What Goes on As I Listen

At the Spiritual Guidance Training Institute, we include listening practices and techniques in each of our modules.  One of the ways we practice deepening our listening is to reflect on how we are doing with our own listening in various contexts.  During our spring residential institute, our students spent some time one-on-one with a peer and discussed a relevant topic for the day’s theme.  After the discussion, we met back together and asked, “What did you notice about your listening?”
 
The following include paraphrases of some of our students’ responses:

• I noticed my body and what I do with it while listening.
• As I was listening to the story, I was thinking that I knew the end to the story, so I didn’t fully listen in the moment.
• I felt a need to want to affirm their theory.
• I felt distracted by the listening techniques.
• I was wondering where my eyes go when I am listening.
 
This list is not an exhaustive list, but a collection of responses that represent a range of thoughts or feelings that emerge while we are listening.  Being able to name some of them is a way to first acknowledge the transient nature of our thoughts and feelings and then to let them go so we can be fully present with our companion.  By offering our attention to the person in front of us, or on the other end of a phone/Zoom/Skype call, we engage in the practice of companionship.  We not only getin touch with the sacred in another and in ourselves, but we also touch the sacred in another and in ourselves.  And that may be one of the greatest gifts we can offer another.