Lovingly Listening | Loving, Conscious, Mindful Relationship

We wanted to make a teaching on the process of listening and hearing each other.

And also listening and hearing in general.

Whether it's to yourself,

To someone else,

Or to what's going on in the world.

You know that cartoon visual of putting your ear down to the earth and hearing the beat of the earth,

The rhythm of what's going on.

Understanding not just what someone is saying,

How they're feeling and why they're saying it.

Whether it's you and your thoughts or someone else speaking to you.

Or a movement moving through society.

When you learn to listen like this to others,

To really hear them,

To understand them,

What and why they're saying it.

It opens tremendous doors to have much more connected relationships.

To work together as a conscious team to collaborate.

And as soon as Alessandra and I started really doing this practice,

And it took years to really hear each other.

We started to get so much better results because what we found was that we were listening to each other rather absentmindedly.

Meaning that yes,

We were listening to each other,

We were trying to hear each other,

And there were so many other thoughts going on at the same time.

So many other priorities.

Trying to remember what we were going to do that day,

Trying to not forget something.

Literally while the other person was talking.

Ironically,

Our minds were full.

We weren't being mindful.

And it was not a mindful process.

And our minds were full of other thoughts,

Of distractions,

Of worries,

Of concerns,

Of anxieties.

And those were preventing us from just listening to each other,

Just hearing each other,

When the other was speaking.

And when we learned to just listen to each other,

To single pointedly focus on just hearing the person,

What they were saying and why they were saying it.

We really started to connect.

And to work as a team.

And that created this sense of support and love and care and appreciation for each other in our relationship.

This trust.

And before that was going on,

There was less trust.

Not because we couldn't trust each other.

Just because we weren't really present with each other.

Listening and hearing each other.

And being willing to shift out of whatever we were thinking of.

Whatever we thought was so important to focus on in our minds.

Shifting out of that to just listen.

Listen to the other when they were speaking.

Just that.

Brought so much change.

And conflict went away.

The fighting went away.

Because in the past,

While we were half listening,

Or even 70% listening.

That remaining 30% left room for ambiguity.

And in that ambiguity,

The mind projects and imagines a bunch of stuff.

It might project,

Oh this person is being mean to me,

Or this person is upset with me.

Or not understanding me.

And that leads to conflict.

To further misunderstanding.

When we really started to listen to each other.

100% as much as possible to really hear each other.

We were able to see the truth.

To hear the truth.

And the truth was that Alessandrina,

Or your partner,

Or anyone in the whole world.

Even if they're upset.

Even if they're speaking in anger.

They are not being bad or wrong.

They're not upset or angry at you really.

They are good.

They are innocent.

And they are just processing emotion.

And they want help.

And they want love.

And they want support.

And just as you might see a child who's going through a hard time emotionally.

You wouldn't be angry at that child.

You would want to help the child and care for the child.

And adults,

Who are children in many ways.

They have an inner child.

And yes,

They might be bigger and have more hair and stuff like that.

And they still have an inner child.

And for some,

For many reasons,

We tend to,

The ego,

Our egos tend to shut down when an adult goes through an emotional process.

Because we don't see the inner child.

And we don't,

Because we don't see and hear the inner child,

The innocent inner child,

The good inner child,

The well-meaning inner child.

We actually become angry at the adult.

So what gives us the capacity to do this listening?

And I want to share with you a process that is simple and that you can apply in your life.

And get wonderful results from applying those principles.

The first one is just to set the intention.

Just through the intention of listening,

We're already holding the space for a more optimal listening to occur.

So we can listen more when we intend to listen.

Oftentimes when we're listening,

We're actually doing many other things at the same time.

We're not just listening to listen.

We might be wanting to feel safe,

Not wanting the other to misunderstand us.

We might want to communicate in a certain way and be attached to that.

There might be many different intentions running in our system as we listen.

And so when we set the intention to simply lovingly,

Careingly,

Compassionately listen,

Then already we are in that process of listening.

We are enhancing the process of listening.

The second step in this process,

Once you've set your intention,

Is to identify,

Either kind of recalling prior situations where maybe you experienced conflict or the communications were not ideal.

So understanding what happened,

What was happening at the time,

What was preventing listening from occurring.

So as Dexter was saying,

The other thoughts that run through our minds,

The things we feel we need to do,

Feeling pressured with time or tasks that we feel we have to do,

And anything else that could be essentially limiting our flow of listening,

Our capacity to listen.

So once we remove that,

Then the listening can occur more naturally,

More effortlessly.

If we're not busy doing something else,

Then we're simply listening.

And we can even explore the word listening.

You can ask yourself,

What is it like to listen?

What does that mean to me?

What does that feel like?

And that's the third step,

Cultivating listening.

So as you clear the obstacles to listening,

Then you're beginning to listen.

And then you can put more energy and attention to your listening.

And as you do,

Then you become more and more familiar with what it is like to listen and you begin to enjoy it.

It can really shift your relationship to listening.

It can become something that you truly enjoy and that brings so much energy and love and fulfillment in your heart and brings you closer,

Of course,

To your partner or to anybody that you are in communication with.

So you gave three key steps here.

One was the commitment.

And I love that one.

It reminds me of a golf instructor that a student asked the golf instructor,

How do I get the golf club to hit the ground?

Because the student was whiffing the ground.

The club was not reaching the grass when it's supposed to make a nice swoosh through the grass.

And the golf instructor said,

Commitment to hitting the ground.

So as soon as your partner starts speaking,

If you could apply all of your focus,

All of your commitment and make in that moment a conscious and fiercely determined choice to 100% listen and that their words and what they're saying and their energy and their emotions are going to be your sole focus as they speak.

That was number one.

And then number two was clearing obstacles to listening.

So what happens as you're listening?

Do you sometimes start to take things personally?

Wondering,

Hey,

What does this say about me or what does what they're saying?

How does that affect me or are they criticizing me or what's the implication of this on my life?

Or is this going in a direction that I don't feel safe with?

And this is what the ego tends to do is make so much about the me so much about the I.

It takes everything personally and it's constantly calculating and analyzing how is this going to affect my life,

My safety,

My future?

What is this saying about me?

My social image,

My self image.

So if you're doing that,

Then you're not fully listening.

You're not fully hearing.

And usually that leads to some type of conflict,

Because when we're taking things personally,

While someone is speaking,

We tend to start to fight to misunderstand each other.

It truly.

In many ways,

It's never personal.

A person is going through their process,

Their experiences,

And.

And if we listen,

If we hear them and understand,

Then,

Of course,

Then we can be a team.

And and even if that means that they're saying that,

You know,

They didn't like something we did or they're unhappy with us because of what we said or how we said it or how we did it.

Even that in many ways is it's not really personal.

It's it's their experience.

It doesn't mean it's necessarily their their version of events is all fact.

And it does mean that we can hear and look for the truth in what they're saying,

The validity of their emotional process,

The importance of how they feel and how they process emotionally and mentally and understand.

And then help and work with them and do our very best to help make their lives easier and better.

We can do that with people in relationships.

And when we do that,

They tend to do that also.

And with another person,

You can begin to build this back and forth process of teamwork,

Of loving teamwork,

Of caring teamwork.

So one of the major obstacles is taking things personally while someone is speaking is is assuming that it has anything to do with us rather than being 100 percent focused on caring about them.

So and I hope it was clear here that not taking things personally doesn't mean saying,

Oh,

You know,

This is just your reality and your experience.

And it has nothing to do with me.

So I don't need to change.

It doesn't mean that.

It means recognizing that this isn't about a competition of egos.

This process of communication,

A process of listening.

It is a process of refinement.

It is a process of evolution together.

Of learning to dance with each other.

And if your partner's telling you,

Hey,

One of the ways in which you're dancing is is is is either stepping on my toe or it's challenging for me at this time and maybe we could dance another way.

One can hear that and say,

Wonderful.

I would love to dance that way.

And there's no need to start to feel,

Oh,

She's just they're saying that I'm not dancing well.

They're saying that,

You know,

I did this bad.

They're saying I'm wrong.

You see how that that subtle.

Change and the implications of that shift.

The tremendous positive implications of that shift and and the tremendous potential for collaboration and teamwork and love and support that can unfold in relationships as a result of that shift.

Of hearing each other without taking things personally and into conflict,

Hearing each other in order to dance better together and seeing that the one who is speaking is in their core.

They're they're good and they have good intentions.

And number three,

Active listening and choosing to listen and to cultivate so that we can know what it is to listen to.

Yes.

From our hearts.

Yes.

That's so important because it's dynamic and through time,

That cultivation process,

Because,

Yes,

From this teaching,

You may have picked up stuff and.

The process of listening and hearing and any art or skill is something that is optimally developed and cultivated,

Evolved and refined over time through one's own conscious choice and.

And discovery process.

And oftentimes we can have a definition that we've been conditioned into of what it means to listen.

And so we can imagine that we are listening.

And until we explore for ourselves and we discover for ourselves what it means to actually listen,

What it feels like to listen,

What it is to listen,

Then we don't really know.

We're just operating from a word that we've learned and then the associations that we have with that word rather than the experience of listening.

And if the listening in the past wasn't really listening,

Then we don't really know what listening is until we really explore it and for ourselves discover.

And you may already know that meditation means to become familiar with.

So meditating on listening and what it means to listen.

That is your process of becoming familiar with listening.

And therefore,

The more familiar you become with the art of listening.

The more you know to you what it means and what it is and the more you can develop that art,

The more you can refine it.

And the quote unquote better you become at listening.

Just like an artist refining their masterpiece over and over and over again.

Yeah.

Or like,

Is it archaeologists that unearthed these,

They find the tip of a bone in the earth.

They don't know what the animal is.

It could be any animal.

It could be a completely undiscovered animal.

And so they just keep digging carefully moving dirt away,

Clearing dirt away without very gently to unearth the whole skeleton of this unknown animal.

And they just keep doing it.

And even when they think they're done and they've gotten the whole skeleton,

There might be other pieces left that give key information about that animal and the Earth's history.

And if they were to pack up and leave before they had unearthed the whole skeleton,

Then they wouldn't be able to unpack that additional information to find that great the greater depths of that thing,

Which in this case is listening.

And so to have your own process of conscious discovery of evolution and cultivation of your understandings of listening,

For example,

Will allow you to really get the most out of your life and your relationships and to experience more and more of the very wonderful and multidimensional and fulfilling and inspiring experiences that this life on Earth,

This life in relationships,

Has to offer and all of the wonderful,

Beautiful learning and sharing and intimacy that we can experience on our own and also with others who are also on a similar path of discovery.

And in that process of exploration,

Of experimentation and discovery,

If you would open your heart to the listening,

If you would allow yourself to really be in the place of your heart,

In the space of your heart as you cultivate listening,

This will allow for more and more energy to flow into your whole being,

For you to be more present,

For you to be in your body,

For you to be connected from your heart,

Not from your mind so that you're not listening or imagining that you're listening from your mind,

So that you are truly in your heart listening.

And this ties into so many different dimensions of what the heart does,

The heart center and the capacities and the experiences we can have when we open our hearts.

And today we're simply focusing on listening and how opening your heart will enhance your process of listening and make it even more enjoyable and a really,

Truly beautiful and connected experience.

I just want to give a quick example of that,

That I feel to be tangible and helpful.

The other day,

I was communicating,

I was going through a challenging time and communicating something to Alessandra and she could hear in my voice that it was challenging for me,

That I was a little bit stressed,

A little bit frustrated,

A little bit upset,

And that,

And this was about,

In some ways,

Our relationship,

Some dynamic in our relationship.

And she came to me and she was so loving and she came to me and she said,

I want to know.

And she listened so fully with love and care in her eyes for me,

Wanting to understand.

And it was beautiful and it was healing and it was bonding and it,

It removed barriers.

And we had more connection,

More love,

More vulnerability,

More intimacy.

And she heard me and she wanted to understand what she could do differently,

How she could change to make things easier,

To help,

To support.

When you listen like this,

Or when someone listens like this to you,

You feel it.

It makes a difference and it opens a new door.

If the ways we typically listen tend to only open doors of,

To conflict or to,

In many ways,

Not changing,

It's not evolving and staying the same and entering some of the same old patterns and programs of misunderstanding and conflict and victimhood and anger.

And imagining that we're safe or better than.

Then the process of listening we're describing opens a whole new door,

A beautiful white door with divine light emanating from it.

And when you go through that door,

There is no one person who's better than the other.

There's just two people who are listening to each other and caring and wanting to do their best to bring about the highest potential,

The most caring and divine and loving potential.

So we invite you through that door.

And to use the listening or to experience the listening as a way to love more,

As a process of love.

Yeah,

An opportunity to love and to cultivate love for the other,

For the other human being.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.