Tara Brach - Listening with an Awake Heart (2016-04-27)

Episode Date: April 29, 2016

Listening with an Awake Heart (2016-04-27) - True listening both nurtures and expresses evolving consciousness. This talk explores our ego-based conditioning to have an agenda or defendedness that prevents deep listening, and the strategies that evolve our capacity to listen fully to ourselves and others. When our listening is openhearted and full, it enables deep understanding and connectedness, and provides a transformative healing space for those who receive our listening attention. 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 makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. There's a story told by Franklin Roosevelt. He often endured these long receiving lines at the White House and he complained that nobody, when he'd greet people, nobody really listened to what he was saying. So one time he decided to do an experiment, and with each person that he met in the line, he'd shake their hand, and then he'd murmur, I murdered my grandmother this morning.

And the guests responded with phrases like, marvelous, keep it up, keep up the good work, we're proud of you, sir. God bless you, sir, you know, whatever, they just say things like that. It was until the end of the line that the ambassador from Bolivia actually heard the words he said, and he was very nonpluced, and he leaned over in westward. else or I'm sure she had it coming to her. So most of us value good listening in some deep way we get that we can't really understand each other or ourselves.

We can't really connect if there's not that quality of listening attention. And we also, for most of us it's a growing edge. There's some intention to improve on that front. And often it comes to us in a jarring way, that reminder that we haven't really been listening well. And it might be that all of a sudden our partner questions the relationship, questions the intimacy that's there, or we find out our teenage son has gotten addicted to drugs, or it might be that we haven't been listening inwardly and our body falls apart in some way. or it can happen in a spiritual way that we've realized, wow, it's been a decade and I haven't really been attuning or aligned with my purpose, my values.

So there's kind of a wake-up and we get that not listening creates suffering. That if we're not attending inwardly and with each other, we really can't be present, we can't heal and we can't bring healing to our world if we're not listening. So this class, the title is Listening with an awake heart. And I'd like to explore what is true listening, what does it really mean, what gets in the way, what stops us, and what some strategies are that are really tonight, tomorrow, the next day, ways that we can wake up that, capacity in us. Maybe I'll like to begin with a favorite story. A friend told me years ago

who was teaching in a Montessori school and these are seven to 11 year olds. And he had a gong with him. This is a little ring gong, a baby gong. But what he said to them was, I'm going to strike the gong. What I'd like you to do is kind of watch and follow and listen to the sound. just with interest, notice where it goes, because he said, if you watch and follow, you'll get closer to God. So that was the exercise. And he talked to one of the children's mothers,

who was a friend of his later, who heard about the experiment, and told him what happened with her son. And her son had said, well, I watched and listened to where the sound went, and I didn't get closer to God. I was God. When we're fully present, we become that presence itself. Listening is an amazing pathway. I think of listening is probably the best template for pure awareness.

Because when we're listening, there's a quality of openness that awareness is naturally wide open like the sky. There's an openness and there's a knowing or cognizant quality. When we're listening, there's that openness, that receptivity, that cognizance, just like awareness itself. And because of that open, sensitive presence, we're then able to respond. When we listen well, we naturally can respond from the heart. Maybe just since I've been holding my gong, we'll just take a moment, give you the same instructions that the children got. Just close your eyes for a moment. and just listen to and follow the sound and again.

In Buddhism the Bodhisattva of compassion, Kuan Yin, is described as the one who listens to the cries of the world. And Kuan Yin has thousands of hands and so in response to hearing the suffering she can reach out in infinite directions to respond. And I think of it that the bodhisattva is a kind of archetypal model of our evolutionary potential. That our potential as we wake up as humans is to have this quality of deep listening that allows us to recognize the suffering that's around us and respond, and also this listening that takes in the goodness that perceives the sacred and can celebrate it and bow to it and mirror it back. That is the power of listening.

So if the evolved being that we can be has this capacity for this openness and receptivity and listening, then we might look at, well, in contrast, how does our listening get so narrowed or so shut down? And I do think of it in terms of evolutionary development that our primitive survival brain has a narrowed aperture for the senses and by that I mean the concern is okay there's an individual self that's perceived and we emerge to perceive separation. It's the design of the brain that there's a self in here

and there's a world out there. and part of the design is to protect from danger and to grasp on to what we can get to promote ourselves and enhance ourselves. And our listening is aimed at, oh, is there danger? Is there a slither that's going to then attack me? Is there danger out there? And we're listening for advantage.

Is there something that we can get more of? And so there's a narrowed aperture for listening and when we're in what we might call the trance of separation, when we're really in that cocoon of egoic thinking, when we're in that self-centeredness, our listening is very fixated towards what will give us gain and what's going to cause threat. We're not in that open receptivity

that can listen to the cries of the world. So what we'll be exploring is how do we evolve ourselves? So we move from where it's kind of domination of the limbic, system that's keeping the listening small and egocentric to that freedom to take in our world in a very open and tender way. So how do we get hijacked? How come we move through the day and if we're honest with ourselves? We're not listening in a very perceptive way to what's going on inside us and nor are we listening

to understand in a wide open way with each other what happens. And we might divide it into there's two main limbic energies that take over and are predominant at any given moment and one of them is the wanting mind. And this is the energy that when we're with somebody has some agenda, some agenda that narrows the aperture. And you know there's a very classic. classic description in Sanskrit that's translated to when a pickpocket sees a saint, they see the saint's pocket, right? And that's wanting mind. It's like we just fixate on what we want.

So in a conversation, and this is really valuable to monitor, just to ask yourself, you might do it after the conversation's over and just reflect back and you might have had a conversation today that you can use, did I have an agenda? In other words, did I want that person to experience me in a certain way? That's one agenda. Because if we want to be experienced in a certain way, we're configuring ourselves and listening so that we know how to present ourselves. Did we want to look intelligent or do we want to look spiritual or capable or caring or

interesting? In other words, how often is wanting somebody's approval? present and how often is it preventing us from really listening to who's there? Because when I say listening, I'm not just talking about the words. Do you know what I mean? You know, talking about are we listening with that inquiry to really understand who is there? So we want approval and that's one of the lenses for us. You can ask yourself, you know, was I listening but did I want the conversation to go in a certain direction because if we were wanting it to go a certain way

then we're not really listening. Do we want to prove something? Do we want to get something from that person? Do we want to be right? Did we want to fix the person or accomplish something? When the lens narrows, when we're wanting, we can't take in reality, we can't take in who's there. And one of my favorite little mini illustrations

is the woman sitting on a park bench a guy gets off the bus and he sits down next to her and she goes, so, what are you doing? He goes, oh, I just got out of prison. She said, oh, what for? And he said, well, I murdered my wife. She goes, oh, so you're single. It's a terrible illustration, I know.

I'm sorry, but I kind of like it anyway. So it's interesting to look and say, you know, what is the agenda? and often it's not to do with that particular person. Often we have another agenda that has nothing to do with that person, which is we really want to get away and get something else done, or we want to get back to work or be with somebody else or get something to eat. But either way, wanting mind stops us from open presence and listening.

Exact same thing with aversion. When there's something going on and something in us doesn't like it, you know, when there's fear, when we feel threatened, and we are designed to pull back, so we're not really listening. And my husband can really relate to this one. The four words that will make men run for the hills, we need to talk. And you get it, though.

When there's a sense of, oh, I'm nervous about something, the aperture closes. So we start reviewing and sensing in different conversations. was there a subtext where I felt afraid of criticism? I mean, we know it that, I mean, if you think of it, what's it like when you're receiving criticism? How much can you really hear? When we get threatened, we create an armor

and we're not really taking things in. What's it like when you're talking to somebody who doesn't agree with you on a political matter? Are you listening? I mean, how often have you ever really listened and said, Well, that, sure, I can get that perspective when you're feeling strong about a political belief. It just doesn't happen.

You know, that phrase, the world is divided into those who think they're right. And that's the whole phrase, you know. So it's hard to listen. It's particularly hard to listen when there's a power differential. If you are of the non-dominate culture, if somebody else has more power, if it's due to race, our sexual orientation, our workplace status, socioeconomic, when there's a sense of a totem pole and you're not as high, that power differential means that there's going to be some wariness, defendedness, fear, threat that stops you from paying attention to who

is that person really? same thing when there's a power differential in your indominent position. There's a sense of power over. There's a sense of control. There's a blindness to privilege that means you can't really see who's there. It's hard to listen when there's any form of aversion or fear because that is a hijack and we narrow. And as I mentioned with wanting, often when we're feeling that aversion of fear, it might not have to do with the person. We might be carrying stress with us in a way, in our bodies

in that biochemistry of fear and we just can't take in who's there. And I want to name one of the biggest ways it comes up which is a feeling of I don't have enough time. How many of you are familiar with that as a real stressor, that sense of not enough time? Okay. Let me share a story with you. that was very much of an illustration of this. It's written in a book called Tattoos on the Heart. And if you haven't read Tattoos on the Heart, it's a very, very powerful, beautiful book about compassion.

And Gregory Boyle, by the way, this is the way the book looks. Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest working with Latino gang members in the most violent part of L.A. and so the way he describes it, he's in his office between morning mass and then there's morning mass, then he has to do a baptism right after and he's running late and he has seven minutes between the two.

And right in those moments, he describes a woman walks into the room, her name's Carmen. She's a heroin addict, gang member, an occasional prostitute. She's often seen defiantly storming down the street, usually shouting at someone. So she walks into his office, she takes a seat, and she jumps right in, and I'm going to read you what he writes. I need help.

She's right there, 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 multitas, 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 graduations 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 tilts her head back until it meets the wall. She stares at the ceiling and in an instant her eyes become these two ponds what are rising to meet their edges, swollen banks spilling 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 the door,

I had mistaken her for an interruption. Not listening causes suffering because we leave home, whether it's not listening to ourselves, not listening to another because we feel there's not enough time. In those moments, we leave the one place that has potential for loving, for seeing truly what's here and for healing. I want to name one more fear that stops us from listening. And that's the fear of not being here.

And you might have noticed sometimes how when people are... are talking and there's no room for you, how there's this kind of need to assert in there, like saying, hey, I'm still here, you know, and kind of put ourselves in. And sometimes when people are speaking, we're preparing what we're going to say because in some way we want to, we want to be a part of it. We want to assert our presence, our existence. And we don't really know who we are when we're not planning our response. So it's very hard to really listen and not be coagulating ourselves together to be somebody. And yet that's the very requirement,

is that courage to stay open and not be the self that has a response. So I just wanted to speak some about this because there's different ways that this trance of separation arises through wanting and fearing to close the aperture and make it so that we fixate on certain things and we really can't take in what's true about ourselves or others. And as we begin to wake up and all of us here have that longing to wake up, we start noticing that we're not listening.

We just start becoming aware of it. We start becoming aware that, oh, I've been with that person but I haven't really noticed what's really going on. We become mindful of not listening and then there becomes this real longing to deepen presence, to understand, to connect more, instead of communicating from that I-self place that's not really taking things in to be living more from we. So let me take a pause and again invite you just to check for yourself a little bit about your own, where you are in this listening process.

And perhaps in this pause, take a moment to arrive to get right here. You might collect yourself a little with your breath. You might scan your life and choose somebody that matters to you. Somebody that you know you'd like to deepen your attention to. You'd like to listen more fully from the heart when you're in communications. And it may be you think, well, I want to do that with everybody, but pick one person. And to begin to investigate a little, you might ask, you know, what's between me and listening with an awake heart?

What happens? What actually goes on when I'm with this person? And without judgment, just scan and sense. So what form of a limbic hijack happens? It might not be extreme. The agenda might not be super strong, but maybe there's some wanting there for the person's approval,

or that they cooperate with you. Maybe there's some discomfort, some fear of being judged or rejected. Maybe there's a bit of a sense internally of hierarchy that one of you is superior or inferior. It's hard for us to admit sometimes that we feel superior to others and yet that is a remnant that's very much alive and well in our body mind of how we humans rank things. Or maybe there's a sense of that pervasive stress of not enough time,

that sense that I'm not prepared for what's next and I can't spend time right now. Where do you get hijacked where the aperture closes and you're not really, as they say, listening with the ear of the heart really there? As you're reflecting you might notice how do you end up distracting or controlling your experience? Do you go into your own thoughts and prepare what you're going to say? Do you steer conversations? Do you plan your response? Do you insert yourself?

Do you think about other things? Do you strategize how to end the conversation? Do you keep it away from certain topics? Do you try to make it go towards certain topics? Just letting this scan be one of genuine interest so that you can deepen your intention to be aware on the spot. Deepen your intention to really seek you. to understand the other and to connect.

Just to know that the key to listening with an awake heart to it, the way the bodhisattva of compassion holds open that heart to be present in a very unconditional way is that there's no controlling. That when somebody is speaking there's no controlling going on, no directing, no perceiving, No pursuing an agenda, no planning or response. There's just presence with an open and undefended heart. Here's how Mark Nippo puts it. He says, to listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

I'm going to say that again. To listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. I've been speaking of listening as this evolutionary capacity because when we listen fully and deeply it awakens our understanding. We listen to understand and it deepens that capacity to then respond with compassion, with tenderness. And it also offers the other person a blessing. Your listening attention is a blessing. When another person feels listened to there's a healing that goes to.

on because you're including both their suffering and their goodness when those moments of presence are occurring. And the image I like best and we're going to be practicing some with this, I'm going to invite you to take it a step further with that person you want to listen more to. But I want to give you some examples of how you can actually deepen your attention. The image I like is to imagine listening, the power of listening, that we have this creative spirit that's like a fountain, that life and love and creativity is always flowing through us. And it's all from this pure source of awareness, this deep intelligence and love that's our being.

But when we haven't been listened to, and this is through our early childhood or in our life, when we haven't been listened to, that flowing stops. We get kind of clogged up. The source of awareness and love is always there. But there's kind of a clogging that the fountain starts to dry, it starts to shrivelsome. And when we're listened to it thrives. Okay? So just to keep that in mind.

So what happens if somebody hasn't been listened to is that what gets expressed can be stagnant or murky or kind of... kind of dissociative. And you can talk, if you talk to someone who hasn't been listened to, they can speed up what they're saying or not have silences or not, there's not a real connection with what's inside because they're not communing from their depths, there hasn't been that practice of having a receptive environment. They've lost touch. And often when somebody hasn't been listening to, they lose touch with their purpose and their heart. And so when we start to listen to somebody. And we all, to some degree, have had some of that clogging

in our lives. The creative fountain begins to flow again. That's what happens in that space of listening. It doesn't happen right away though. I was talking about this with somebody the other day and he said, yeah, well what I hear is just repetitive stuff that's victimized this and, you know, angry at that and blame it. It doesn't happen right away. When we have to live, we have to live in, listen and keep holding the space and keep holding the space and gradually what happens, first the shadow stuff comes, the more muddy waters, and then it goes deeper and what needs to be expressed starts being expressed and included and then it goes even deeper until we really sense the pure waters of that being.

Give you an example of this power of listening with an awake heart some years ago. A woman shared this with me. She had done a training and mindful listening and there are many around now. And she decided to practice with her brother. Her brother is a professor of economics for decades and she found her brother incredibly self-absorbed and opinionated and domineering and yet the families each summer would spend beach time together and she dreaded it but decided okay I'm going to practice which is kind of cool when you have you're going to go be there so you might as well practice something, you know. And so at first she said listening was horrible.

It was so difficult. Her brother just talked incessantly about himself or went on to diatrives about everything from childbearing to world affairs and he took up all, sucked out of all the air out of the room and there was no room for her at all, no space. And so in the past she would have typically found excuses to end the conversation and not be around. but she stayed and she used her breath as an anchor. She just felt herself breathing in and out slowly

and that was her way of just stay, be calm, which by the way is one of the tips when you're practicing mindful listening is have some anchor that helps you just know you're here and you keep coming back to the anchor so that you're not spinning off in your thoughts, you're back with the anchor. And I'm going to describe how she deepened her little, listening with the acronym Raine, which is recognized, allow, investigate, and nurture. It's an acronym for really step-by-step awakening, mindful, kind presence.

So she had that anchor and then she began to, you know, she was very kind of provoked by him in terms of being real impatient and frustrated and she felt a lot of aversion. So she recognized and allowed, okay, don't like this, not liking it. felt her breath and just recognizing allowing, she didn't like it. And then the eye of rain, she started to investigate and I want to just maybe slow down. When first we react to another person, that's what's, you know, that's the limbic system coming online. Okay, there's no room for me. I feel diminished and demean by participating because I'm not really participating.

So all that stuff comes up, you can't just go straight to listen to them, you first have to listen inwardly. I sometimes call this the U-turn. So the beginning, this recognizing and allowing is you're making a U-turn and you're saying, okay, I'm recognizing and listening within me, this is the reaction. And for Hershey, just say yes, it's okay, it's okay to feel this, it's okay. So it's important to first, when you're practicing, awakening this open-hearted listening, to take care of the parts of you that aren't feeling open-hearted. Otherwise, it's a bypass, it's a spiritual bypass,

and we're not going to really listen. So recognizing and allowing is that you turn being with what's right there and saying it's okay, frustrated, impatient, it's okay, and that creates more space. Then she could investigate him. She could listen with a kind of an interest, like, okay, so what's really going on here? And she coached herself,

and I think this is really useful when we're, listening to another person, she coached herself to stay curious. She would kind of mentally whisper to herself, okay, so what's really happening here? And she reminded herself, there's time, there's time, what's behind the words and beyond the words? Can I hear who he is? This is the investigating of rain, which is really part of a mindful presence, a real interest. And what she could hear was her brother's need for attention, that he need to feel like he mattered, that he was intelligent, that he was interesting, and she could hear the depth of the insecurity underneath. So she was listening into that, like Kuan Yin, she was listening

into the sorrows there. Then the end of rain comes naturally when you start feeling, when you're listening to someone, you start feeling, oh, they're hurting. There's a natural kind of tenderness to your presence and the listening becomes very, very kind and caring. There's a full listening presence. So this went on for a couple of days that she just held a space and she was able to practice rain, you know, feel her breath and do the U-turn when she needed to and open up to him. After a few days he confessed to her something. He said he was pretty agitated and hurt because before break, before they had gotten off, I think it was spring break or whatever,

they'd received a bunch of students' complaints that he was an interesting, that he was compared to a more popular econ professor that, you know, that got discussed with the department head, that he was getting a number of students that were wishing they hadn't taken his class and wished they could have switched and so on. And so she held that with presence. She listened. And then he said something she never expected.

He said, I'm not the person I want to be. And his eyes are wet. And so she just, you know, who do you want to be? And he said, I want to be someone who can connect and engage and interest these young people and the challenges of our world. I want them to be able to pay attention to what matters. And then they talk. Then they actually really talked.

There was a back-forth about what had gotten in the way for him. and what would allow him to more experientially engage the students. And she told me, she actually came here to a class when she was telling me that she said the day they left, he just approached me, he had such gratitude, he said, I needed you, you've been so here for me these days, it helped me reconnect with my purpose. And what had she done? It was kind of like that fountain. He was clogged up and he was sputtering in a kind of muddy, clogged up way in that habit.

And she just stayed and stayed enough for it to go past that. So something else came up was that deep vulnerability of that insecurity. And then underneath that, the pure waters of his real longing to be there for others in a way that could help them wake up for students. Read to you a quote I love from Ticknott Han. He says, 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 to suffer less.

One hour like that can bring transformation and healing. So again, just to name again the strategies that can help, select an anchor, something that'll help you stay coming back, being with yourself. It could be the breath, it could be feeling your hands, it could feel yourself on the ground, you know, your body's posture, so on. And then with rain, recognize and allow what's coming up in you, the kind of limbic reactivity, you know, do that you turn where you're just say yes and agree and be forgiving and compassion to whatever's coming up in you.

And it may be that that's what you do a lot and it might take in a relationship with somebody else some weeks or months before there's enough, you've kind of been with yourself enough that you can extend. That's okay. Sometimes the reaction's strong. Then the investigation, what is really happening for this person? What's going on inside this person? Who's here behind the words? So important.

and so beautiful. And as you investigate, the quality of presence deepens and there's a natural tenderness. There'll be a natural quality of kindness that comes with your listening. You become the bodhisattva of compassion when you're occupying that presence. Now, my primary focus has been how do we wake up in our one-on-ones, in our individual relationships? But this is part of evolution of consciousness. We're waking up, we're evolving our consciousness to listen and it's happening on parallel levels in a societal way. And I want to name that because the movement from fight-flight freeze where instead of

listening we're in some way planning or resisting or manipulating or controlling to attend and be friend, which is the living from an awake awareness, is something that happens with us when we're with each other and also between groups of humans on the planet and we can see it the first beginnings peeping up of it whether we see it in the peace and reconciliation hearings that happen in different countries where there's conflict

where there's a commitment to listening a deep commitment to listening because how else will warring peoples whether it's religious or ethnic or governments ever come to understanding and peace if they don't listen to each other. If they don't listen and say, well, what really are your needs?

What is it we both need to be able to come to some resolution? One of the most powerful examples of evolving consciousness on the planet for me has been to see the growth of restorative justice circles and how they're occurring in different institutions

settings and for those that aren't familiar with it, if you think of the way that we operate from our limbic brain, a limbic society, when somebody breaks the law, what do they do? A limbic society blames them and punishes them. There's no healing in it. It's blaming and punishment. But a society that's coming more from the heart of a bodhisattva will create what's called a restorative circle. and what that is is that instead of blaming and punishing, there's an attempt to discover

and it includes everyone's needs, the victim, the offender, the community, everybody's invited in, and it's a system that listens to and addresses everyone's needs. And the assumption is when people behave in certain ways it's not condoning, but there's some suffering there. And when people are hit by another in some way, they're suffering. How do we meet all the needs that are there? And one of the examples I wanted to share with you came from a very dear friend, Sherry Maples, who's a Dharma teacher, and she was in the police for some time also. And she described to me attending a three-day restorative justice session at a maximum security prison. And in this, a victim of rape came in and told her story to the guys

that were there, including sharing all the different ripples that her story had on other people's lives. And there were a lot of things that happened over those three days, but what Sherry communicated to me was that those guys that were listening got clearer and clearer what was the impact of their particular crimes. And there was this healing that took place for the woman who was the victim that was amazing. At the end, she thanked them for healing her, for being part of that healing, for listening to her story, and she left saying, you're welcome at my dinner table anytime. This is our evolutionary potential that we can have those.

those that are wounded, those that have wounded, communicate. It's happening in schools which makes me so happy. There's in a bunch of different schools but I was heard about some of the circles going on in Oakland and I was watching a video and one teen described being in these circles that would meet and he said you know I used to lie, I used to get into fights, get suspended. Now I'm coming to this place where people listen to each other. and we see each other how we are when we start opening up and he says it makes me want to treat people differently

when I see who they are when they open up. This is the hope. It's the hope in our own lives if each one of us right now, this moment, deepened our commitment to listening to someone in our lives that we have in some way been hijacked,

we haven't really listened to. We're part of the evolution of consciousness. Part of that. This is a poem called Waiting in Line. When you listen, you reach into dark corners and 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, but it can be your brain, your fingers, your toes. You can listen anywhere. your mind might not want to go. If you can listen, you can find answers to questions you didn't know. If you have listened, truly listened, you don't find yourself alone. Written by Nick Penna, fifth grade.

It's pretty good, right? Yeah. If you have listened, truly listen, you don't find yourself alone, which I think is really the gift here, that listening connects us. When we're operating from that separate self and our listening is contracted, it reinforces the separate self, where the wanting self, the fearing self. But in the moments that we open wide and really let in our world, we become that presence that includes our world. We wake up. So let's explore, let's take a few moments together and get a little taste as we bring to mind again someone in our life

that we'd like to listen more deeply to. Take a moment as you're pausing right now just to arrive and relax and feel your breath and as you're sitting in this stillness you might open your senses to listening to sound, not just with your ears but with your whole awareness and let the sounds wash through. Be that open and receptive. You can just allow whatever sounds are rising and passing just to wash through you. Be the space the sounds are happening in. Bringing to mind a person you'd like to deepen your listening to,

somebody you'd like to listen to with an awake heart, Imagine a place where you might be that you be talking. And take a moment to feel your heart's intention towards presence, towards seeking to understand, towards connection. Imagine the conversation and if there's some familiar kind of resistance or tightness, an agenda, a fear, Let yourself begin by bringing that recognizing and allowing right to what's inside you. You might make a gesture of kindness if it's difficult, if there's a difficult reaction. Sometimes it helps us to put your hand on your heart and just really send a message, it's okay, I'm here.

I care about this suffering and as you feel ready to open the aperture, to open the ears of the heart to the other. You can begin that investigating. Now what's happening? This person's talking and I am quiet. There's endless time. Just give yourself that space. I'm hearing it every word and what's beyond the word. Who is this person? Can I hear who this person is? Imagine and sense and feel that unconditional receptivity and presence that can allow that person's fountain to flow, that you might be listening to and sensing the person's fears or sorrows. And you can also sense into the purity that that sacred source of awareness and heart That's the very essence of that being, that you can listen in that deeply, taking it all in.

To listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. Just take a moment to sense the quality of presence and heart that's here when there's truly deep listening. as that little boy listening to the gong. When we truly listen, wide open, present, tender, we realize the very essence of what we are, that sacredness, that love, that presence, that's our true nature. Namaste and blessings.

So a closing couple of words, just to not be too out there, Please explore within the next hour at least some moments of what it really means to listen from the heart. Don't let this get compartmentalized into just a talk, you know? Just try it out. It is life-changing and it helps the world. So thank you for your presence. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list,

please visit tarabrock.com.