Listening is it really a Deep Subject?

by Linda Levy, M. A.

What do I know about Listening?

That's an odd question, isn't it? Haven't we listened since the day we were born? Or even before? What more could we possibly need to know about Listening?

Maybe we don't need to know any more; maybe we just need to consider what we do know from all that experience we have, listening.

So, what do I know about listening that is helpful?

I know that the quality of my listening changes: sometimes I hear what others say, sometimes I have to ask them to repeat what they said, and sometimes I am drawn into the conversation so that it is all that exists at the moment.

Let's explore those three ways of listening.

When I hear what others say, I have various experiences. I can hear some things without paying much attention: my husband can ask me to pass the mustard while I read the paper and I can process that and do it without really moving my attention away from the paper except for a brief moment. So it is possible to hear the words someone is saying without engaging with them, but that doesn't seem to be what "listening" is really about. Perhaps, that describes our physical capability of hearing sound.

So if listening is more than interpreting sound, what is it?

It seems to me that when I am listening, I am bringing my full being to this interaction. If you think of intelligence as light, it feels as if I am turning off all the little candles I have burning that split my attention in different directions and I am turning on one big spotlight and directing the spotlight on this one conversation. So it feels as if all of my attention is on the person I am listening to.

And as I let the candles go out, my normal thought patterns fade out of my awareness, leaving a quieter sense. If I really damp all the extraneous candles, not only the ones that seem to be demands from others, like the meeting coming up in only 35 minutes, then I also "put out" the ones that are so often invisible, such as my usual thoughts about expectations, or my usual values about what is important to achieve, or my quick fixes to problems I've heard many times. By allowing my normal thoughts to fade further into the background, I seem to be allowing a possibility for something unexpected but perhaps perfect to arise in the moment.

What does that feel like to allow our normal thoughts to fade away?

I would say it feels quieter than usual inside my head. The thought stream is in the background, so the typical thinking I entertain is not captivating me as much as usual, freeing me to hear someone else's thoughts without comparing them to "the usual suspects."

If I'm not actively comparing and analyzing what is said, how do I understand the conversation?

It's a mystery to me, but understanding doesn't seem to be a problem. It seems natural to feel and appreciate the person's story when I am quiet. It feels more like watching a movie than like playing chess: I seem to understand all the characters' intentions in a movie, not just the main character. In a movie, I'm not working on understanding, I'm not analyzing each character and what they say and how they say it, but somehow I'm taking it all in. The experience is very different from playing chess where I not only have to think about my friend's moves and figure out what they might lead to, but I have to pay close attention to my own moves too and how they intertwine.

In the movie, I am shown all this: I see how the characters' intentions and behaviors get intertwined and create havoc or harmony. And many times, I know before the action what will happen. Even though the character may be very different from me, motivated by extremely different thoughts than me, and with a different value structure than I honor, often I know and understand those thoughts and know where they will lead, seemingly inevitably.

How do you know when you're just taking someone in instead of analyzing and interpreting?

The feeling of the interaction is richer. When I am engaged in this way, usually I feel a sense of wonder--- I am curious and even if my intellect tells me I've already heard this a million times, I am curious to see something new, something I haven't seen yet. This feeling, this sense of wonder feels good and seems to pull my attention further into the interaction.

You can imagine how this feels to the person I am listening to! Experiencing someone listening with rapt attention is so unusual in our culture that often the person I am listening to will interrupt their story and comment, something like, "You're really listening to me!" Or sometimes they seem to become more enlivened, more animated; sometimes more reflective, more thoughtful. Sometimes they begin to listen to themselves seemingly with this same sense of wonder and they hear something new or something wise that might just have flown by without their noticing in a less wondrous conversation.

So then, in these types of conversations, is the listener just quiet?

In these types of conversations, there really is no way that they look. Even when normal thoughts stay in the background, we are alive, aware, and intelligent (perhaps more so since our habitual inner noise is lower) and questions or insights may occur to the listener that are perfectly appropriate in the moment. When we are relaxed and engaged in a conversation, we don't really question what we should do. It's much like dancing --- we just follow the speaker and go where s/he goes as gracefully as possible. And sometimes we may step on their toes and then we apologize and go back to following with as much grace as possible.

Does anyone really listen this deeply?

We've all had conversations like this. Remember how much wonder you experienced when you first fell in love. You wanted to listen to every word; you wanted every word to last, each word seemed so fraught with meaning. Remember how you listen to a good friend, no matter really what they're talking about, an exciting time, a despairing time. You just want to listen and be with them. The feeling in these conversations is rich and seems to be much more important than content.

Could this way of listening be important for you?

Are these kinds of conversations just for fun then? At first glance, they seem to be. Results don't seem to be a part of this interaction. And yet, this kind of conversation seems to facilitate change, to lift the participants' spirits and often new insights are recognized.

Certainly, they create rapport between the participants, a feeling of being on the same page that many business representatives would like to create with their clients, and many employees would like to create with their managers and vice versa.

They seem to facilitate a deeper, fuller understanding of whatever the topic is. Though not linear (wild tangents may come up and be explored), the conversation breathes life into the topic. It's almost like you are not only looking at the apple, but you are touching it, tasting it, smelling it, bringing more experience and more intelligence and more awareness and more understanding to life.

And even beyond these fruits, there sometimes appears a new understanding that we are beings who have an incredible capacity to change, that we are much more able to be responsive to life's challenges than we ever realized, that our capacity to see and recognize new thoughts that open up new and healthier ways of experiencing life is present, but often not realized, that we are indeed capable of forgetting the past and experiencing today through fresh eyes, and that we are connected and cared for. We are not in it alone. We are not isolated.

If you are looking for more creativity, more understanding, more rapport, more insights and even more enjoyment, this kind of listening might be worth trying in as many different situations as possible. All you have to do to bring it to life, is to start wondering more about what the other guy is thinking and experiencing and allow as much of your attention as possible to rest in the present conversation.