Silence and Listening

Silence and Listening

I have only begun the application of what I am learning to my life and work. I am blessed with a job that offers opportunities to listen soulfully and be more fully present to my listeners. I have much to learn and need more practice in order to “shift” into a state of prepared awareness that allows the soul to appear and stay present. For myself, this work has allowed me to become even more aware of my internal landscape and the strengths and weaknesses in my ability to be a safe container for other’s souls.

There are a number of factors that need be present for me to listen soulfully. These factors can be thought of as internal and external. For me, the physical environment plays a large part in listening not only with my ears but my heart and soul. If there is noise and chaos around my listening partner and myself, I find myself distracted no matter how I may try to attend to what my partner is saying. Parker Palmer makes the point of having a moment of silence to begin a circle of trust; I agree with this idea and believe that the appropriate setting is a must. I find that giving another that moment of silence to gather thoughts or simply be still is so important: and so hard to do in a culture so frightened by silence and driven to do, do, do. Also, there must be the appropriate time and place; the busy office or bar is not a setting that the soul can be present fully. I suspect that this is one of the reasons that relationships that begin in such settings are sometimes failures: it is usually strictly a meeting of ego. However, the physical environment can be changed if a soulful exchange is truly desired.

Changing the environment is the simple part of paving the way for a soulful and meaningful experience. For me, quieting the inner-landscape is the most difficult piece to soulful listening. I find that sometimes my inner-dialogue gets in the way of truly hearing. Too, if I have too many distractions—noise, movement—I will “check out” of the discussion and thus possibly miss something very important. I am finding that I must enter into a soulful discussion with intent. Preparing my mind, body, and soul for an exchange of soulful value must be first a cognitive decision to stay fully present and deliberately put my tendency to want to “fix” others and offer solutions aside. I am discovering that I am someone who must learn to listen soulfully as it is not something I do naturally or well at times. While I do not often make judgments about others, I believe that doing so may be problematic for many (and I do it at times too) and would not create a soulful exchange. One’s questions might be colored by a desire to “set the speaker straight.” It has been my own experience that the soul will indeed sprint back into the woods when it senses such judgments.

During the listening exercises, I did some mini-experiments to check if how I listen varies wildly depending upon who the speaker is. I find that for me, it does make a difference. With my own child in the first exercise, my parental or mother archetype started an inner-dialogue about the behaviors described by my son. I kept losing track of what he was saying because I was so busy formulating a rebuttal and ways to make him see the error of his ways. What that really meant was that I was not listening soulfully but being a parent and wanting him to conform to my way….not conducive to coaxing the soul out to play. To validate that soulful listening is something I must learn, I did another exercise with my son after doing one with a friend and found that I was able to listen to some rather disturbing revelations without “checking out” or any rebuttals at all. This is encouraging to me because I now know that I can cultivate this skill and use it with whomever I may be listening to.

Learning this skill at this particular time has been extremely valuable in my new work. I am able to more easily focus my attention and be silent with clients at the recover y center where I work. Having begun this learning process of coaxing the soul out into the open, I can give more soulful attention more quickly.

While there are some professional environments that welcome soulful exchange, and I am fortunate enough to work in one, there are some surprising settings where the soul is not welcome. Oddly enough, it has been my experience that religious gatherings, in my area and experience at least, do not welcome our individual presence or soul. In such didactic religious settings, the soul is assumed to be present but is spoken at rather than to. It has been my past experience that my soul cringes and beats a hasty retreat from such, “my way or the highway,” talking at or down to. In such environments, I find that discussions of soul and spirituality are not readily received; again that has been MY experience. Of course, there are also places of business that the soulful presence is not only not welcome but does not even come into consciousness; many corporate structures are not typically places the soul will feel safe enough to show itself and with good reason: such places can and sometimes do reduce humans from beings with presence to tools or numbers. I have difficulty conceiving of soulful listening or circles of trust being made welcome in many corporate environments. I am sure that there are exceptions and a good thing too!

Despite the soul’s lack of welcome in some settings, it is vitally important to listen to others as fully and respectfully as possible. First, I believe that all beings are valuable and deserving of our attention—at least a fully as possible. Second, to listen in “circle of trust” mode, even in environments that are not conducive to the soul’s emergence from the woods of ego, is to be one’s own most authentic self. It becomes a matter of “walking your talk” wherever one happens to be. Perhaps it cannot manifest outwardly in exactly the same manner as a “circle of trust” or a soulful one-on-one; however, if we stay aware of our own tendencies to lose focus, be distracted, and indulge in inner-dialogue, then we can bring our own soul to the conversation. Our own soul becomes the yardstick for appropriate, respectful listening. By listening with full attention, not attempting to fix the other, and giving the speaker time to say what is needed, we can indeed bring ethical and soulful listening to most structures and environments albeit subtly.

Surprisingly, sometimes our inner-landscape can be less-than-welcoming to our own soul, I am finding. For me, self-criticism and self-judgment keep my soul at bay—from myself! I discovered just how easy it is to ignore myself and my own soul by indulging in old mental “tapes” that discourage true awareness of what my body, heart, and soul are saying to me. Practicing a “circle of trust” with myself during this module has made me much more aware of the need to connect to myself and also self-correct when my inner-environment becomes hostile to my own soul. It is rather disheartening to discover that one can separate from one’s most essential soulful self by self-flagellating. I feel that learning to listen to others in a “circle of trust” mode has helped my practice by first calling attention to the lack of respect I pay myself and second allowing some gentleness toward me and my practice.

Overall, the application of “circle of trust” mode of listening has increased my awareness of the need to mindfully and deliberately prepare for listening to others—if even only for a few seconds prior to the experience, which is another practical usage of a moment of silence. Also, I am learning that simply being silent while others are expressing is so much more respect and conducive to an exchange in which the speaker feels safe. Only in an atmosphere of respect, and quiet, open listening can the soul come out to play and speak its truth.