Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually, you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.
Rachel Naomi Remen
HEAD
Empathic listening is listening from the heart. It involves an acknowledgement of the speaker’s experience without judgement, sympathy, advice, instruction, interrogation, trivialising, comparison, or interruption.
This isn’t easy. Listening empathically is offering someone your complete presence. And that is a great service. From the space of this gift, the speaker experiences relief, and from there comes clarity of their feelings and needs. A loving silence has more power to heal than the most well-intentioned words.
Sometimes, we find it hard to listen because we are ourselves in pain. To recognise this is also self-service. Awareness of this takes us to the next step – doing the work of being present in our suffering.
An excerpt from a 1967 lecture by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi highlights the practice of listening:
“When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong or good and bad. We just see things as they are with him or her and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other. Usually, when you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion, you may accept it, but if it does not, you will reject it or you may not even really hear it. “
Words are like black fire and the spaces within the white fire. When we listen empathically, we can listen to the white fire. We can connect from heart to heart, to the speaker’s feelings and needs at that time. When someone feels listened to, it feels almost like a burden is lifted.
More reading:
Practising Listening with Empathy, by Thich Nhat Hanh
HANDS
In April, try to listen from your heart. To do this, you may need to watch yourself and catch old patterns of advising, interrogating, taking sides, etc. This practice will be as much about holding back as stepping in.
Gift your family, friends, co-workers, relatives, strangers, helpers, and anyone who needs an ear your complete presence. Be a source of refuge and strength.
Don’t forget to listen to your own body, mind, and spirit also. Gift yourself your complete presence without judgement, trivialising, advice, and other behaviours that fog this deep connection.
Watch this short video for practical suggestions on being a good listener.
HEART
Share your experience of listening empathically. Notice the shifts in yourself as you listen with your complete presence. Do you observe any change in relationships? What expands in your being? What feels challenging?
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