Listen deeper. Can you hear them?
Be calm and focused for a moment and listen. Can you hear people? Listen past your own thoughts and the chatter of your mind. When you listen your mind tries to guess who they are. But guessing always references past experiences and prevents you from staying present and hearing something you haven’t heard before. Don’t guess, just listen. Listen deeper and hear who they are.
Can you hear their thoughts? Can you hear what they are listening to? Can you hear their worries and fears, their hurt and sorrow? Can you hear their broken hearts and forgotten dreams and all the love they lost?
Can you also hear their strength and courage, their passions and desires and their joy and laughter? Can you hear their plans and schemes and their hopes and dreams? Can you hear the love in their hearts that just wants to come out and shine on everyone?
Isn’t it fantastic? Isn’t it amazing? I could listen to them all day long.
People are a gift. Acknowledge and thank them. Let them know you are listening and can hear them. They will appreciate and be grateful to you because they want to know that you are listening. They want to be heard.
Your title drew me in on this one, Phiya. I think what you are talking about is somewhat similar to ki diagnosis, which was one of the subjects we studied with Denny Waxman at his
Advanced Training Seminar in June. Quite an impressive class, and a way of allowing people’s presence to affect you. We started with the visual sense, as he was training us to see auras, and broadened out from there to a more general, “sixth sense,” if you will, though I hesitate to use that term, because it’s a little on the woo-woo side for me.
I appreciate this reflection, guidance into a certain kind of meditative receptivity that hones the physical hearing, segueing into the hearing “between the lines,” a kind of deeper hearing of the life’s essence of other people. Very beautiful.
So, yes, Phiya, I am “listening, ” and even in this crazy, cyber-world, I think I can hear you. Thank you for this post.
I also loved this one – it’s a keeper (but then so are many of yours). I didn’t take it as Elaine had into reading between the lines, but rather about the importance of quieting my own mind, so as not to impose my own thoughts – and most important, by not jumping in with my own thoughts, but allowing the other to continue, then more and more is expressed and can be heard. It’s a beautiful deeper way to relate – truly a gift as you say.
Thank you, …I was talking too much already.