Deep Listening

Deep Listening

The kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another human being...

Yesterday, my youngest daughter stood at the top of the stairs and screamed so loud I felt the vibrations through my bones and felt certain the trunks of the trees around her would splinter. Two groups of picnickers close by would have felt the earth tremor and I felt like I must be the worst mother on the planet...I also felt incredibly annoyed/embarrassed and incredibly helpless. We continued in this way down to the beach and I through down my wrap and ran to dive into the ocean. As I came up though the water I could see her where I had left my wrap, a little girl playing quietly in the sand, writing and drawing and making patterns. I still carried a lot of tension in my body but I listened to the sound of my heart and could feel her breathing even from a distance and so I approached her speaking quietly and encouraged her to go into the water. What I managed to do, and have not always been capable of, was to listen to my own thoughts and not act on these, I listened to my own needs and felt that if I could make it to the water the natural elements would support and nurture me, and I could return to her and really listen for what she needed, even if she didn't actually speak words to me...

"To really listen to others, say David Rome and Hope Martin, we must first learn to listen to ourselves...Deep Listening involves listening, from a deep, receptive, and caring place in oneself, to deeper and often subtler levels of meaning and intention in the other person. It is listening that is generous, empathic, supportive, accurate, and trusting. Trust here does not imply agreement, but the trust that whatever others say, regardless of how well or poorly it is said, comes from something true in their experience. Deep Listening is an ongoing practice of suspending self-oriented, reactive thinking and opening one’s awareness to the unknown and unexpected"

Opening oneself to the unknown...this is the bit where we can instinctively pull ourselves up...its like looking over the edge of a precipice but not seeing anything but darkness, maybe hearing calls from below but how do we throw ourselves over this edge?

For myself this is an ongoing journey, what I realised is that my daughter is not sleeping well, she is feeling afraid of the shadows at night and this is leaving her very tired and uncertain during the daylight hours. This means she is vulnerable and sensitive and needs a lot of TLC. It's not easy to give TLC to someone who is literally screaming at you, so yesterday I took care to do what I needed to do in order to be present and really be with her. It hasn't entirely stopped the screaming but it means we are still caring for each other and we can have quiet little chats when the screaming stops with no hard feelings building walls between us...trust remains. 

What has motivated me to keep walking to the edge and leaping off is that I know it is not only making my own life happier, but it is easier for those whom I love most in this world to be around me and to share our life together. It's easy to be kind to strangers, but it is vital to be kind to those we live with and spend time with every day, and mostly it is imperative to be kind to ourselves. Learning the ways in which we can really nurture ourselves frees us to have more space for those who need us or just want to hang out with us in coffee shops or go dancing...it also allows us a sense of humour...inappropriate jokes about ourselves are completely necessary on this path as it is often arduous and requires lots of laughter to get us through each day of it!