The Art of Listening and Loving
There are times when we hear somebody telling us something again and again, a hundred times, but because we think we know this already, we’ve heard it already, we finish the sentence for the person, or we readily draw a conclusion and the brain immediately closes down and doesn’t process any more information, thus shutting out that person who is there with us. Our body is physically there, but our mind is already focused on another object, or it’s planning, or daydreaming.
The other person feels this and knows that he or she is speaking to a wall. Sometimes the person may ask, “Are you there? Are you listening to me?” We reply, “Yeah yeah yeah, I hear you,” but we’ve already shut that person out.
In the spaciousness and quiet of our mind, we may belatedly truly hear a familiar sentence for the very first time. We finally understand the message and ask, “Is this what you mean?” After all this time, five years or twenty years, we suddenly understand what our mother, father, or partner has been trying to tell us, and they may exclaim in exasperation, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all this time!”
We suddenly see how this message is connected to everything else. We discover this aspect of the person for the first time, and this is a moment of deep communion in our relationship, with ourselves, and with each other.