A Life-Changing Insight Into Listening

[UnbornTao]

It's your job to have it - whatever it turns out to be.

For one week, contemplate what listening is and what it requires.

Try to set aside your own baggage - especially what you think you already 'know' - and question what this act really is.

Other related questions:

• What is the act of paying attention?
• Why am I listening (hearing or reading) to this communication - or manipulation?
• What am I trying to get out of it?
• How can I step out of my own intellectual world so that I can better hear?
• Where is this person coming from, and what is their experience?

Or simply: What is actually going on in the other person's experience?

Edited February 23 by UnbornTao

[AtmanIsBrahman]

Notice listening requires someone you’re listening to. It’s fundamentally a giving away of authority.

Obviously we can learn from people, just have to be careful and aware of what you’re doing. Just felt the need to add this in here 😁

[Davino]

@UnbornTao Interesting exercise, I'll contemplate this week and see.

[UnbornTao]

31 minutes ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

Notice listening requires someone you’re listening to. It’s fundamentally a giving away of authority.

Obviously we can learn from people, just have to be careful and aware of what you’re doing. Just felt the need to add this in here 😁

I think I understand what you mean, but I'd consider that worry unwarranted here. Listening is not about you!

It's about the other person's experience.

[Joseph Maynor]

Listening is part of Love too in the sense that everyone has something slightly different to say.  This should be expected and appreciated.  This is what allows people to feel safe around you.  Truth contains every finite perspective.  Love is the embodiment of this insight.  

[UnbornTao]

14 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Listening is part of Love too in the sense that everyone has something slightly different to say.  This should be expected and appreciated.  This is what allows people to feel safe around you.  Truth contains every finite perspective.  Love is the embodiment of this insight.  

How long have you been working on the exercise?

Edited February 22 by UnbornTao

[Hojo]

@AtmanIsBrahman you can listen to anything. Things that are not people. Or even silence.

[UnbornTao]

Couple of quotes:

Quote

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

-- George Bernard Shaw.

Quote

I hope that you will listen, but not with the memory of what you already know; and this is very difficult to do. You listen to something, and your mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions, its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future understanding.

Just observe yourself, how you are listening, and you will see that this is what is taking place. Either you are listening with a conclusion, with knowledge, with certain memories, experiences, or you want an answer, and you are impatient. You want to know what it is all about, what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. You are not actually listening at all.

You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn't react immediately, when there is an interval between your reaction and what is being said. Then, in that interval there is a quietness, there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension which is not intellectual understanding.

If there is a gap between what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a few seconds - in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain, and the old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic sense.

When there is an abeyance of that, when the reaction is suspended, when there is an interval, then you will find that the new brain acts, and it is only the new brain that can understand, not the old brain.

-- J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

It's likely that many of you will overlook or even outright ignore this topic, which partly explains the issue of poor listening.

Edited February 24 by UnbornTao

[Someone here]

I've touched on it before. Likewise goes for disagreement. And also the fact that most people care about being right and sounding intelligent and outwitting others instead of arriving at the truth of the discussion they are having or even just exchanging thoughts and opinions neutrally ..because at the end of the day we are not goning to agree upon everything..people are different by default and inside their heads there are different beliefs and opinions they've gathered from all the informations they have been exposed to in their entire lives .not a surprise to me that people on this forum who are supposedly highly Conscious lack this ability sometimes .

[UnbornTao]

@Someone here

You're invited to do the exercise.

Notice the baggage that tends to immediately come up. Krishnamurti alludes to this above.

[CARDOZZO]

Great work! 

[Someone here]

@UnbornTao I see . Does it necessarily have to take one week of contemplation before I post my answers? 

[UnbornTao]

3 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@UnbornTao I see . Does it necessarily have to take one week of contemplation before I post my answers? 

No, but taking some time with it helps to reveal everything that tends to get in the way.

[Oppositionless]

This is somewhat tangential but I've been going to these spiritual discussion groups and I notice that if I don't say my piece in exactly the right way it becomes very tempting to waste time trying to mentally correct it while other people are sharing. Actually its not just at groups (but it's more emphasized), it's in all conversations. I'm constantly trying to correct myself when I should be listening, and I'll think if I don't say it just right people will be pissed off at me, and I'll interpret their response as they're pissed at me.

Edited February 23 by Oppositionless

[Leo Gura]

I call it understanding rather than listening.

If your goal is understanding, you will automatically listen.

Edited February 23 by Leo Gura

[UnbornTao]

38 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I call it understanding rather than listening.

If your goal is understanding, you will automatically listen.

By necessity, listening precedes understanding. The first danger is automatically assuming you know what is being said - because you understand the language, it fits your view, and so on. 

The problem with putting your focus on 'understanding' is that it feeds into your assumption that listening is restricted to the conceptual. Since we take words to be symbols, we think this is merely a conceptual endeavor. But there is a deeper kind.

Read Krishnamurti's quote and see how what he says applies to you. He's describing the process as it occurs for most people.

Edited February 23 by UnbornTao

[Someone here]

@UnbornTao but isn't the same thing happening to you as well? 

[UnbornTao]

14 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@UnbornTao but isn't the same thing happening to you as well? 

Sure. The difference is that I've been contemplating this for awhile. 

[Sincerity]

Nice post. Thanks. Listening is indeed essential, especially to Oneself.

I was contemplating listening a while ago. I thought how LISTEN can actually be a better pointer towards awakening than LOOK. It’s powerful.

My trips and meditations are essentially extreme listening sessions. Listening to Now, to Nothing, to Me. These pointers arise after listening to ???.

The Krishnamurti quote is good too.

[Oppositionless]

@Sincerity Doing a lot of spiritual practices has started to reveal my true inner voice. I heard it before but there was also a lot of conditioning. It was 80% conditioning and 20% my real inner voice. Now the ratios are improving, steadily, with daily meditation and yoga.