Tara Brach - The Sacred Art of Listening (2015-08-05)

Episode Date: August 7, 2015

The Sacred Art of Listening (2015-08-05) - Deep listening - the kind of listening that brings intimacy and understanding—takes intentional practice. This talk looks at the societal and inner obstacles to an undistracted presence, and the mindfulness strategies that nourish our capacity to listen in a way that heals and connects. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Greetings. I'm Tara Brock, and I'd like to welcome you to these podcasts. While the talks and meditations are offered freely, we'd very much appreciate your support. To make a donation or learn more about my schedule, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org. Thank you. Namaste. There's a story I heard about Franklin Roosevelt, who had to endure long receiving. lines and he often complained that nobody really paid attention to what he said anyway so one day he tried an experiment and to each person who passed down the

line he'd shake their hand and then he'd murmur I murdered my grandmother this morning so the guests would respond with phrases like marvelous keep up the good work we're proud of you God bless you sir so it wasn't until the end of the line and when he was greeting the ambassador from Bolivia, that his words were actually heard. And non-plus, the ambassador leaned over and whispered, I'm sure she had it coming. So our theme for this session of speaking and reflecting and so on is listening.

And most of us value good listening. I think most of us realize even it's a growing edge that needs our attention. And sometimes we get reminded of it in a really jarring way. You know, all of a sudden we realize our teen is addicted to drugs and we had not been listening and attuning. Or there's a conflict that flares up at work, and it's really there was just not that kind of attention paid to know what was going on.

Or for some, it's in our intimate relationships with a partner who all of a sudden says, you know, I'm thinking of a separation. and we realized that something's been coming down and we just haven't been paying attention. I did, somebody sent me this recently. It's a couple that are talking and he's saying, I'm sorry, dear, I wasn't listening. Could you repeat what you've said since we've been married?

So we'll cover, we'll look at three elements and one is what is really deep listening, a listening presence, and what makes it so challenging. And then what are the mindfulness strategies that can really wake us up in this domain? And this is one of the inquiries and talks I try to do fairly regularly because I find like it just can't do it too much.

You know, we all need to deepen our attention. One of the stories that has always touched me, as a friend had one of his friends had a child in a Montessori school and so she invited him to do she they brought him in to teach a meditation teacher and he took a gong and he rang the gong and he said he said here's what I want you to do just listen to the sound and follow it with interest so the whole class is sitting there and he's doing the gong and they're listening to it and he said if you follow and you really watch and pay attention,

you might get closer to God. Okay, so those are the instructions. And then he heard later from this one mother about her child's experience, and this is what the child had said to his mother, well, when I watched and listened to where the sound went, I didn't get closer to God. I was God.

That probably, I could stop right here, right? I didn't get closer to God, I was God. So I brought in my Tibetan bills and let's just practice for a moment following sound, listening to sound. And as you listen, just sense, closing your eyes now, just sense really what are the qualities of listening? What is listening? What has to be there for truly to be listening?

Okay? Okay? So take a moment to collect your attention. You might feel your breath, feel yourself here, open the attention to sound, listening, and again, and again. What are the qualities that make for listening? What has to be there? Let me actually make that a real question and I just ask you, what do you know, it's just to name a quality that has to be there.

What are the qualities of mind or heart that have to be there? Anyone, raise your hand and I'll at point and let you speak loud, if you will. Yeah, please. Presence. Okay, and there's no wrong answers. And there may be qualities of presence, yeah. Awareness, yeah. Letting go.

Yeah, a letting go. So you can't be like holding on to something to be listening in the moment. Yeah. Attention. Attention. So these are different words for presence, yeah. Openness. So there has to be a quality of openness. Nice. Yeah. Again, there's no wrong answers. Yeah, beginner's mind, which means you're not making associations. Oh yeah, it's like that because, you know, it's that kind of Tibetan, da-da-da-da. Yeah, just fresh in the moment. Yeah.

Anything else. Yeah, please. Curiosity. So a quality of real interest. Like, what is this? Yeah, nice. Yeah. Non-judgmental. So there's no pushing away with a version of what's there, adding on it shouldn't be there. Yeah. Okay. So these are all really beautiful qualities and I sometimes think of it as yin-yang, the active and receptive both have to be there. That to listen we have to be utterly open and receptive.

Completely undefended. and also engaged. So it's not just passive. There's an engaged interest, as somebody said, and yet utterly open, not obstructing or opposing or anything. Now, our conditioning, rather than that openness and that engagement with what is, are conditioning us not to abide in that.

We spend a lot of time in a trance where instead of that there's an inner dialogue going on as someone said we're interpreting things and just talking about it in our mind rather than contacting directly what's there we're preparing a response, we're rehearsing. We know that. So let's look a little more closely

at what makes it so challenging to rest in that open, engage presence. There's an article I saw, it described a study by Microsoft and the caption was Goldfish have a better attention span than you oh smartphone user and the understanding is that the human

attention spans decreasing if you just look in the last 10 years it's decreased significantly we're now considered about at eight seconds which is one second less than a goldfish for real and right after a conference conversation we only remember about 50% of what we've heard. And Microsoft is saying, it's

kind of bold of them, but one of the major causes for our increasing attention and deficit, our reduction in attention span, is that we sit in front of a screen a lot. And what that does, technology actually changes the structure and function of our brain, that being in front of a screen, we're better and better at multitasking. We can take in multiple channels of information and process them, but we're much worse at going in deep and really attending in a steady way and discovering in a deep, rich way what something means. So we lack deaf. So imagine if you're on the phone and sitting in front of a screen you've chosen not to listen well. It's really very direct. And the lack of being listened to because it's the same,

we listen less, we attend less, that means that we're getting attended to less, makes us feel more isolated and disconnected so we spend more time with the screen. So it's a kind of cycle of getting less and less intimate in terms of listening and feeling listened to. So I was thinking about that a lot and thinking how you know can't fight it the cyber world's here to stay but how do we really

become aware of its effect on us and then I read another article about from Microsoft seems to be talking about this stuff and it says for the sympathetic ear more Chinese turned a smartphone program so it says that she's known as Shao Ice

and millions of young Chinese pick up their smartphones every day to exchange messages with her, drawn to her knowing sense of humor and listening skills. So what's happened is she's a program introduced by Microsoft, a program that you develop a relationship with its artificial intelligence that listens better. So first we get addicted to the screen and then we have to use artificial intelligence to feel listened to. I just sound that really interesting. I don't know if you do, but... But let's say even before smartphones and internet and so on,

before they took away our capacity a certain degree, you know, the whole world has been getting speedier and noisier, which makes it harder to pay attention. And even beyond that, our inner distractiveness is constantly running interference. We don't need screens in front of us to be completely caught up in our own thoughts and worries. So, the next inquiry that comes for us, especially if we want to really learn to pay attention more deeply to each other, is what's tugging me around? You know, when I'm in a conversation with someone, what's going on unconsciously or subconsciously

that keeps me from really having that freshness like with the gong, like interest and openness. Really right there. So one of the main forces that keeps us from attending in that way is that we have a constant habit of wanting something. So there's an agenda in our conversations. And I'm going to invite you to check this out. I'm going to invite you to check out when you're having a conversation with somebody just to start noticing, is there an agenda?

Are you trying to change them? Are you trying to change how they think? Are you trying to get approval? Are you trying to get their agreement? You're seeing things the same way. Are you trying to get their attention so you can feel attended too? Are you trying to get their time or their money or anything? Some of you might remember a story I like of a woman who's at a bench by a bus depot

and a man walks off the bus and he sits down next to her kind of looking a little uncapped and so on and she goes so what's your what's the deal and he goes well I just got out of prison I was in prison for 25 years and she said oh what were you in prison for and he said well I murdered my wife

and she said oh you're single you know so when we have any agenda any agenda at all we're unable to take in with that same openness that allows us to really experience full connection and presence. Now, our attention is also blocked by aversion. And that crops up, we are so conditioned to be aversive. One of the big ones is we're afraid we're going to lose time. We're afraid we don't have

enough time. We're afraid we're going to miss out on something. It's like William James said, like 150 years ago. He said, most of the time when we're doing, something, we think we should be doing something else. So we're in a conversation but there's a part of us that is not wanting to be because we need to be doing something else. How many of you when you hear that know that's a big one for you? Can I just see by hands? Okay, yeah. Okay, so we also have blocks to listening because we're afraid we're being judged or we're afraid we're in some way deficient and that the person that's listening has a filter of how we are is not okay.

I read a story of a new priest who's nervous about hearing confessions, so he asked an older priest to sit in on his sessions. And so he does a couple and then he and the older priest step out so the older priest can give him some pointers. So the old priest says, well, how about you cross your arms over your chest and rub your chin with one hand, and the priest tried this. And he said, now the older priest said, now try saying things like, hmm, I see, yes, go on. And I understand.

And how do you feel about that? The new priest says those things, and the old priest says, now, don't you think that's a little better than slapping your knee and saying, no kidding, what happened next? How are we listening? So what happens for most of us is when there's aversion, when we're either judging or feeling judged, then we start trying to control the conversation and get away from the aversion,

and we have different ways of doing it. And we either drift off or we get defended or we get outwardly judgy, or we just try to exit, basically. Some of you might remember, postmaster Edgar Day had his strategy when he had a long-winded person on the phone and he was feeling restless and edgy.

His strategy was this. He would hang up on himself while he was in the middle of a sentence. So it seemed like... You get the idea. Just a strategy. I've gotten many emails from people to listen to podcasts

and say that's the one that they know was... Author Carol Mathau writes, the dying process begins the minute you're born, but it accelerates during dinner parties. You know, I'm kind of being light about it, but we know it that without good listening, we're going through the motions. Now, just to say that sometimes the reactivity,

the wanting or the aversion that stirred up that stops us from being there, It doesn't have anything to do with the person that we're with. We may be stirred up from something else entirely. But either way, if we're really honest, there aren't that many moments that we put down our life, so to speak. Now they're stop trying to figure out or get somewhere or avoid something and are fully available to receive what's offered.

Okay, so let's check in now. Let me invite you to check in for yourself. Just take a moment, as we often do. I'm going to invite you to reflect on what you feel for you as the patterns of what stops you from really listening well at times. I'd like to invite you as you pause to reflect to see if your intention can be to not judge yourself for what you notice, to rather bring a real, interest, a curiosity, a sense of what you learn can serve you. Okay, so the inquiry is,

what is between me and listening with an awake heart? And you might choose a person that's a regular part of your life. Maybe friend or family or somebody you're friendly with that's part of your work life. What's between me and listening with an away cart? You might sense, well, is there an agenda? Am I wanting something? Am I wanting that person's cooperation? Am I wanting that person to change? Am I wanting approval?

Wanting to look good in some way, to impress. Am I wanting to be right? Am I wanting to look like I know a lot? And maybe there's something aversive. Is there something I'm afraid of? I'm afraid that I'm going to be in some way judged. Or maybe there's an aversiveness like I'm judging that person. I don't like the way that person is speaking or behaving or I don't agree with that person.

Notice what you do to control the experience. What are the strategies you use? Do you just get distracted into your own thoughts? Do you try to steer the conversation? Do you plan responses? Do you insert yourself into the comment, in when the other person is speaking? And as we close this reflection, just to sense your intention to bring this more into awareness next time so that you can move towards a more full listening presence. Send your intention to connect. And if you'd like to open your eyes, it's fine, you can keep

your eyes closed if you'd rather. So how do we begin to cultivate that presence? And of course the first step is to notice what pulls us away. The Chinese character for listening is a beautiful one. And it's got the characters for in the symbol. It's got ears and eyes actually that has to do with taking in. And then in the middle it's got the character for undivided attention. and at the bottom holding it all is heart.

So it's like taken with undivided attention and hold what's being taken in with your heart. That's pretty deep. I think it's beautiful. So what allows us to do that starts with intention, that if you finish this reflection and come out of it with just a little bit more of you saying, you know this matters in my life intimacy connection understanding matters i'm going to pay more attention

to this that intention will carry you you know many of you're familiar with the 10,000 hours to master something we do a lot of training with meditation you know paying attention inwardly and you can't really listen to others unless you know how to listen inwardly if you don't know how to listen inwardly and sense and listen to where your own loneliness is or longing or fear, then you're not going to be steady and present for another. So it starts inwardly. We have to practice with each other too because so often when we're in the relational field we just go into a trance and we go into that agenda or we go into that cutting off. So it takes the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. We have to put our time in.

So that's the first piece is to be intentional. Know you're actually practicing. Pick a person, pick a situation, have in advance the intention to listen more fully. If you just picked one person for the next few weeks that you knew that in a certain setting, maybe in the evening or a dinner or whatever, you are going to at least for some minutes practice,

it would make a huge difference and it ripples out because people when they feel heard it changes them too so that's the first piece is that intention the second is it helps if you want to listen and stay present

to have an anchor and I'll sometimes listen but I'll also feel my body because I know that if I feel my hands and I feel my breath I feel my body posture that I'm not going to be going off in my interpretations

and my rehearse rehearsing things. So you can have an anchor. And then the third quality I want to mention, you know, there's intention and having an anchor. The next one is a quality of interest. Like you can coach yourself into it, like really wanting to understand, not just the words, but where is this person coming from? So you're listening behind the words to who's there. interest and then hand in hand with interest is friendliness this is Mark Nippo he says

to listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear can you feel how those different elements are in that that openness and that engagement

engagement and that interest like okay what's what's in this can I let myself be changed by what I hear so there's a metaphor and I'm going to give you an example of how this can work how we can bring these practices actively into listening but first this metaphor that I find really helpful that kind of shows the gift that we offer anytime we actually show up and quiet ourselves and and then become that tender listening space. And the metaphor is to imagine our creative spirit like a fountain, and that it's all from the same source. This fountain of our being all comes from this awareness and love that's source,

and it's got a natural intelligence and aliveness to it. And when we're not listened to, this creative fountain kind of shrivels, it dries up, up. And when we're listened to, it thrives. It kind of unfolds itself and it flows. So if somebody hasn't been listened to for a while, initially what you might hear is kind of real habitual talk. It might even sound stagnant or contrived or unclear or murky. Sometimes people haven't been listened to speak really quickly because they're nervous because they have this feeling like the other person doesn't really want to hear it.

I think this is all probably your, this might say, and you might intuit this. So sometimes when we first start listening to others, and if they haven't been gifted with good listening, it's crusty. It doesn't come through right away, but with a bit of time, our listening invites that creative fountain to flow again.

That's the gift. Listening offers a space for someone else's truth that kind of flow and be revealed and shine. So it also allows the vulnerability that needs to be expressed to be expressed so that it can be healed and also the goodness to be seen in a person. So an example, I want to give you an example of how it can work. and this is a story that is written up in more fully in true refuge if you want to I have a whole chapter on relating with an open heart and a wake heart and listening as a real part of it as is speaking so one woman had gone to a training and after a training

that include mindful listening she decided to practice when she visited her mother Now her mother was this kind of well-known writer who was also she was wealthy, successful, brilliant and really, really narcissistic. People kiddingly refer to her as the kind of the center of the universe and, you know, she would hold forth and treat people's kind of orbiting satellites. So needless to say, that did not create good relationships with her family and so on. So Kate, the woman that went to try, she went home really with this intention, I'm just going to try to listen with the qualities that I've just described

with interest, with friendliness, not running a lot of static, and keep in mind that listening means she had to listen to her own reactions too and that's what happened at first. I mean they'd had a strained relationship and at first listening was difficult because her mother, you know, talked incessantly about herself or else gossiped about friends. So for Kate it was like feeling like there was no space, no air to breathe in the room. She didn't exist and didn't matter. And so she had to first listen inwardly and accept her own impatience and frustration. Okay? But as she did that, and this is the power of mindfulness, if you can name and say, okay, frustrated, turned off,

whatever, if you name it and recognize it, it doesn't end up getting so solid. Okay. So she did that and then she started coaching herself and her coaching was a way of anger and she says stay curious she said what is happening here then she tell herself there's time I've got all the time in the world then she'd say what's behind the words can I hear who she is so these are the I'm just giving you an example of the way she would coach herself and as she listened she began to feel her mother's desperate need for attention and to feel that she mattered. And so some days this went on,

that Kate just listened, just held that space. And when you're really listening, you become like this open, tender space. Stuff just flows through very kindly. A few days in, her mother complained that her friends never had enough time for her. They'd come around and so on,

but they didn't really, she got a feeling her friends didn't really want to be, be with her. And that's when Kate gently said, mom, it's because you don't listen to people. She said, people don't feel like they matter to you. They can't feel close. Now, in the past, her mother would have been totally defensive and nothing would have gotten in. But because Kate had been so consistent in showing up, it really stopped her mother in her tracks. She said, please tell me, I need to know more. and she had this look of such sorrow that it struck Kate right to the heart.

And so this became part of, they started talking about it and not only had her connection with Kate deepened but it made a real shift in how she related to the world. Kate told me afterwards that, you know that, because I shared that Mark Nebo quote with her, that in taking in her mother in that way, her willingness to be changed was a willingness to move from being armored and judgmental of her mother to feeling a tenderness of understanding that she hadn't touched before.

Listening heals and wakes us up, and it's a gift to those that were with. I'd like to share with you, Ticknatham, quote 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 him or her empty his heart even if he says 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 him to correct his perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don't interrupt. You don't argue. You listen that way, you listen that way with one purpose to help him or her empty his heart. In a evolutionary sense, you know, we've spent a lot of time when we're stressed and reactive coming from the parts of our brain, the reptilian part of our brain, or the limbic

part of our brain, that's not the listening part of our brain. That's the part of the brain that's going after what it wants and avoiding what it fears. And so it's a more recently evolved part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, that actually can pause and notice what's going on and put aside our own concerns and care and bring interest to another. And it has an evolution function. It's pro-social. It helps us collaborate. It helps us have a greater collective intelligence. It helps us to really live together in a collective way. Now, so far I've been talking really on an individual level, but in a societal way, we need to evolve to listening to each other between tribes and cultures and races and places of difference. And for a

exactly the same reason. It's the only way that will stop the war. It's the only way that we'll connect and understand. So it's kind of exciting that I'm thinking now of truth and reconciliation hearings, which are a kind of societal expression of deep listening, that there's been over 40 major formats for truth and reconciliation that have been launched worldwide. And these are facilitating an encounter where a victim can tell the stories that need to be heard, and there's modes of official apology and reform. One story from, this is in South Africa, many were testifying to the atrocities. They endured under apartheid.

One young man who had been blinded when a policeman shot him in the face at close range 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 I couldn't tell my story. We need to listen. This Sunday will mark a year since Michael Brown lofts his life in Ferguson. And I think it would have faded very quickly from public attention except for, because we have such attention deficit,

except for the fact that it keeps happening. and we're getting it now more and more that this is not a one-shot. This is a historical legacy of race-based violence that just is going to keep on appearing until we listen more deeply. So what's really needed is peace and reconciliation hearings in communities to begin to make the links of understanding and caring that can start to heal so many decades of misunderstanding.

So what we're exploring really in this class are pathways to that. Pathways to deepening our listening as individuals and it's absolutely essential to happen on a culture-wide basis. And the purpose, it's what we all long for, it's connection. Here's a poem. It's 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 were 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. 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. It's written by Nick Penna, a fifth grader.

If you listen, if you can listen, you can find answers to questions you didn't know. If you have listened, truly listen, you don't find yourself alone. So this is a realization of a 10-year-old that listening presence is what gives us a sense of belonging. You don't feel closer to God. You are one with.

You belong to. And yet, as we've been discussing, it goes against very strong conditioning to think we don't have enough time or to try to control things or get something. So it takes a committed practice. And we'll close together by doing a brief meditation. It'll give you just one more round of practicing a bit

of bringing this content. consciousness into relationship. Says you pause, put aside any doing and simply relax. Come into the state of listening to the sounds in the room. These words, the spaces between sounds, you can sense the furthest sounds you can detect. Listening with your ears and with your senses. Listen with your whole being, your whole awareness.

listening to your environment, not to one particular thing. Just listen globally so that everything's taken in evenly. Listening to sounds, to silence. Notice what it's like to feel in your being to come into the state of listening. Listening to the sound of the gong. Not trying to do it right to reach a goal. You'll notice their sounds. the feeling of sounds, space in the room.

You can feel that space, the underlying silence in the midst of sound. Let yourself feel that, silence, sound, space around your body, open and engaged. Now bring to mind someone in your life, someone who you'd like to listen to with an awake heart, and imagine a situation where you be with that person. that person's speaking and your intention is presence. Your intention is to listen, to seek to understand, to be the space, that tender space that receives what that being is offering out.

You might imagine that inner coaching if it's helpful, do you sense what's happening? My friend is talking. I am quiet. There's endless time. I hear it. Every word. And what is beyond the word.

I hear who this person is. Sense that quality of heart, that attitude that Mark Nippo, the poet points to, when he says, to listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed, by what we hear, sense the possibility of bringing this listening presence as you listen to others in your life, as you listen to the life around you, as you listen to humans and to beings from other species, to the earth and to your inner life.

When you're listening deeply, you're not there, there's just space and a tender, awake presence. Namaste and thank you for your listening attention. We hope you've enjoyed these teachings. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule and special online offerings, please join my email list by visiting tarabrock.com.