Are You Really Listening?

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Be Desperate to Listen!

Listen!

Why are you always desperate to speak? Be desperate to listen! Listening – what a powerful tool for transformation! Listening is the only way to receive life. Listening is the only way you can truly relate with yourself and others.

When you listen to yourself, all the unconsciousness in you drops away. Please understand: the hidden, unresolved, incomplete parts of you are crying for your listening. Just listen. When you listen to yourself, your awareness reaches such a peak that there is no space for conflict, no space for non-integrity and inauthenticity to live in you.

People Want Your Listening

When you listen to others, you will transform them just by your listening. Remember, when people come to you, they almost always don’t want solutions. They just want your listening. In the space of your deep listening, they will find the answers they need. And out of that deep listening, even if you speak, it will always be what the other person needs to hear.

I always speak what you need to hear, because I listen when you speak. I know what you need, and I speak exactly that. When I listen, I listen to everything – what you speak and what you don’t speak and what you want to speak! I can transform you because I listen to you.

Empty Your Cup

A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s full! No more will go in!”, the professor blurted. “This is you,” the master replied, “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.”

Listening Means not Having an Answer Ready!

We really never ever listen at all in our lives. See. When your spouse, your boss or your friend is talking to you, see exactly what you are doing. You are not listening. You are preparing your answer to them! Even before they start talking, you are preparing your answer. That is why your answer never matches their question – because you never heard the question!

Listening needs three things from you: One, a passive inner space that invites the other person to pour themselves into your listening. Two, a deep patience that can wait for a solution to emerge on its own. Three, the courage to respond spontaneously, without a prepared answer or a ready made solution.

Listening means just dropping your mind and being available for the other.

Adapted from Paramahamsa Nithyananda’s teachings

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