The Art of Listening
by Rev. Martha Doran, PhD.
I recently completed the One Spirit Interspiritual Companioing and Counseling program (ISCC) designed to enable its students to gain a better sense of how to be a spiritual companion, a spiritual guide, or counselor. One of my biggest insights is how much being a companion is being a listener.
What is the art of listening?
While that may sound trite, how often do we feel that the one listening hears us for what we are saying, not for how it matches what they have done or can tell us, or can fix for us or can lecture us about, or worse yet, preach to us? We each may mean well in trying to listen, trying to be “with” someone.
But the art of listening takes patience, restraint, focus, and persistence. In other words, it takes work, demanding inner work. Yet even more than any of these admirable efforts, listening requires our own desire to listen for just the sake of listening.
One of my primary prayers is acknowledging that God, the Divine, speaks to every listening ear, and every ear listens. Her Message is being broadcast, sent, received, and heard – 24/7. It takes practice to listen, along with space, time, and awareness.
Yet the key ingredient is our consent which starts by saying “yes,” and being willing to listen. Then the practices and the time and the space all have a way of showing up. How do we find our way to yes? Once found, how do we renew our consent to listen? Do we have tools in our toolkit to check in with Divine guidance during the day, during the world’s demands?
In this article, I share definitions and examples of what it means to listen, including some of my experiences to develop a listening practice, and to find ways to allow for space and time to listen. While listening is an art more than a science, science can help distinguish the difference between hearing and listening. It’s good to practice in a variety of ways to help us check in with our listening, our consent, our yes, as well as ways to renew our yes.
Hearing and Listening
So, what does it mean to hear? Merriam-Webster defines hearing as the “process, function, or power of perceiving sound; specifically: the special sense by which noises and tones are received as stimuli.” In comparison, Merriam-Webster defines listening as “to pay attention to sound; to hear something with thoughtful attention; and to give consideration.”
Hearing is what our senses do often without any thinking or effort on our part. Listening requires that we make the decision, the effort to pay attention and then think about, consider, even reflect on what we have just heard. In essence, we must give our yes. Figure 1 below is a summary comparing some attributes of Hearing compared to Listening.
Figure 1: Hearing Compared to Listening
| Attributes | Hearing | Listening |
|---|---|---|
| Uses both ears | X | X |
| Receives sound waves through ears | X | X |
| Understands what was heard | X | |
| Part of the five senses | X | |
| Uses body’s other senses | X | |
| Receives brain vibrations | X | X |
| Observes behaviors that can give meaning to what was heard | X | |
| Can build better relationships with others | X |
Source reference: DifferenceBetween.net
When I was writing this article, I had a profound, though mundane experience of the difference between hearing and listening. Over my car radio, streaming forth from my favorite Oldies channel, came the song “Spinning Wheel” by Blood Sweat and Tears.
As I listened, I realized the song was referring to a merry-go-round with the imagery of “riding the painted pony.” I was dumbfounded. I had heard this song for over 50 years. I had “perceived the sounds” of the song and could even sing its tune and lyrics. Yet only at this moment when I listened had I “heard with thoughtful attention, given my consideration” and so understood the comparison to life’s ups and downs with the round and round of a merry go round, riding our painted ponies.
This moment was a seemingly small yet huge “aha” about the difference between hearing and listening. I am now humbly thinking about how many other songs, conversations, and ideas I believe I have heard but probably have not listened to.
Are You Ready to Listen? An Activity
I have found that what elevates listening to a spiritual practice is the way we go about listening. Good questions to ask ourselves include:
Have I put aside any personal agendas, ranging from my need to correct someone’s mistaken beliefs, to cure someone’s ills or to convince someone of my experiences being the same as what the companion is sharing?
Have I prepared my own inner sanctuary, my heart space, to be ready to receive, to listen to Spirit and to my companion?
This preparation grows from daily practices of making space, getting still, leaning into our yes…all from a starting point of love. The questions help me to clear the deck of the Cs of agenda making: Correction, Curing, Convincing, Criticizing.
When I let go of these Cs, there is room, space, and stillness to be open to Compassion, Clarity, Christ-strength, Communion with Spirit. A snippet I read somewhere and scribbled down sums it up: “When the human mind is quieted, divine direction is clearly heard.”
Love: Our Way to Yes
My work these last many months has also showed me that the heart of the matter (beyond forgiveness as the Eagles told me in The Heart of the Matter), is love. Love of the Presence that holds all creation, love of my companion and of myself.
Writing this now I am struck by how Jesus gave this teaching when asked what was the greatest of all the Commandments. The story says that the listener/questioner was trying to trip him up.
Perhaps the listener was listening to find fault, or areas of disagreement, or even to stump Jesus. Maybe the questioner was trying to get recognition or acceptance for his own actions, his way of acting, his knowing of the law.
The story according to Luke, tells of an expert of the law, a religious person, one who wanted to be good, to be seen as good, who asked Jesus about the way to gain eternal life. Jesus returned his question with a question… ”How do you read the Law?”
The Expert answered, saying “Love God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said, “You answered correctly, now go and live your answer.’”
The Expert wanted to “justify himself,” so he asked a new question: “Who is my neighbor?” He might have been trying to justify the generally accepted belief that a person can only be required to be a neighbor to those who are deserving and worthy, those who are like us.
Yet Jesus was listening to what was behind the question, what was coming from the Expert’s heart, and he responded to his question with a story, “The Parable of the Good Samaritan”. It’s a beautiful story, a long story and for listeners of his day, the story took different twists and turns, ending with an unlikely hero … a Samaritan.
The Samaritans were people of Jesus’ day who were thought to be a lesser class of citizenry. When Jesus asked the Expert about the neighbor in the story, the expert acknowledged it was the Samaritan, the one who showed mercy. Jesus concluded the story by telling everyone to “go and do likewise.”
Telling his listeners to be merciful to outsiders was a big ask for his time. It’s still a big ask today.
Getting the Expert to see and acknowledge that an outsider could be a hero and good neighbor was also a big shift in perception, an opening, an awareness, that continues through our times as the story gets told repeatedly. Mercy is a big part of the art form of listening … often starting with mercy for ourselves which helps us be more merciful to our neighbor. The hospitality shown by the Samaritan is the base to our word hospital … and many hospitals are even named after the Good Samaritan.
Being treated with mercy, our needs being listened to, and being companioned during an illness — all these concepts show how much listening is part of healing, maybe the most important part. Learning how to companion starts with healing one’s sense of being separate from God.
A couple years ago my brother was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. He was living in another town, and I lost him in the indigent care system and then mercifully found him in time to be with him. I was even able to get into the hospital and stay with him, holding his hand, wiping his tears. I was guided, directed each step of this journey by listening to an Intelligence and leaning into a Power that held me, held us both.
The details that unfolded in finding him and getting to him were so beyond my futile and fruitless attempts that I early on knew we were in God’s care – not separate. My time in the hospital with my brother gave us space to listen together.
Even though he no longer seemed able to speak to me, I felt I heard him, and he heard me. In the small room that was our refuge, we were cared for by the nurses in this space, even though we were where we were not supposed to be – me as an outsider during COVID and he as a person dying with no hope of recovery and with no means to pay.
The small room my brother and I occupied in the hospital, facing the mountains.
We were outsiders. Yet we were allowed to stay, and were lovingly cared for those last few days. He made his transition just before he was to be moved to a new location. I was so grateful for this space together, space for our communion with God, a quiet room to listen together to the Divine, the gentle Presence who holds all creation in an embrace of unconditional love.
Love held us, held the nurses who worked tirelessly to care for us, held the administrators who wanted us to be gone to comply with rules yet also wanted to try to find us some other place to be. No one was left out of God’s care. My brother had given me the master’s course in listening and companioning, which I then completed in the coursework offered by One Spirit.
These seemingly well-known qualities of listening and loving are not new concepts, not new advice and while seemingly simple to talk about, difficult to live. Maybe that’s the rub. Maybe that’s why the song “Eleanor Rigby” is so poignant … all the lonely people, where do they all come from? Where do they all belong?
The ability to listen with loving ears, to see with loving eyes, allows another to show their face without feeling they must wear “the mask that they keep by the door.” It’s the mask we learn to wear when we believe no one wants to hear our answer when they ask, “How are you?” We can feel more and more lonely when we can’t be who we truly are and especially when we even hide our true selves from ourselves … the blindness of self-deception.
Listening first to ourselves, enables us to then be able to listen to others. When we can truly listen in this way, it can help to gently remove those masks we keep by the door and reveal each one’s authentic core.
This kind of listening may include unpacking stories we have been told – stories told to us, about us, and around us – that we often don’t even question. We just keep re-telling the same old story. It’s important to listen and encourage the telling of the story of who we are at this moment, right now. This current story is as important as any tale twice told of our past.
Renewing Our Consent
A key ingredient in renewing my consent to listen from the heart, with love for myself and love for others, is humility — not a popular word — and often a misunderstood concept. Humility is understood by most as being humiliated, being downtrodden, being subservient, giving up, having no control, having no say. Many of these concepts can be a part of humility, but only capture the view from a perspective of human will.
The humility needed to listen comes from a sense of hearing beyond words, beyond personal agendas, personal worries, fear of losing face, of being seen as vulnerable. When these concerns fade enough to be in the background of thought, what “takes over” is the strength of humility that comes from a Source that is bigger than human will.An analogy of humility’s strength is the light that is given from the moon. The moon’s brilliance is purely reflected — all by the moon’s reflection of the sun. One of my favorite phrases describes …"humility, soft as the heart of a moonbeam". Yet the brilliant strength of the moon’s light is also illuminating. All by reflection.
Moon outside my door
Humility is my word to work with this year, the word that found me. One of the activities I did, after my word found me, was to use each letter in the word to listen to what Spirit was saying to me about humility. Figure 2 below shows what I heard. It came to me as a kind of poem, which describes the essence of renewal for my yes.
Figure 2: Letter Poem
Humility
H – Heartfelt willingness to listen
U – Unshaken understanding that grounds, holds, uplifts
M – Mercy that bathes and washes over all of us
I — Inspiration, to breathe in Spirit
L – Love … aah, Love
I – Insight that lands and enlightens
T – Tenderness that tempers each thought and action
Y – Saying “yes” to yielding, bowing, waiting
I can turn to these phrases for getting back the feeling of humbly bowing to the Divine, to listening, to saying “yes” to what I hear, and to then follow and obey what I have heard. It’s interesting to note the Latin root to the word “obey” involves listening, giving ear to, paying attention.
The concept of consent certainly starts in the heart, in one’s interior space where we can take stock of what’s happening on the outside. Allowing my heart to open helps slow down racing thoughts, a bit at least, and lets me listen to God’s guidance – Her messages.
These angel messages can be in the form of a word or phrase, a snippet from a song or sacred text, a billboard, a bumper sticker, an awareness of something right at hand, here and now. This is the kind of listening that allowed me to find my brother and companion with him as far as I could go, before he made his transition.
These moments can be small or large, can inspire, give me insights, make me smile or chuckle, or cry. Even when nothing seems to arrive or land … just knowing my willingness to say “yes,” to try to listen, is enough, and blessed.
Ways to Check in: Listening Practices
Being willing to bow before the Divine, to consent to listening and following what I hear or feel, forms the basis to my practice of being a companion. One listening practice I use is just the simple phrase I once heard — “Listen with your heart … no words needed.”
Have you been in the presence of someone who listens to you with their heart? My animal companions have this ability beyond compare.
I need more work in this regard, so I make time to practice “listening with my heart.” Sitting (or standing) and listening into a space, fully aware and present to what is happening right there, right then, is such a good way to spend some moments. You can do it when you are waiting for someone, sitting at a stop light, in line at check out, sitting with your animal companions as well as children, friends, spouses and in a hospital room.
It’s hard for some to let silence occupy the airwaves, but your willingness to allow the stillness to hold you can help others lean into this kind of practice. As you develop this kind of listening, remember to be open to what comes to you, and to what lands on your heart, for further understanding. I have had to learn to drink in these insights, even chew on them so to speak, and carefully unpack the messages.
A similar practice I find helpful is to invite an image or word to find me. (This was what I did at the beginning of the year when the word “humility” found me.)
Give yourself time to observe or feel what is coming to you as a kind of invitation. You may be drawn to words from a billboard outside your window, or words and images that are like a billboard inside your head.
You can also use your phone’s camera to receive an image, which is different from taking a photo. Observe what invites your attention and what message it can share.
Once you take a photo, look at the picture you were invited to see, and listen to what Spirit is sharing with you. The visual message can also be a listening experience. The perception shift from taking a photo to allowing ourselves to be invited into a listening experience with a visual messenger makes for both a more humble and rich listening experience.
I am growing into a better understanding of embodied listening, using the practice of listening when walking, whether in nature, in my own back yard, or in the city. Many people engage in a specific walking meditation practice. I also find I can use my time when walking to be present and to listen to sounds around me. I can listen to the birds and the wind, even the traffic.
My dog is such a study in listening, watching, waiting, and still listening. So much more is always going on than we can see or hear with just the physical senses. Yet these senses, and our willingness to be present here and now, are often a portal to listening and hearing all kinds of angel messages. I felt and heard and saw this lesson during the time I shared with my brother in our hospital room.
These few examples of listening practices are some ways I use to prepare for the times I am asked to companion others. I love the advice an amazing Christian healer from New England gave her students about their ministry in the world. She said: “Keep your violin tuned. Keep your violin tuned.” She repeated the advice twice.
So being in tune with the Divine is our primary practice. The analogy of an instrument being in tune and ready in an instant to play the tune being called for helps me understand how the elements of consent, humility, and listening are the basis of my practice of being ever ready to hold space to companion anyone, everyone, in the presence of the Presence.
A Recap
Listening includes hearing and is also so much more. It’s the attention given to what is being said and not being said.
One can listen with their heart, no words needed. Love of our neighbor, and of our self is the way to find our yes, our consent to the art of listening.
Being merciful, caring, and compassionate allows others to feel that the listening space we offer is safe, a place where healing can take place. True listening invites authenticity from everyone involved … no masks, no pretenses.
Our ability to give consent to being a compassionate listener is aided by a humble attitude of leaning into Spirit’s guidance more than our own certainly and having the courage to go forward and obey the message we hear from God. My understanding of humility means I can see that I am not the Source yet also see that “this is mine to do.” I bow to hear more of what Spirit is saying.
Practices like listening with your heart, letting an image or word find you, listening like my dog does— all help me keep in tune with the Divine. A poem that’s also a hymn often comes to me and summarizes this art of listening "I will listen for Thy voice, lest my footsteps stray."
Rev. Martha Doran, PhD, is an ordained interspiritual minister, companion and counselor, graduating from One Spirit Learning Alliance (OSLA) Seminary in June 2017 and getting her ISCC Certificate in December 2022. Becoming a college professor in the early 1990s, she honed her skills of serving as a guide on the side, letting go of the urge to be a sage on the stage. She feels everyone is both a teacher and a student; that everyone has a story to tell, a unique gift to contribute; and that education is a way to lead forth this inner splendor.
