Heartfelt Communication: Listening Beyond the Surface
Heartfelt communication, listening beyond the surface, was a skill that took many years to develop. Growing up, my family’s commandments included, “Listen when your mother speaks to you!”
It may as well have been written on stone tablets, for it was delivered with authority I never questioned.
I thought I knew how to listen, and throughout school, I took notes to remember what I heard.
I sometimes felt like a tape recorder, with little understanding of the deep rich messages that lay beneath the words spoken by some pretty fine teachers.
Listening as a heart practice
Then I discovered listening is not done only through my ears, but it is a heart practice.
My first experience of this type of listening began deep in the woods behind my home when I was a young adult.
I loved to wander through the trees and listen to the trees “talk” to each other. It didn’t matter to me that I couldn’t translate what they were saying.
It was overwhelming to realize that trees (and flowers and all wildlife) have language and communication.
Who did I think I was? Someone who was supposed to “take dominion over all the earth?”
Or to listen as Mother Earth speaks?
Listening to the trees
As I listened to the gentle murmur of leaves and occasional groans of heavy limbs, I realized a conversation was happening.
I didn’t understand the language—but then I didn’t understand the language of birds, cats, Germans, or people from Spain. It no longer seemed to matter.
I would find a stump to sit on and listen to the trees talking to each other. Occasionally I heard a songbird commenting on something (perhaps her opinion of humans trespassing so blatantly in her home?). Of course, there always seemed to be squirrels and chipmunks celebrating their acorn harvest.
I listened to something else as I sat beneath the tall evergreens and thickets of birch trees.
Beyond what I could hear with my ears was a song of lament, a confession of wonder, a psalm of gratitude.
Listening to the silence
I discovered my heart could hear more than my ears if I allowed it to be still enough to listen. And I also learned one of the greatest lessons of my life…to listen to the silence.
Instead of listening “for” something, I sat very still and allowed silence to wrap around me and bathe me in her healing presence. I didn’t need to translate her message, for it was Love.
How has this changed how I listen today? Unless I catch myself, I find myself often listening the way I did back when I was in school.
Listening with my ears as if I need to take notes as if I will be tested on the words that have been spoken, and with a mind constantly on alert for arguments to what I am hearing. The mind of a student!
Listening deep
There is a place for this listening, but not when I want to discern the response to deeper questions like “What am I being called to? Or what is someone trying to say beyond their tears or anger? Or what are my deepest needs?
These questions call for careful listening, an openness to new ideas, and, most of all, silence.
It’s the silence I struggle with. Do I not feel worthy of such holiness? Do I judge myself as more knowledgeable than the person speaking to me? Do I need to feel heard and validated by another person?
I do NOT hear YOU when I listen to you with an unexamined heart.
Oh yes, I can repeat to you what you just said. That special area in my brain is akin to a tape recorder. Have you ever noticed that tape recorders are passionless and practically hollow boxes?
The challenge comes when we get quieter. Many voices are demanding to be heard, not unlike my mother’s voice.
These voices are full of oughtas and shouldas and judgments. If you are trying to tell me something important in your heart, there is very little chance it will reach my heart if I listen with my ears.
Listening with the heart
So what are the steps to listening with your heart instead of your ears?
The first challenge is to turn down the volume of inner voices, and you do that by acknowledging their presence with a smile and assuring them (your outer self) that you will return and hear what they have to say later.
There are precious few times when what my brain is telling me to say can’t wait.
Suppose you visited a neighbor whom you haven’t seen in a while. She tends to be shy, but the first thing she says is, “It’s good to be home. That hospital was no fun at all.”
Wow…she just opened the door to many questions, any of which you may want to respond to.
But first—remember the questions are yours, not hers.
“What happened? Are you sick? How are you feeling now? Is there anything I can do?” How often do you suppose this shy woman has had to answer these same questions in the last 24 hours?
When I am faced with a situation like this, I find if I bite my tongue (gently), it creates enough distance between my noisy brain and my much more gentle and loving heart that I can create a holy space in which she may breathe and reconnect with ‘home.’
And if not, that is OK. Her need may be to be silent, to be loved without talking, to share the intimacy of “home” without interrogation.
A heart response echoes her statements— “I bet it feels good to be home.”
And then pause.
Let the silence enfold you both. There often is more spoken, heart to heart, from within silence than could ever be heard with ears.
And that is what makes silence holy.
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