Tara Brach - The Art of Listening--Nourishing Loving Relationships

Episode Date: June 8, 2011

2011-06-08 - The Art of Listening--Nourishing Loving Relationships - Deep listening is an essential ingredient in intimate, caring relationships. This talk reflects on the intentionality, presence and quest for understanding that create the grounds for a healing and loving listening attention. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

Many years ago, I heard a phrase that has stayed with me. And the phrase is the ear of the heart, listening with the ear of the heart. And it's St. Benedict. And what I wanted to do in this gathering tonight is to explore what that really means. I mean, what would it mean if we move through our life and we're able to pause and be with each other and listen with the ear of the heart. What would happen? And I'll do it by taking three basic pieces

that feel essential if we're to awaken the ear of the heart. And the first is a quality of purposefulness that we know this matters, that we're intentional about listening, deep listening, about the sacred art of listening. That's the first. The second is a commitment to cultivating this kind of presence that is,

and I hope that you felt it a little with the guided meditation, profoundly receptive, not trying to control, really open and yet completely engaged. That's part two. Part three of awakening the ear of the heart is a quality of interest that's seeking to understand.

So it's receptive and yet truly engaged in a live way, seeking to understand. So we'll reflect together on each of those elements, but to begin with intention, the Buddha taught that this entire existence arises on the tip of intention. that's a huge statement and what that's saying is that

in this moment to the degree that your intention your consciousness you know it has a sense of what matters to that degree that will unfold itself so where you're paying attention and what's mattering to in any moment

creates your experience okay and we can become working conscious of our intention. So we then sense, well, does listening matter to us? And I invite you to take a moment to reflect on a relationship in your life that might be difficult, a relationship where even in the last weeks there was some tension. Okay, so if it helps you to close your eyes, close your eyes, but take any relationship where you've maybe sensed, it's a relationship this important to you, where you've sensed tension, difficulty, I'd like to actually have you go

in your mind to a time recently where you were with that person and that there was that tension was manifesting. For a moment, just inquire as to the quality of listening in that occasion. If there was any intentionality about listening, if there was any quality of receptive presence, and there may have been some, I'm just asking you to just check it out for now. If you were seeking to understand in the moments of tension, were you seeking to understand? And I know in these reflections, sometimes it's hard to land on examples, so perhaps you haven't. But this is the inquiry. When there's tension, are we intending to listen?

Is there a receptive presence? Are we seeking to understand? Maybe move the mind to a moment with this person when the relationship was really gratifying, when it was feeling flowing and alive and good, when there was an intimacy, or the qualities of listening then. Was there presence?

Was there a seeking to understand? A curiosity. So this is something you can, I'm going to let you open your eyes whenever you'd like, but this is something, a kind of frame that you can use for just sensing, when are things working, when are things not working? What quality of listening is here?

When we start really paying attention, we get that it makes a lot of, all the difference. And let me just ask for you here, how many of you, in a very conscious way, are trying to become a more skillful listener, a better listener? Can I just see by hands? How many is this like a part of your practice and path? Okay, for those that aren't here, almost everybody's raising their hands. So it matters to us. Why does it matter? We know listening is the vehicle for true connection. We know that. A story for you, which is that one of my friends who teaches meditation was teaching at a school, teaching children, young children, I think seven to

11-year-olds. And his way of teaching meditation was he had a gong, bigger gong, this one, one that reverberates in a little bit of a different way. But he asked them, he said, if you follow follow or watch the sound. If you do that, if you get interested, just follow it. You might get closer to God. So he said, and then he, that was the exercise. Afterwards, one child reported this. He said, well, when I watched and listened to where the sound went,

I didn't get closer to God. I was God. What happens when there's a listening presence? When we're fully in that listening presence, when there's that pure quality of receptivity, we become presence itself. Whether you call that God or pure awareness or that awake space,

the boundary of inner and outer dissolves, we just become that field, that luminous field. And it's when we're in that openness and that presence that we can really then respond to the life that's here, we fall in love. We include all that life. We can engage with that life. So the state of listening, that openness is the precursor, or the prerequisite to loving relatedness.

The more you understand the state of listening of being able to receive and have the sounds of rain wash through you, receive the sound and tone of another's voice, the more there's that kind of presence, the more you know about love. So we begin this reflection by just sensing that intention that really is in most of us. If we intend to wake up and become more mindful, we sense what is meditation, then this listening quality, which is an essential part of me, meditation is key for us. So we begin by sensing that. And then we say, well, what gets in the way? And that brings us to the second part of the process, which is that true listening takes not just

a presence in a moment, but sustaining this kind of receptivity where we don't get caught in that virtual reality, where we don't leave. And as most of us know, there's pretty much of a ceaseless inner dialogue, isn't there? I mean, if we look through our day, if I watch my mind, it's just always, it's always moving, and it's always got ideas and comments and judgments and complaints. And it doesn't just stop and become empty and open when somebody else is talking. It carries on some, you know, a little bit toned down, but, you know, right? So we're in this kind of virtual reality a lot of the time.

And when we're in it, it severs us from the actuality of what's happening. Now we know that, I mean, forget about listening to another person. We know that when we're moving around through the day, if we're thinking about and planning what we're going to do, we're not hearing the sounds of the birds and we're not feeling our breath then we're not contacting this moment, right? So someone sent me this little story. He says, as a bagpiper, I play many gigs.

Recently, I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man. He had no family or friend. So the service was to be at a pauper cemetery in the Kentucky back country. Now, as I'm not familiar with backwoods, I got lost. And being a typical man, I didn't stop for directions.

I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone. The hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late. I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play. The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I've never played. before. And as I played Amazing Grace, the workers began to weep. They wept and I wept and we all wept together. And when I finished, I packed up my bagpipes and started from my car, though my head hung low, my heart was full. As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, I've never

seen nothing like that before. And I've been putting in septic tanks for 20 years. Apparently I'm still lost. It's a man thing. So it's just a virtual reality story, and it's a silly one, but we know this kind of thing. You know, we know that we get lost and we disconnect from the what's actually happening. Sometimes it's not quite that severe. But we do it with each other, and that's where I really want to spend some time. Like, what happens when we're listening, when we're being with each other, when we're talking? What happens that rather than...

that presence where we just put down our preconceptions, put down our interpretations, put it down and just here I am, instead we leave. There's not that quality of openness. The mind wanders. Now sometimes it's just the habit of discursive thought. We just kind of wander around or we're just partly there. But sometimes we leave because of something else. There's something that we want to avoid. There's something about that open receptive listening that doesn't quite feel right to us or good to us or okay to us. And I'm wondering if I asked you this,

what would stop you when somebody's talking to you from just opening and just listening? What would get in the way? Let me say it differently. What bad might happen if you just receptively open and listened? Now, what comes to mind for you? What bad might happen? Just sense for yourself a conversation in the last week

where what it would have happened if you just put it all down and just opened, really opened and listened. What bad might happen? And I'm actually asking that question right here. And just to say, if you have an idea, just say a few words. Just raise your hand and I'll just point.

If anybody has a sense of what bad might happen if you just completely opened yourself receptively listening. Yeah. I might get very angry at being bored

but the person kept talking to talking. Yeah. So I might be subjected to being bored and then get angry at being bored. Thank you.

Yeah. I was afraid that... Aha. So you're afraid that it might attract somebody to you. Good.

Thank you. An unwanted attraction. back there I wouldn't be prepared good so you in other words you're kind of preparing your response and you wouldn't be prepared with your response yeah up there by just listening I'd be endorsing unwanted behavior you wouldn't have put your stamp on this is not okay uh-huh yeah what yeah I'd be hurt you'd have to sit and feel hurt mm-hmm vulnerable uh-huh so if I just put it all down I'm vulnerable. Yeah. You might have to feel really sad. Right. So instead of like doing something or responding,

you just have to open to sadness. Is that kind of what you meant? Yeah. Yeah. Lack of time. Lack of time. I don't have enough time just to open and listen to, right? How many of you notice that? That there might be a little bit of a time issue here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did you? Having to deal with anger. So this is great. You, you've, I've, you've, I'm, I kind of wrote a list for myself and you're landing on most of the things I thought of. It's kind of amazing when you start tuning in. Well, what really stops me? And in a way, it's an extremely vulnerable position.

As soon as you stop, you know, planning what you're going to say or controlling with the other person saying, all of a sudden there's no control. It's just all happening. It's very vulnerable. You're open to your own sadness, your own anger, discomfort. The other person might just keep going and bore you

or get attracted to you inappropriately. In other words, no control. Listening means putting down control. Not a small thing to do. We spend most of our moments when somebody's speaking, planning what we're going to say, evaluating it,

trying to come up with our presentation of ourselves, controlling the situation, Does that make sense on why it's so difficult just to put it all down? In the most basic way, when we're listening and we're not planning and judging and stepping in, we're no longer reasserting that I'm here kind of thing. You know, most of the time on some level we're trying to reassert that I'm here. We rarely drop it all and just create a space for someone else. So I hope this brings it a little more clear

that pure listening is a letting go of controlling. And it's not easy. It takes training. And yet, if you think of it, it's only when we can let go of that controlling that we open up to the real purity of loving. we can't see someone and we can't let them be who they are in the moments that we're either trying to control what they're saying or trying to impress them with what we have to say.

There's no space for that person to just unfold and be who they are. So it takes courage. It takes a greatness of heart and it takes training. because part of it is that our habit of our mind is to go into a trance and just be discursive and part of it is we're protecting ourselves and trying to control things in most every conversation we have. Mark Nippo he says the poet he says to listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear to listen is to lean in softly

with a willingness to be changed by what we hear so maybe just to take a moment and close your eyes and we're going to each time I'm going to invite you to reflect on how you might practice listening with the ear of the heart and you might choose one person in your life that you know you'd like to explore the sacred art of listening And you might sense a situation that you're in with that person regularly where it might be even an opportunity. So you can start inclining yourself towards this consciously because it takes intention.

It takes a kind of purposefulness. Imagine the situation. Imagine that you're saying to yourself, I am going to listen. I'm here to listen. And you might even sense that that filter of do I have an agenda? am I trying to control what's happening? Am I open to what's unfolding? Can I just be here quiet, listening?

So there's more purposefulness. You're alert to this tendency to control and intending a kind of courage to put it aside. So these are the first two steps. This purposefulness and this commitment to present, this courageous kind of presence. Okay, so just open your eyes again, but just to keep that sensitivity,

that this is where your intention is. And then we say the third element, seeking to understand, and I think of seeking to understand as if this listening presence is completely receptive and open, the seeking to understand is the active engage quality where it's out of love that you really really

want to know what someone's saying. You want to hear them. You want to create a space and find out whatever is going to unfold in that. So, not to interpret. Here are the things we do that end up undermining understanding. And one of them is that we have a kind of conceptual overlay so that when someone is speaking to us and telling us about their lives, We're coming in with images and fragments and little clips of our own life and how it relates to our own life and our own experience, which is quite natural. But we're believing that and we're adding a kind of a judgment and adding a commentary. So someone tells us of a challenge with their child and their child's acting out and how their way of responding to their child acting out as more restrictions on playtime or whatever. And you're remembering how your child did that.

but that seems heavy-handed the way they're responding and maybe maybe they need to be a little more flexible so you're adding your idea onto it which happens and you're translating it according to your emotional read a favorite cartoon is of henry the eighth and one of his wives they're with a mediator okay just that alone is good but anyway the mediator saying you say off with her head. But what I hear is, I feel neglected. So we're all going around with our own set of wants and fears and our own past histories and associations. And that's our filter. So someone expresses appreciation for us, but we get uncomfortable instead of taking in what they're saying. Something in us doesn't believe it. And we go into deflecting mode, right? We're not listening to

that person. We're immediately listening to our own history and our own experience and we can't take it in. Our person's angry and loud. Another person gets angry and loud and they each keep getting more angry and loud so there's no listening. We just keep on responding from our space. The more stressed we get, the less we're able to take in the reality of that person and the more we're putting our own reality as the overlay. Just to watch that. Are we seeking to understand? Are we listening to our own thoughts? Are we believing our own beliefs? Sometimes it takes major suffering. We have to get over the head to be able to get that that's not, that's my reality, that's not that person's reality. That's not where they're coming from. We have a huge lag time,

and sometimes sadly it's decades that we go through of not really trusting that someone loves us, not really getting or another person's coming from, not hearing another person's needs because of our overlay. My illustration, David receives a parrot for his birthday.

This parrot's fully grown with a bad attitude and worse vocabulary. Every other word is an expletive. Those that weren't expletives were to say the least, rude. So David tried hard to change the bird's attitude and was constantly saying polite words, playing soft music, anything that came to mind, nothing worked. He yelled at the bird. The bird got worse, yelled back. He stripped the bird and the bird got madder and ruder. Finally, in a

moment of desperation, David put the parrot in the freezer. For a few moments he heard the bird squawking, kicking and screaming, and then suddenly all was quiet. David was frightened that he might have actually hurt the bird and quickly open the freezer door. The parrot calmly stepped out onto David's extended arm and said, I'm awfully sorry that I offended you with my language and actions. I ask your forgiveness. I will try to check my behavior. David was astounded at the bird's change in attitude and was about to ask what changed him when the parrot continued, may I ask what the chicken did? So how we learn our lessons, how we listen, how we put aside our overlay. That was a stretch, by the way, to communicate a point.

So unless we're really intentional about seeking to understand, we have an overlay. And I found for myself that just that reminder, am I trying to understand? You know, what is that this person is really trying to say? And behind these words, who is this person? Like, what's really being communicated? What really matters? That inquiry deepens my attention in a way that takes it outside that frame of interpretations, the habitual frame.

Does that make sense? Just asking the question to yourself, what's this person really meaning? What does this person really want me to hear? There's a teaching that goes like this. It has to do with understanding, meaning the word stand under. Isn't it true that to get to know the beauty

and majesty of a tree, you have to be quiet and rest in the shade of the tree? Don't you have to stand under the tree? To understand anyone, you need to stand under them for a little while. What's that mean? It means you have to listen to them and be quiet and take in who they are

as if from under, as if from inside out. So again, if you'll reflect and just sense that relationship or person where you want to listen more intentionally and if you imagine a typical situation with that person where you'd be with them and in some form of dialogue. And what would happen

if with internally you paused at some points and just ask yourself, am I seeking to understand that the sacred art of listening has this intention to listen with the ear of the heart? This courage to really put down our ideas, our inner dialogue, and to seek to understand. And this is actually what creates

an atmosphere of love. If you imagine reverse someone who is intending to listen, willing to be present, and wants to understand, that's an atmosphere of love. Again, if you'd like to open your eyes, please do. And I'll give you a bit of a, um, my favorite example of of how this can work. First, there's an image or a metaphor that I found really useful in terms of listening, what really brings to life the gift of listening, what it gives to another person.

And just to imagine that our spirit or awareness is like a fountain, that it all comes from the same source, this awareness that's really the source of our intelligence and love. And it fountains out through, these body minds. And when we haven't been listened to, our fountain shrivels. It dries up. It gets clogged. There's feelings that need to be processed, need to be expressed. When they're not

listened to and received, they start clogging the fountain. And so what comes out actually comes out stagnant or nervous or superficial. When you're with someone and their fountons clogged they haven't been listened to. Often the way they'll express themselves might be rushed as if they know you're not interested to, or else they won't speak at all, or else what it is, is kind of, it's just superficial and darting around, but they're not flowing from their source, right? So when we listen, we create that atmosphere of love and safety and invitation that helps the fountain begin again to come from its source, from its purity, with its humor and spontaneity and realness. Now, it doesn't happen all at once. If you are with someone that

hasn't been listened to, or if you're the one that hasn't been listened to and someone holds that space, you know, it's going to be fits and starts. And there may be that kind of nervousness or muckiness or what confusion or whatever but if we're generous in our listening if we're generous if we continue to offer it so somebody becomes starts beginning to trust that oh this space is a real space that fountain starts flowing again so share a story because we teach this on these listening practices often in our in our in our sometimes in the weekend workshops this day long that Jonathan and I are doing we do some listening practices and at one of these workshops a woman came and committed herself to exploring this sacred art of listening this

listening with the ear of the heart with her mother now the story was her mother a well-known writer very narcissistic she considered people kind of orbiting satellites that she would just kind of speak to and had very little interest in anybody else but hearing her own voice and this woman's younger sister was on the west coast barely ever came home and she herself had a hard time being around her mother her mother had aline had divorced her first husband her second husband they were in a very kind of routine mechanical but not intimate relationship she couldn't listen so so this woman decided she was going to try this out try sensing, offering this kind of a real courageous presence to her mother.

And when she began, you know, the way she arranged it was her, she decided to visit near where her mother lived to get some CUs at a course. And then she ended up spending something like eight days staying with her mother while she was, then she'd go back and forth and take the classes. a lot of time more than she had been with her mother since high school. So she started listening. And at first her mother did just what her mother did. She just laid out all her stuff, and it was really excruciating.

And she felt a lot of resistance and a lot of judgment. And as one person said, she went through boredom. She felt kind of misused. It felt kind of abusive to be just having to take in somebody else's stuff. She stayed, and she was very kind to her own experience. important peace. If you're practicing deep listening and you have a reaction, internally, bring kindness to your reaction. It's not like you're supposed to be a non-reactive, you know, open space of, you know, shining light for another person. You know, you're just a human having

reaction. So offer compassion. But stay. Stay. If you can. She stayed. And so she first, she offered kindness to her own experience. And she said, She said she had a panicky sensation at times. It was like she would drown if she didn't get away. And so again, she would just kind of offer space to her own heart. And then she started coaching herself. And she said words like, okay, what's going on here? My mother's talking and I'm listening. She said, I'm quiet. I have endless time. Now that was a big one. I have endless time because the idea is we get into this feeling like this is taking too much time. I have time.

That creates some space. Her body could feel more space. Then she starts saying, I hear what she's saying. I hear the words. And I hear what's behind the words. And what she heard behind the words was her mother in some way going, I'm here, I matter, I'm here, I matter, I'm here, I matter, I matter. It was like this desperate attempt to assert her existence and have someone get it that she was there.

So this woman's heart took that in and something softened, you know, kind of a sorrow for her mother. And in that softness and that sorrow, she just found again that there was more space. And her mother could, and her mother could feel it because her mother started having pauses between her phrases. and longer spaces. She slowed down. She seemed more reflective. Towards the end of the visit, her mother began to tell her

that she felt alone and unappreciated. And finally, this woman set her peace, and it was very gentle and very sincere. And what she said was, Mom, it's because you don't listen to people. Now, her mother froze, but she didn't get defensive.

Why? Enough trust had built. there had been enough moments of just offering that space that something had registered in her mother that my daughter is here. This is not an adversary trying to criticize me. She kind of sensed that it was a caring reflection of truth. And so she said, please tell me, I need to know more. And so this woman told her, she told her how it had been for her growing up and her sister and her father and now stepdad. She says, when you don't listen, people feel that 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. So this woman looked at her daughter with a kind of sorrow that pierced her daughter's heart. Something landed there. Maybe the pain of alienation broke through her defense, or maybe it was her time, but something changed, and she started to listen.

And when they were all back at the holidays, her sister noticed, she said, for the first time in her life, her mother was like engaging with a real person, and it was a dialogue, not just a holding forth. She said, I felt like I existed. So the change really rippled out. This woman's relationship with her new husband, not new,

but the stepfather actually regained dimension. Things changed. And what had happened was her fountain started flowing again. Somebody had listened. It doesn't always happen in this eight days, and it's not always neat and clean. But there's no question that when we bring our presence and our intention and our wanting to understand

into a relationship, there's an atmosphere of love that emerges. And it makes it safe enough for the real being that we're with to emerge. I've worked with many couples where the training and listening, the key piece, and many of you are familiar with this,

was in some way a mirroring where one person would say what was really vulnerable and difficult and hard, the other would let that person know that they heard it, truly let that person know that they heard it saying the same words and saying that they get it. And in being heard, something shifts. The bottom line, when we are listened to, we feel connected. When we're not listened to, we feel separate.

And feeling connected is the source of all healing. There's a wonderful story I heard from the Truth in Reconciliation, hearing, South Africa, after apartheid, and many testified to the atrocities endured, and the healing that happened in giving testimony and just speaking it. And these necessarily weren't, they weren't necessarily speaking it to people that were highly trained in listening, but speaking and having a space where their stories were heard. One man said, it's a young man, he had been blinded when a policeman and it shot him in the face at close range. He said, I feel what has brought my eyesight back

is to come here and tell the story. I feel that what has been making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn't tell my story. So listening creates relationship and whether it's between tribes or religions or ethnicities or racial groups or different generations. We need to listen.

The more we understand, the less we fear. The less we fear, the more we trust, and the more we trust, the more love can flow. Listening is what makes it possible. Read you a poem. When you listen, you reach into dark corners and pull out your wonders. When you listen, your ideas come in and out

like they were waiting and lying. Years don't always listen. 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. That was written by Nick Penna, a fifth grader.

If you've listened, truly listened, you don't find yourself alone. So this is the realization of a 10-year-old, and yet it goes against this really strong conditioning we have as we started off talking to get distracted, to get controlling, to really want to present ourselves or to control the situation, to get anxious about enough time, to get focused on ourselves.

So it takes a kind of intentionality But there are gifts that are ultimately the gifts of the spiritual path. One of the gifts is when we really learn to listen to each other. I think of it kind of like this alternating current that goes back and forth, and we never get tired of each other. We never get tired of each other because if we're really listening, we're inviting forth the realness, which is juicy and spontaneous. spontaneous, which is loving and good.

When we listen, we don't find ourselves alone. When we listen, as with this story of the child listening to the gong, it carries us right back to the source of awareness. We become that awake space, that luminous awake space. We come home. So I'd like to close tonight with a, a brief reflection where we can bring these pieces together, create an atmosphere for you to kind of bring into your life,

this listening presence. So the listening we manifest in relationship begins with the pure state of listening that is our meditation. So in this pause, just establish a sense of openness. helps to soften wherever there's tension in the body. Wherever there's tension in the body, that's a kind of a resisting what is. So as you soften the shoulders, the hands,

there's more of an allowing, softening the heart. Let there be a listening presence, aware of the sounds around you, aware of the space you're in, the more distant sounds, letting go of all controlling and just letting sounds wash through, sensing this open, awake space of listening. And just bringing to mind a person that you have selected, that you'd like to explore listening with this ear of the heart. And again, bring yourself to a place

that might be quite natural for you to be speaking with this person. And feel your own sincerity of intention. that listening matters, that loving relatedness matters. Imagine being engaged in speaking with this person and being able to inwardly pause and say now, what is really happening? My friend is talking. I'm quiet.

There's unlimited time. I hear the words and what are beyond the words. I hear who this person is. so that even in imagining you can sense receiving this person, sensing this person's fountain flowing in this space, in this atmosphere of loving presence. Imagine if you, if each of us, spend a few minutes each day listening to the people we're with,

just a few minutes consciously listening like this each day. one person with other people imagine if we started listening to the earth to the life within us to the life everywhere with this respectful quality of attention with the sacred art of listening close with a short poem from Mary Oliver

what can I say that I have not said before so I'll say it again. The leaf has a song in it. Stone is the face of patience. Inside the river, there is an unfinishable story and you are somewhere in it and it will never end until all ends. Take your busy heart to the art museum and the chamber of commerce, but take it also to the forest. The song you heard singing in the leaf when you were a child is singing still. I am of years lived so far 74 and the leaf is singing still. So thank you for your presence, your listening, your attention. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation,

learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.