The Art of Listening

As a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and spiritual coach, listening is the most important skill I offer. It is the most basic skill and yet the most advanced at the same time. Listening is not simply opening one‘s ears and paying attention, but it involves directing one’s attention in specific ways to hear the different registers of experience. In this podcast episode, I distinguish between two types of listening: listening-for-others and listening-for-Self.

Listening-for-others is when you listen to someone with your full attention and being. It is to become a vessel for someone to hear themselves through you, and to ultimately help someone hear the different meanings within their words that they did not pick up on. If you can employ this listening, then you can help someone discover something about their truth that is beyond the confines of the ego.

Listening-for-Self is a practice one does alone with the purpose of loosening the grip of the ego to allow the Self within to be expressed. There are many types of spiritual and meditative practices to listen in this spiritual way, but quite simply, one can tune their attention to be actively passive, which means maintaining an activeness in perceiving one‘s inner and outer reality, but being passive in letting it flow and not trying to interfere. The goal of this listening-for-Self is become Flow, let what needs to be expressed come up, and reduce the tendency of the ego to cling to certain mental contents to decrease its rigidity.

If you would like to hear more about these two different types of listening, listen to the podcast episode below.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soulara-a-spiritual-and-mental-health-podcast/id1864222533