The Conscious Heart (37 page)

THE LISTENING COMMITMENTS

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I commit to listening carefully enough that I can restate the content of what you have said without adding my point of view to it
.

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I commit to listening to the feelings embedded in your communication
.

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I commit to listening in such a way that our mutual creativity is facilitated
.

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I commit to speaking and listening to myself and you free of criticism. (Criticism is defined as “finding fault, censuring, disapproving.”)

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I commit to speaking and listening to myself and you free of evaluating either of us. (Evaluating is defined as “appraising, determining the worth of.”)

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I commit to speaking and listening to myself and you free of judging either of us as right or wrong, good or bad, smart or stupid
.

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I commit to speaking and listening to myself and you free of comparing us to each other or to anyone else. (Comparing is defined as “bringing things together to ascertain their differences and similarities.”)

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I commit to speaking and listening to myself and you free from controlling the feelings, energies, or actions of either of us. (Controlling is defined as “curbing, restraining, holding back, having authority over, directing, or commanding.”)

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I commit to speaking and listening to myself and you with appreciation. (Appreciation is defined in two senses: “sensitive awareness” and “focus on positive qualities and attributes.”)

E
XPLORING THE
L
ISTENING
C
OMMITMENTS

W
e found that these listening commitments were so radical that they required a great deal of work to embrace. Often other people have deep resistance to them, because these listening commitments require treating others as equals. In fact, listening skills are the behavioral evidence of equality in action.

The first commitment pledges you to listen with accuracy. You set yourself the high task of listening so thoroughly that you can restate or summarize what your partner has said without putting your “spin” on it. This listening commitment has changed people’s relationships all by itself. For many people, being heard is so rare that when it happens, it shifts their whole way of being. On the listener’s side, many people have never suspended their judgments and evaluations of other people’s speaking long enough to actually hear what they are saying.

Many people require several intense hour-long learning
sessions to learn this skill. In the beginning, we ask people to practice their listening in short two-minute segments. In other words, we do not ask them to remember and summarize twenty minutes of conversation. Sometimes, in fact, we find that we must teach listening in only one-sentence segments. The careful attention is most worthwhile, though. When they get it, a great leap of energy and aliveness fills the room.

The second listening commitment, to hearing feelings, opens the possibility for a deeper level of attunement to what your partner is saying. Beneath the verbal message there is almost always an emotional message. Words and feelings must both be heard for useful communication to take place. For example, the speaker may be saying, “Are you going to the store this morning?” To accurately paraphrase these words, the listener might say something like “I hear you asking if I’m going to the store.” But the emotional message might be anger, as in “I’m angry that you are going to leave me here with the children while you go to the store with that bimbo to buy more vodka.” Or it might be despair, as in “I’m sad that you’re going to work so soon after your coronary. I’m worried that you’ll die and I’ll be left alone.” To fully paraphrase the original sentence, then, the listener would need to say something like “I hear you asking if I’m going to the store, and I also hear that you’re angry (or sad or scared).” While the first depth of conscious listening—accurately paraphrasing the words—is very important, the second depth is often where people finally feel heard.

Emotions are a powerful gateway to spiritual development. Gary Zukav says: “Only through emotions can you encounter the force field of your own soul.” When we can meet our feelings directly, and greet them as friends with a message, we make a great leap forward in our spiritual development. Not only do you learn that you’re scared or angry or sad, you also pick up the distant glimmer of essence. All emotions melt into the soul. If you are scared and listen to your fear instead of hastening to be rid of it, you will find that the very sensations of fear dissolve and resolve into clear space.

The third commitment is to listen as an ally in the other person’s full creative expression. At this depth you listen in such a way that you are “being for” the other person. Your attention is directed toward the other’s essence and how it is expressed in the world. In its most basic form, third-depth listening is the ability to ask the other person, “What do you most want?” It includes the ability to listen in such a way that you draw people into deeper appreciations of their heart-desires.

Our experiences have shown us that these three listening commitments are extremely powerful but equally hard to master. The problem is that when we get scared, we tighten around our own point of view and wall others out. It is very hard to “be for” someone else when you are seeing that person as the enemy. It takes an act of high courage to let go of the contraction and embrace the other person as an ally.

The next five listening commitments deal with eliminating the filters that people habitually put on their listening. In our early days we called these listening shields, but now we have adopted a more benign and porous term, listening filters. In order to master the first three commitments of conscious listening, most of us need to remove one or more of the filters that our conditioning has placed on our listening.

At our seminars, we often harvest from the audience the filters they most commonly use in their relationships. We give them an example of a woman saying, “I’ve been feeling depressed. I don’t feel like I’m using my potential. I’m thinking of going to medical school, but I’m forty-five and have three teenagers to raise.” We ask people to imagine themselves in the role of her husband. Here are some of the listening filters that emerge:

Listening to criticize (“That’s the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard.”)

Listening to judge or evaluate (“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”)

Listening to influence or control (“Don’t even think of leaving your family to go to medical school. We need you right here where you belong.”)

Listening to compare (“I put aside my education and my dreams to raise this family, so I don’t think it’s fair for you to go off and do what you want to do.”)

Listening to fix (“Why don’t you try working out at the gym for an hour a day—that depression would disappear quick as a wink.”)

Another listening filter that is troublesome in close relationships is listening to support victimhood. This filter takes two main forms. One form is to encourage people to think of themselves as victims. In the medical school example, a victim-thinking friend might say, “You poor dear. You’ve put up with him for twenty years and now he won’t give you a break. I don’t know how a saint like you ever ended up with a lout like that.” Some of us have friendship networks that include people who support us in being victims rather than in being effective in our lives. One of our therapy clients, a well-known entertainer who has portrayed many wronged women, uttered a memorable one-liner during a discussion of this issue. We were encouraging her to spend her time with friends who supported her effectiveness, and to stop hanging around with people who treated her as a victim. “Well,” she said, “there goes my whole Rolodex.”

In the second form of victimhood listening the listener compares their victimhood with the speaker’s. This style is very popular in couples’ therapy sessions. One partner will say, “I’m really angry that you didn’t pick up the laundry,” and the other will reply, “If I didn’t work my tail off all day, you wouldn’t have any laundry to pick up.” The race to occupy the victim position is on, and there is never a winner. Even if you do end up portraying yourself as a bigger victim, you lose. Now and then a victim will
hit the jackpot, perhaps by pouring hot coffee in their lap at a fast-food restaurant, but the race for victim never produces happiness.

The last listening commitment—listening to appreciate—is difficult to master. It requires that we live in a state of appreciation even under stress. In a famous story a Zen master is being pursued by a tiger. He comes to the edge of a cliff and is faced with the decision: jump or be eaten. He jumps, and as he falls, he passes the branch of a cherry tree, which he grabs. There he is, hanging over the abyss, tiger slavering above him, the void below. He sees a ripe cherry on the tree and, with his free hand, picks and eats it. Ah, he says with total enjoyment. The point of the story is that we need to learn to live in appreciation in each moment, even when the stress of life has got us hanging over the abyss.

In our own relationship we have done a great deal of work to learn to live in appreciation. It seems that each time we make a breakthrough to a higher level of this ability, the universe gives us a pop quiz to find out if we can practice the skill in the rigor of conflict. Sometimes we pass, and sometimes we fail. We find it downright maddening at times, given our long study of this problem, to find ourselves caught in its grip. Sometimes, in fact, our status as relationship experts gets in our way. Because of our intellectual knowledge, we forget to practice the basics of conscious listening, truth-telling, taking full responsibility, and keeping the flow of appreciation going all the time. When we forget, the real world is right there to remind us: No matter how far we’ve traveled, we must still take the path carefully, one step at a time.

T
HE
F
IRST
L
EVEL

T
he first level of conscious listening is to give a simple summary of what you have heard a speaker say. Until you have tried it a few times (or a few thousand times, in our personal case!), you may not appreciate what a challenge it is. We have seen people go
through two or three rounds just fine, then completely lose their ability to listen on their next turn. You never know what is going to push the “stop listening” button in our brains (and we all seem to be equipped with that particular button). That’s where the learning occurs, though. Don’t make yourself wrong for not being able to give the summary. Just learn from each time you slip up—notice what triggered you to stop listening—and try again.

What follows are the simple instructions we use to teach the first level of conscious listening to therapy clients and workshop participants. We recommend that you begin by reading carefully the previous discussion of the listening commitments. If you are willing to embrace them, consciously and formally commit to them. Now you are ready to learn the first level of conscious listening.

Instructions

We will give the instructions verbatim as if we were speaking directly to two participants. You may want to get a third party to be your coach and timekeeper. If so, this person can read the directions to you as you practice them.

“Speaker, you will have one minute to say anything you want to say about your feelings or the relationship. Do your best to speak the deepest level of truth you can. You can expect us to stop you right on the minute, so both of you will know you’re getting exactly the same amount of time. Later, you can do a free-form version of this without timekeeping, but we have found it easiest to learn in the beginning by watching the clock.

“Listener, your job will be to listen carefully, so you can paraphrase the content of what Speaker said.

“Speaker, go ahead. (
Speaker talks for a minute
.)

“Speaker, pause.

“Listener, summarize what you heard. Two phrases that are useful are ‘I heard you say —–’ and ‘What I heard you say was —–.’ ”

(
Listener gives summary
.)

“Speaker, was that an accurate summary of what you said?”

(
If Speaker says yes, switch roles. If no
): “Speaker, say again the part you felt was missing. Listener, at the end of it, give a summary of what you heard.”

(
Continue until Speaker okays the summary. If Speaker tries to add content that was not in the original minute, ask him or her to hold it until the next round
.)

T
HE
S
ECOND
L
EVEL

T
he first level—listening for accuracy of content—forces the listener to separate the speaker’s meaning from the meaning generated by the listener’s own filters. The second level involves hearing the emotion under the words. One of our clients referred to the first level as “listening from the head”; the second level could be called “listening from the heart.” At the second level we listen for the music that is running along under the lyrics.