Tag: listening

Quote of the Day – December 27 2012

“It is easy to tell the toiler
How best he can carry his pack
But no one can rate a burden’s weight
Until it has been on his back”
― Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

People ask me for advice from time to time. I find it surprising because I don’t see myself as any kind of example and what insights I have seem to come as much from luck as anything else. Yet as the years go on, I have people making comments about my wisdom. I figure as long as I find it funny and don’t start believing my own press I am probably ok… That’s one of the worst traps I can imagine, believing myself to have any kind of wisdom beyond that of any body willing to listen and say clearly what they are hearing.

 

While we’re on the subject of traps, another one that I am more likely to fall prey to is comparing the burdens that people have. One person may tell me that they were teased and bullied and I may know another who was beaten and sexually abused and abandoned by their parents yet can I truly say the latter had it worse than the former? Perhaps the one who was tortured found a safe and loving home to grow up in and started putting the pieces together in early adulthood. Perhaps the other felt so worthless from being bullied that after years of resenting and hating others gave into their learned loneliness and killed themselves. It seems our capacity to deal with what we bear in life is relative. But then comparing people’s pain is a sucker bet at the best of times. I’d rather share some cool techniques for helping them through it. Better yet, let’s compare back rubs or ways of making another person feel valued. Yeah, a much better use of time.

Blessings, G

 

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Kali at the Fountain

Kali At the Fountain by G A Rosenberg

 

 

Kali Dancing in the Fountain of Time2

Kali Dancing in the Fountain of Time by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – February 22 2012

“Listen to your heart. Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.”
Paulo Coelho

Listen to your heart yes but even more important as I’ve been learning lately is listening with your heart.

I have always had a reputation for being a quick study. I can usually read what someone is saying within a spoken line or two. I tended to get impatient after that, finishing what they had to say sometimes putting a question mark at the end because tho I was a fool, I didn’t want to think of myself as an arrogant putz. So much for that idea. I missed something in the equation that I’ve just started figuring out lately. It’s not important only that a person be understood but that they feel listened to as well. I’m getting a bit better at it. I still have a ways to go. It’s a funny thing tho the more I’ve been listening, the more I’ve learned that what a person is saying is only part of the picture. The rest you can’t hear with your brains or your ears but only by listening with your heart.

When you listen with your heart, not only do you hear what a person is saying but what they want to say. Not only their words but the feelings, perhaps unspoken to that they’re saying as well. When I’ve listened with my brain, far too often I was looking for flaws in what they were saying. Perhaps I thought I was being helpful, finding ways in which their statement could be improved or corrected but I don’t want to be the person who does that anymore. Sometimes the help a person needs is not to be corrected but to be considered. That doesn’t mean blindly agreeing, It means absorbing their communication and answering back with what I honestly feel and if I do disagree, then state it without equivocation but making them feel that they’ve been heard. That’s who I’m looking to be now. It will take practice and I’ll screw it up sometimes but I feel like I might be on the right track with this listening stuff. Thanks, G

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Initiation by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – February 20 2012

“Effective listeners remember that “words have no meaning – people have meaning.” The assignment of meaning to a term is an internal process; meaning comes from inside us. And although our experiences, knowledge and attitudes differ, we often misinterpret each other’s messages while under the illusion that a common understanding has been achieved.”
–Larry Baker

Well, I believe words do have meaning. Still, I agree with L Baker that you need to listen not only to the words but beyond the words to the heart that speaks them. Not just listen with your ears but listen to your heart. This has been a lesson long in coming to me. Funny thing is that the clues and pieces were there all the time. My favourite story that of the Six Blind Men and the Elephant that I’ve used a lot to illustrate how everybody has part of the truth is all about what happens when people WON’T listen to each other.

Blind Men and the Elephant
poem by John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887)

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the ElephantIs very like a wall!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
” ‘Tis clear enough the ElephantIs very like a tree!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

If those ‘wise’ men had only listened with compassionate hearts to each other, they might have figured out they all had a part of the same thing. Too often we focus on the part of what someone else says that we most want or expect to hear, so if the person is someone whom we have problems with (and we all know those people, usually they are the ones who manage to tell us what we most need to hear in a way we just DON’T want to hear it, then what we hear will cause us problems. We may look for the insult in their words. If they say something that disagrees with our most cherished beliefs than we may very well feel ourselves insulted. I know I have.
Sometimes when an idea of ours has been challenged, we feel exposed and vulnerable, The Emperor who’s new clothes so fine that only the wisest of sages can see it has actually been tricked into walking around naked. How dare they? Yet if we listen, we hear that that is not so at all, we have not been insulted, our clothes are there (tho there is much to be said for being comfortable with nakedness and vulnerability), just a belief has been challenged. Can we refute the challenge, either through our thoughts or through research? Perhaps or possibly we may learn something new. We may come out of the conversation with clearer understanding than we entered it. I know that for me there has been many a time where that has been the case. But only when I listened. Blessings, G

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The Compassionate Heart Listens by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – November 15 2011

“So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.”
–Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

Listening to a room, empty except for love and enjoying the fullness of every moment.
the cat purrs and it becomes a melody
as does the screaming of my son’s computer in the next room
or the ring of the telephone
or the dog’s bark at the stranger at the door..
listening and allowing those moments of love
becomes an exercise in joy
–G A R

 

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Furnace of Creation by G A Rosenberg

Clearing Out the Communication Room

Today I found myself in an interesting conversation on the E.T. Disclosure Now! group on FB. In it, I found myself expressing some ideas in a fairly clear way so I thought I’d share it…Someone had asked about how to ‘keep up’ and do spiritual work on themselves. The fact that they were asking the question was an indication that they were doing work on themselves and that when it comes to self-development (or anything else for that matter), intention is 90% of it. Learning to listen to ourselves and opening our hearts count for several more steps in the process.

The first step to listening to ourselves or anyone else is to be silent. Nothing can get in the way of listening more than talking over yourself. Another step, forgiving yourself ahead of time for anything you might hear and your reaction to it. We all have a lot of garbage in the communication room to clean out. Some of it is stuff we’ve kept piling up because we’re afraid to look at it most of it is no worse than anyone else’s, we just fear it is because it’s ours. Bringing it into the open and being willing to look at it, telling the tale even to yourself is a big part. Nothing is as big as the secrets we keep.
Once they are known they shrink.

Once we look at some of what we have been carrying around, we can let them go by accepting them the way we would accept a confession of past wrongs by an old friend with acceptance, forgiveness and love. A lot of the garbage we carry around inside of us may be our responsibility but is not our fault. Once we can forgive ourselves for carrying it then we can forgive others for what they might have done or what we perceived they did. Once we have cleared out the nonsense in the communication room, then we can listen to others and ourselves easier. There is very little we dont already know if we but listen.