Generous Listening

One of the keys to making the world more livable.

image courtesy of stock.adobe.com

If a friend of yours needs you, do you know about it?
Do they trust you enough to say so? And if they do, are you able to step away from your urgencies long enough to hear them out? That’s generous listening.

Some of my biggest regrets echo from moments in my life when I could have listened more deeply. When I could have let go of my performative self, my desperately codependent self, and just sat still in the presence of someone’s pain. Someone I loved. When I could have sat still enough to make space for hard truths to poke through, lance the boil, and heal.

“If we cannot listen mindfully, we cannot practice Right Speech. No matter what we say, it will not be mindful, because we’ll be speaking only our own ideas and not in response to the other person.” The words of Vietnamese peace activist, writer, and Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.

In other words, if we can’t listen, deeply and well, nothing we say in response will matter. Because we won’t have received what was said.

There is a practice in therapy called Imago. With this technique, your partner speaks, then you repeat it back as accurately as possible. This ensures not only that you heard them, but that they know and feel that you heard…