end of the song or if you're planning what you're going to have for lunch. And you can't listen to another person if you're already rehearsing what you're going to say. takes really that kind of releasing of that self-involvement and that openness to what's actually in the moment. One of my favorite descriptions of the power of listening and the depth of listening came from a teacher at a Montessori school who was teaching children really about sound and listening and she had a gong much like I have right here and she did a kind of exercise with them and

she said, I'm going to call forth the sound of the gong. I'm going to sound the gong. And what I'd like you to do is to watch where it goes with interest. Just listen with interest. And she says, if you follow and you watch, you might get closer to God. And so then she did the exercise. Well, one of the children went home and told his mother, who actually was a friend of the teacher. So here's what... and what had happened to him, and the mother went back and told the teacher what her son said.

And her son said, well, when I watched and listened to where sound went, I didn't get closer to God, I was God. What happens when we're really, really listening? When there's that silence and stillness, we just become one with that open, awake awareness. that tender presence, we become presence itself. That's the depth of the capacity that we're talking about. So, as with meditation, when we decide, okay, listening really is this path of truly it's a way of connecting.

When we listen, we get connected, connected to the whole, connected to the person we're with, connected to our inner life. When we start intending to listen more, we encounter very, very clearly, and often with like a real how much we're tugged away. And so I'd like to explore

the three main ways that people often find they're tugged and pulled away from listening. They came up in some of the questions that I got. And the three key areas we'll look at that we get tugged is by our own self-agenda, what we're trying to promote in some way. We get tugged by this chronic inner mantra that says there's not enough time, right? And then the third is we get tugged when we're having an averse of reaction to what's going on

and there's judgment and there's criticism and there's conflict. Okay, so we'll just take them one at a time because I found that most people can relate to all of them. And the first one's the agenda, and we talked about this in the last talk, that any time you have an agenda when you're communicating, anytime that means that you can't fully be receptive in listening. If the agenda is, I want my child to cooperate, or I want you to understand me better, or I want you to agree with me, or I want to be right. or I want your approval or I want to impress any of those, the real natural ones.

You know, I want your tame. I want this conversation to stay light. I want this conversation to go deep. Any agenda. And we're removed. We're in some way living inside our own movie of where we want things to go. And the aperture is closed. We're not really taking in the reality of what's here.

Pretty much my very favorite Gary Larson Farside, which I think probably most people know, is the one with millions of penguins. And you have one penguin who's just singing out, you know, I just got to be me, you know, and all the, and he's among millions of penguins, but, you know, you just see this one creature that's like attention is going to moire. And it's kind of like that when we have an agenda. it's like we cannot take in the realness of what else is there. That's the blinder.

So I have a kind of favorite illustration of having an agenda that some of you might remember, and it's one of my 10,000 priest-minister rabbi stories that I collect. I've got like a huge file of them. And in this case they're talking shop and they're talking about how to bring those that need religion, how to bring it to them. And they decide to have a friendly competition and they're going to go into a woods and find a bear, an attempt to convert the bear to their particular faith and then meet up a week later.

So this is an agenda. They each have an agenda with the bear. Father Flannery, this is a week later, he doesn't look good. He's got his arm and a sling, various bandages on his body and his limbs, goes first. He goes, well, I went into the woods to find myself a bear, and when I found him, I began to read to him from the catechism. Well, that bear wanted nothing to do with me and began to slap me around, so I quickly grabbed my holy water, sprinkled him and holy Mary, mother of God, he became as gentle as a lamb. The bishop's coming out next week to give him

first communion and confirmation. Reverend Billy Bob spoke next. Now, he was in really bad shape. He was in a wheelchair, had one arm and both legs and a cast. In his best, fire and brimstone oratory, he claimed, well, brothers, you know we don't sprinkle. I went out and I found me a bear, and I began to read to my bear that God's holy word and that bear wanted nothing to do with me. So I took hold of him and we wrestled down one hill and up another and down another until we came to a creek. So I quickly dunked him and baptized his hairy soul. And just like you said, he became gentle as a lamb. We spent the rest of the day praising Jesus. How? Hallelujah.

Okay, so the priest and the Reverend both look down on the rabbi and happens that they're in a hospital and he's lying in the hospital bed and he's in a body cast, traction, IVs, monitors, etc. He's miserable. So the rabbi looks up and says, looking back on it, circumcision might not have been the best way to start. Extreme. But when we have an agenda, we don't take in information.

We're not attuned to feedback. So here's a question that came in. Whenever I have a conversation with my managing partner, I feel like he has another hidden agenda, even though there's plenty of silent pauses. This makes me question his truthfulness. So how are agendas and trust connected? And so I wanted to slow down here and say, having an agenda is the norm. Most of the time we do. You know, we might have the intention. for a really good listing, but we have, it's layered. And often there are layers of that that want in some way to look good or to get approval

or make something happen. So that's normal. It's often it's transparent and it's often benign. And often also, if it's hidden, it gives off a message to the receiver that something's going on that's dangerous or threatened. So if it's not transparent and if there's a sense of manipulation, we get armored. It's very natural. So there's a sense basically that something's wrong.

And so I want to just name that agendas get subtler and subtler. So you might think to yourself, hey, I just want to really be there with another person. I want things to be good. But just to keep on investigating. One person asks this question, what if the person you dearly want to listen to, want you as a listener, has shut you out, is so zipped up in his space suit that he cannot change roles and needs to hold on to fix ways of interacting. The message here is, you turn, don't blame the person who doesn't want to be listened to,

check your own agenda, check your intention, because they're layered and if you recognize the layer and not judge it, just recognize it. Well, maybe in this case there's a attachment to having a certain kind of communication and a real hurt and so maybe even some anger that it's not happening and some expectation. If another person feels expectation that they're supposed to be listened to, they're going to pull back. So as we approach listening, the first step is check your agenda, check your intention and so that if you notice it's maybe on that layer of, you know, want,

approval or want something good to happen, you can drop deeper and deeper until it gets very, very clean, just simply presence. Can there be understanding? Can this serve understanding? Even if the person doesn't want to communicate, can that sort? Can I wake up with that one? Check your intention. I had a friend who was in a standoff with her teen and desperately wanted to

turn around this strange relationship. And for her it meant she really, she really wanted to be there and listen and she knew that her daughter was having a hard time. And the fact that her daughter would not, you know, would not at all talk. Even though for most of us if we step back we say, yeah, what's new, it was really, really painful for her. And so I suggested she really looked closely at what was going on inside her. And she was familiar with an exercise I do often with the future self or high self. I said, call on the wisest part of you, you know, call on the part of you that's most compassionate and wise

and have that part of you sense what's going on inside you. And she realized, she said when she checked in, she felt hurt that she was shut out. out and deep down she was afraid her daughter wouldn't know she loved her. And her future self said, then just love her. Don't make it translate into that she talks to you in a certain way. Just love her. And so by listening inwardly, she was then able to hold the situation with a lot less grasping. And over time her daughter started, things started trickling out, but because she wasn't so eager for it, there was space. her daughter didn't have to tense up against her, went off to college, when she'd come back

on the weekends, they had a beautiful communication. So again these are examples of we can get attached to being the listener, attached to things going a certain way and we need to keep coming back to sensing what are we attached to? Because if we're listening inwardly that attachment loosens and there's more space for true listening. Second area. And this is the not enough time. And I'm wondering how many of you have found that as a major static when you try to listen, this feeling of not enough time? Can I see the hands? Good number. Not everybody. I share this one because the more stressed we are when we try to listen, the more there can be that undercurrent of I should be doing

something else right now. And there is a story that, there's one of my favorite books, I recommend it whenever I have a chance is Gregory Boyle's book Tattoos on the Heart. And Gregory Boyle's priest that works with gangs in California and has done a magnificent work at creating a sense of community and meaning for people that he's involved with probably the most violent area in L.A. And he describes one morning. He was in his office and it was between morning mass and then he had to do a baptism. So he had one of these line-up schedules and he's seven minutes late and just when he was about to leave his office to go do the baptism, a woman walks in his room and says she needs help. This woman's name is Carmen and she's a gang member and a heroin addict

an occasional prostitute. And he said he often would see her defiantly storming down the street, usually shouting at someone. So she just sits down and starts jumping in. Okay, so that's the setup for not enough time. And I want to read you how the interaction goes. So she says, I need help. And she launches right in Brash and something of a no-shit sister. Oh, she says, I've been to like 50 rehabs.

I'm known all over nationwide. She smiles, her eyes wander around my office, and she studies all the photographs hanging there. She multitasked and her inspection of the place doesn't derail her stream of consciousness rambling. The family will arrive for the baptism in five minutes. I went to Catholic school all my life. Fact. I graduated from high school even. Fact. Right after graduation is when I started to use heroin. Carmen enters some kind of trance at this point, and her speech slows to deliberate and halting.

And I have been trying to stop since the moment I began. Then I watch as Carmen Telt's her head back until it meets the wall. She stares at the ceiling and in an instant her eyes become these two ponds, water rising to meet their edges, swollen banks, spelling over. Then for the first time really she looks at me and straightens. I am a disgrace. Suddenly, her shame meets mine. For when Carmen walked through that door, I had mistaken her for an interruption. You understand, right?

How often, instead of really listening, really opening our being, listening with that ear of the heart, there's some way in which we're kind of pulling away or on our way somewhere else. but it's not we're not offering that space there's a saying that life is what's happening when we're on our way somewhere else and so it gets very difficult

to sustain our attention when we're in that trance of that kind of tumbling forward into the next thing very difficult to land right here and open one woman sent me a in one of the questions she sent me this line, it says, multitasking as possible,

multi-focus is not in terms of listening. So how often do we have that sense of on my way to something else? Now, the given is that we can't always stop and talk to everybody and listen to everybody and there are times we're on a track and that's just the way it is. So the message is not one should always stop at any given moment, and shift gears, but if you've chosen to be there, can you be there? I know for myself very often I'll be, you know, working and I'll have a scheduled call but I'll be working and really wishing I could keep on working but then there calls there and so there's a part

of me that's wanting to get back to what I was doing before and so I've noticed this for a number of years, so that becomes a flag to me. I mean, that is my wake-up flag, that tug of want to get back to that, that part of me still kind of engaged. And so I'll actually use that. And, you know, at the beginning of that call, I'll acknowledge in my body the anxiety of that and the tug, you know, that sense of, oh, I might not get that done. Something's not going to go right if I don't finish that. And I'll let that be there. In other words, it's not to make that tug wrong. Because if you make that tug wrong, you're creating more conflict and more tugs. Tomorrow I'll just breathe with the anxiety or the feeling of frustration and feel it and be there.

And if I can acknowledge it with the inner listening, I'm more there for that call. Number three, and that is, and this will take a little more time with, how do we listen? How do we open and really show up and be there when there's a part of us reacting and feeling aversion? Like, I disagree, or I'm feeling threatened and criticized, or even in a deeper way, a feeling of hatred or anger. It comes up all the time, whether it's different political views or someone's telling you something's wrong with you. there's a New Yorker cartoon with a couple arguing and he's saying yeah well the Dalai Lama never had to deal with your whining so this is really an essential place for our attention

because in our personal lives and our collective there's so little listening and so the inquiry is how will groups that have been at war ever stop the cycles or how will the ongoing racial and class and religious struggle, the struggle with those of any kind of difference, how will it ever reconcile? If there's not a bridge of understanding that comes from opening ourselves and sensing, okay, what's it like to be you? I'm listening.

To be willing to be changed by what we hear. That's poet Mark Nippo. We lean in to be willing to be changed by what we hear. level, it's radical openness. So I think of it and I was thinking of a story I wanted to share with you that was in my own life where this came up where it was really, really challenging and I have participated over the last decade in a number of groups now that are multiracial and also of other different sexual gender orientation and so on. are to deepen understanding between people. So I participate in a lot of them and a lot of trainings.

I'm remembering at the beginning of one group, just we're kind of still in that form forming and norming stage and we were doing a go-around and kind of sharing where we were, sharing something about ourselves that wasn't as easy to share. And I shared, now I've been very, very public about it, but I shared how much I was struggling with health and how hard it was to not even know if I was going to be well enough to show up for something and how much vulnerability I had around that. And how even in forming this new group, my hope was we'd schedule meetings in a certain way so that, you know, they wouldn't be too close in because I was afraid I'd end up not being able to show up and I felt terrible to feel that way.

And so I appreciated their understanding. I was glad I could share this. And one person of color was really, really angry at me. And she felt like I was creating a back door. She wanted to feel my commitment to the shared work. And right from the get-go, there I was creating a backdoor. I can't quite meet as often as that kind of thing. And we tried some back-forth right then and there,

but neither of us were listening. So, on my own, I did that U-turn because I was upset and angry and hurt. You know, I felt like I had disclosed something that was vulnerable and not been well-received. And so I was into self-justification, but then as I listened more deeply, I got in touch with underneath that a much deeper place that wanted attention, which was a feeling of shame and guilt. and it was basically that self-doubt, well, maybe I'm not so committed. And it was what now over the years I've understood as white guilt,

which is basically I'll never be able to do enough to address the enormity of trauma that white people have created from slavery to this current day in terms of institutionalized racism. I'll never be able to do enough. And personal badness with that. So I stayed with that and I kept on listening into that and sensed even under that guilt the hardest place to go to which is the horrific sense of sadness and grief, that's the heartbreak about it.

And when I could get to that place, to the caring place, then there was room. Then there was room to not make myself wrong and realize there's no measure that's enough and just to keep caring and keep responding. That was the wisdom place. But it was a really important U-turn of inner listening because then it allowed me to sense and re in my heart and mind sense, okay, so where was she coming from? And sense her, the natural mistrust that would come up, you know, of feeling like, you know, I'm going to abandon ship and the feeling of separateness that would come with that.

And so we got together and talked and then there was real listening. And I learned so much from listening that round because what I learned was that she needed me to know how it was for her that I had an option to space out meetings, being a white person. I had an option to do it when it worked with my schedule and so on. that for her, she said, I'm on the firing line, it's daily and I can't take a vacation. I can't do it according to other things. And just, she just wanted me to understand that, to know that. And that was the beginning of really one of my very, very close relationship of, hey, it's

different moving through this world, white skin. I can care about something and try to help, but I'm not a lot of it. on the firing line. It's not something I have to care about every single day because it's always affecting my life in every situation. And that is the case for her. Just pausing because I can still feel it in my body and I still have to keep relearning what I learned then, the power of that listening. You know, I've been speaking on an individual level, but we really need to be able to do it with each other individually and in groups in our society.

I saw a video of an encounter that I wanted to share with you that was very powerful that kind of gave me a sense of the what's possible. And it was an encounter between a young man, young white man, who was a Trump supporter and Van Jones, who's CNN commentators, founder of the Dream Corps and Love Army, you know, the Love Army is basically saying respond to hate with love. So what had happened was this young man and a couple of his friends had come out of a bar and they knew Van Jones was going to be there on the street and they kind of confronted him on the street with a video camera

and started confronting him about his stance on racism. and it turned out that they spent a half an hour this young man in Van Jones talking and they ended with real respect on both sides and what happened was there was listening and what happened was and I just want to share something that Van Jones said at the end that really hit me

he said if you cry just as much when that black man died in that police car and I cry just as much when that horrible bigot shot down the police. And if you're crying and I'm crying just as much and we're crying together, then we can find a better way. Things can change. This points to the evolution of consciousness, that we widen out of our personal concerns

so that we care like really care, about everyone who's suffering. Not just the people that look like us or agree with us. That's the evolution of consciousness and how does it evolve? We have to have contact. We have to feel what others are feeling and be with others and pay attention and listen. That's the what's possible. It's like Longfellow wrote,

He said, if we could read the secret history of our animus, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. It's really the only answer to the polarization that's going on right now. We have to listen with our families where there's polarization, with our partners when there's conflict. And with those that voted differently and those that have a different worldview, we have to listen. So it's happening in our society. There is an evolution of consciousness.

We can see it starting to wait years back now with the truth and reconciliation hearings, came out of South Africa. I think there's like 40 or so that have been launched worldwide that really facilitate these encounters that allow victims to tell their stories and be heard and listen to. many of those who testified, I found this so interesting, just described how they testified to the atrocities that they experienced under apartheid and they basically said they've been healed by giving testimony and having people listen. It's very powerful, listening creates relationship.

One story, one man was blinding. when a policeman shot him in the face at close range. And he said, I feel what has brought my eyesight back is to come here and tell the story. I feel what has been making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn't tell my story. It creates relationship. So now another forum that's becoming more and more used

in justice system and elsewhere circles of reconciliation. And that's where, again, victim and perpetration, perpetrator and the wider community gather and everybody is able to speak and everybody is able to listen and then make amends. Very, very powerful. I wanted to share right here in Washington, one of the groups that I very much support them involved with, it's called Minds Incorporated. They bring mindfulness into the school systems and the way they're doing it is with restorative circles. other words, they create circles of young people that listen to each other and speak and they

practice mindful listening and speaking in these circles and that's where they learn mindfulness. The power of that, I sometimes think, wow, what if this was taught like math or history? What's more basic to our survival than being able to really have those connections with each other? So, Nick Penna, fifth grader, when you listen, you reach into dark corners and you pull out your wonders. When you listen, your ideas come in and out like they're waiting in line, your ears don't always listen. It can be your brain, your fingers, your toes. You can listen anywhere. Your mind might not want to go, but if you can listen, you can find answers to questions you didn't,

know. If you had listened, truly listened, you don't find yourself alone. Fifth grader. We can listen. We can feel our care listening inwardly. We can listen to those who are like us and those who aren't. We can listen and care and cry for those that seem different. we can be part of that evolving of consciousness, crying together really, from compassion that really will create this new world. I share one of the last questions that came in just a couple days ago which is how is our listening going to help address climate change, how with so many of our island people are dying going to be displaced from climate change, how does listening help that?

So I wanted to respond to that question with a poem by Gary Lawless. When the animals come to us asking for our help, will we know what they're saying? When the plants speak to us in their delicate, beautiful language, will we be able to answer them? When the planet herself sings to us in our dreams, will we be able to wake our soul? and act. Let's practice a little together and we'll explore really

how each of us can begin to bring alive that listening right where we are in our own lives. As you become still you might open the attention to sound and just begin listening to these words

and to the sound soft sounds in the room, and perhaps to more distant sounds, to listening not just with your ears, but with your whole body, your whole awareness. Just be the space that sounds a wash-through, sensing how if you detect the most distant sounds, sense the vastness of awareness that includes that, that listening presence, it's so open and wide,

there's nothing to do. There's just a pure receptivity with listening. You might call on the compassion and wisdom of your most awake self. And since that's what's listening, open, tender presence that has room for everything that's happening. Whether you think of it as your future self or your awakened heart, just call on that which is the silence that's listening, the vast listening heart. And it's from that awake listening heart.

You might bring to mind a relationship where there's some difficulty in communication, somebody that's important to you but maybe there's some block or either aversion comes up or some conflict, some conflict, some misunderstanding. Relationship you'd like to have more understanding and more connection. Imagine you and that person in a kind of a typical place where you get caught or blocked where there's some static. Sense that stuck place where listening isn't open and full.

Begin to sense from your own most awake heart. from your future self, just listen inwardly and sense what's going on inside you first, making that you turn and just listen inwardly. So what's happening inside me? Is there fears, they're hurt? What's going on? Is there an agenda, some wanting that's got tension around it? A real honest, gentle, non-judging, listening inward right now.

in any way making that wrong. Just notice the fear, the anger, the hurt, infusion, whatever it is that seems to get in the way. Just notice what happens if you, from that high self, that future self, just offer that kindness right there to that place. So offer your understanding and care inwardly. And sense your deepest intention for your relationship with this person. then sense that you can listen now in a different way, listening from your high self or future

self to that other person, as if you could listen to the message behind that person's words. What's the vulnerability or what's that person really experiencing that perhaps you haven't been listening to directly, that you've been more reacting to the mask rather than listening to the vulnerability or the heart of that person? What might that person really be communicating? So if you can listen from your most awake heart, what does that person need? Is that person afraid and need some reassurance,

feeling hurt themselves, in some way threatened? As you listen from this awake heart, what possible responses come up but new choices perhaps might be there for you? sensing this possibility to listen from your awake heart here and then also listen to widening circles so that as we close this meditation we can sense our shared intention to deepen our listening and widen our listening to include all who are struggling all species all of life. It's like the bodhisattv of compassion, Guan Yin, who listens to the cries of the world,

that we listen so we can respond to our world with love. And the planet herself sings to us in our dreams. Will we be able to wake ourselves and act? Namaste and thank you for your listening attention. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.