Soft and relaxed
Posted by jodietonita on January 3, 2007
“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” Henry David Thoreau
The practice continues >>>With each and every person with whom you speak, bring your deepest and most respectful quality of listening.
Are you finding it hard work to listen deeply?
Do you get tired?
If so, lets experiment with deep listening and deep relaxing at the same time.
Does it have to be hard or stressful?
You don’t have to DO anything.
It’s more a quality of BEING.
So, when you listen to people today, really listen, but imagine the flow of their words was like a massage. You just have to lay back and receive…
Like their words were a flow of water streaming from a mountain spring…
While you sit on the bank listening and enjoying the sounds of tinkles, babbles, and rushing water…
Let the quality of your attention be soft and relaxed… not spacing out.
Still keeping your attention directed…
But patient.
Easy.
Choose three conversations to practice listening in this way.
Its fine to practice listening all day, but pick 3 where you are going to devote the highest and deepest quality of your attention yet soft and relaxed.
Adapted from the practices of Robert Gass.
Russell said
An Empty House Remembers
The empty house around me ticks and creaks,
A moody end to evening’s gentle rains,
A brooding quiet as the daylight wanes,
The secret language empty houses speak.
What stories might this house preserve entire
In rhythmic code composed of click and groan?
Does House recall a sadness with each moan?
Is laughter stored in every plank and wire?
And how might I, a fleeting visitor,
Acquire an ear for stories trapped in time,
And wrap a tale or two in words and rhyme?
How can I tap the House’s secret lore?
In silence soft the house slips off to sleep.
Alone I sit, in darkness vast and deep.
gokubi.com » Blog Archive » A new voice on listening said
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jodietonita said
Thanks for the lovely poem Russell. I am getting ready to say goodbye to a 100 year ol house that has taken good care of me the last couple of years. This is a reminder to listen to what it has to tell me.
Russell said
I remember very well a time in my youth when I spent a whole week alone on our family farm with just Cleo, our dog, for company. Cleo helped me herd the milk cow in to the milk barn twice each day. It took me 3 days of *not talking* before I learned to understand her non-verbal communications to me. When I finally clued in, it was as if she was telling me, “About time you figured it out. Now let’s get to work!” And from then on, we were attuned, so very well attuned we needed no words at all. Just glances, body position, movement, to direct each other. We were a hunting herding pack of two.
At the end of a week of total non-verbal communication, when my family came back, it was a rude, loud re-introduction to the crudities of common human speech. I was in culture shock. My voice came out as a croak. Everyone seemed so muffled in their ability to express themselves and to hear each other.
And though my awareness of non-verbal communication dimmed over time, it never stopped. What’s jarring for me is the disconnect between people’s non-verbal language and their words. I never smoke pot any more, because when I do, the non-verbal communication literally shouts at me – I can’t tune it out. And people’s bodies usually say something very different than the words they say out loud. I no longer try to reconcile the two – just makes people too uncomfortable.
Listening, however, is where it all starts. I agree. Stopping talking, and letting the messages come in. Talking is too often a wall people use to block out messages they don’t want to hear, or control thoughts they need to have walls built around. Stopping the inner voice, really stopping it, opens up a wonderful new world of communication, whether verbal or non-, and it all starts with really listening.
Thanks for letting me rant.
Russ
Russell said
Love those old houses. They have such a character that most new domiciles never achieve. Bluff House at Cortes, on the other hand, is a newer house that really speaks to me. Literally, the way the wood is put together, the marks on the surface, the orientation within the nest of trees – these all speak to me.
Hope your new location is kind to you.
Russ