The Posture of Listening
“The heart of dialogue is a simple but profound capacity to listen. Listening requires we not only hear the words, but also embrace, accept, and gradually let go of our own inner clamoring. As we explore it, we discover that listening is an expansive activity. It gives us a way to perceive more directly the ways we participate in the world around us.” — William Isaacs
Before we can truly begin to listen to others, we must first learn to listen to ourselves.
One of our teachers, Sharon Salzberg, describes meditation as:
“Essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware — not only of our own inner workings but also of what’s happening around us in the here and now. Once we see clearly what’s going on in the moment, we can then choose whether and how to act on what we’re seeing.”
In a sense then, all good listening begins with and flows from a mindful awareness of our own inner experience. To the extent we remain unconsciously caught up in the chaotic flow of thoughts and emotions that is the river of human experience, it will be impossible for us to clearly hear ourselves, much less listen to others.
Mindfulness meditation is the practice of noticing and naming (without judgment) thoughts and feelings as they enter our awareness — it’s essentially becoming aware of our awareness. This same practice opens up space for us to become aware of what is being communicated to us by another.
If you’ve never tried mindfulness meditation, give it a try.
Mindfulness gives us a way to quiet the loud and distracting inner dialogue contained in each of us. As that inner dialogue quiets, we can tune in to all sorts of stimuli that were always there but escaped our awareness.
In his famous work, Indeterminacy, the composer John Cage tells a story of visiting an anechoic chamber (a soundproof booth) at Harvard University. After exiting the chamber, Cage asked the engineer why, if the room was truly soundproof, had he been able to hear two distinct sounds — one high and one low. The engineer informed Cage that the high sound he heard was his nervous system in operation and the low one was his blood in circulation.
While experts have questioned the accuracy of the engineer’s explanation of the sounds Cage was actually hearing, the illustrative point remains strong — when we quiet the ever-present base noise of our experience, we broaden our awareness to take in and engage with more data than we could otherwise.
Listening begins with learning to be present to the present moment.
