Deep listening
and other ways to pierce the heart
Listening is an art form. An invitation to a sacred witnessing of the other. Listening in itself is a form of recognition of the essential ground of being where two hearts come to rest.
Have you ever had that experience of listening attentively to what a friend is saying, without missing a word that pours out from their lips? Now imagine adding reverence to that. Imagine taking out the need to say something, to give solutions, to evaluate, or to even agree with what they say. Don’t rush. Now imagine breathing deeply as you listen, as if you were taking in every syllable they utter, holding it as the key to the gateway of their own kingdom. Here, every concept, need, or complaint is a manifestation of awareness in its myriad forms—the way in which life expresses itself through them.
Whether awakened or contracted, whether graceful or concealed, whether conscious or conditioned.
In therapy, and especially in person-centred therapy, which is one of the approaches I am training in, listening is perhaps the most important skill along with our presence as therapists. Listening as a form of spacious presence where everything is welcomed, held tenderly, and never judged or used as a means to get the client somewhere we think they should be going. What in person-centred therapy might be called active listening or unconditional acceptance, in the non-dual path we might speak of recognition, as in: “I recognize you as divine consciousness made flesh, and the ways you’ve been hurt, the ways in which you long, and the ways in which you conceal from that same divinity are still a manifestation of that perfect consciousness in its movement and in its process towards self-discovery.”
I have had my most meditative experiences in the therapeutic space, in the allowing myself to listen with the whole of my body to another being, and to allow my awareness and their awareness to merge, as if we both come out of separation for a moment, as if we were a tidal wave finding its way back to the greater undercurrent of life. It is a profound state of non-duality and resonance, and the closest concept I’ve found in classical Tantrik philosophy to it is aavesha (आवेश), which refers to a temporary state in which our spiritual heart is pierced by a deep sense of grace, an overwhelming state of presence.
And if we bring this back into the tenderness of our ordinary life, are we truly listening?
First and foremost to our own selves. Do we allow every thought, every somatic sensation, and every emotion we experience to be gently enquired upon as if the divine was yet again uttering its song? Do we hold our own process with softness and grace and validation? Or do we rush to move past whatever it is that troubles us, if we are able enough to even perceive it.
Do we listen to the other beings with whom we share our life? And especially the ones that are closer to us, the ones we think we already know, the ones we see as a closed concept instead of a fluid process that constantly changes and evolves. Do we recognize the divinity moving through them when they trigger us, when they hold up a mirror to our own deep wounds, when they bring us into our most contracted and contrived selves in the flick of a second?
And lastly—and might I add, most importantly—do we listen to the whole? Or are we accustomed to giving weight only to that which speaks in words, which speaks in the language of cognition? Do we, if ever, try to listen to the other forces of the visible and invisible more-than-human realm—the ones speaking in intuitions, in iridescence and warm light patterns, in energy; the ones speaking in the wisdom of seasons, in changing patterns, in constant arising and passing, in the vision of the engulfing darkness between each star?
Shambhavi Sarasvati writes: “listening is the gateway, the bhava (attitude) that directly introduces us to the overflowing, all-directional continuity of perception beyond small self. Through entering into listening, we can discover our real nature.”
What would happen if we allowed our sense of hearing to extend way beyond our sense of small-self, and to allow whatever it is we receive to pierce our tender hearts back into reciprocity, back into the mystery, back into the utter sacredness of ordinary encounters?