How to be a better listener

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Dear Friends,

I just had my first class with my friend Rik van den Berge on how to be abetter listener. An 8-week series, on this one topic.

My fellow students and I shared why we signed up for the course, spanning professional and personal reasons. As a chaplain-in-training and a writing coach + consultant, listening makes up 90% of what I’m providing others. It seemed important to get better at it, so all can benefit.

Rik emphasized good listening as:

1) a practice of compassion instead of judgement

2) two minds working together to navigate one mind.

Rik encouraged us to practice daily meditation as part of the listening course. One of my fellow students is new to meditation, so Rik kindly asked for my thoughts as a Buddhist practitioner. I shared that **meditation is equivalent to listening to oneself. **

I can’t recall which meditation teacher said this originally (likely someone from the Zen tradition.) It’s a deceptively simple saying. But if we apply the internal family systems (IFS) model and view the mind as discrete parts, inner turmoil is a reaction to our parts not listening to each other.

When we listen to another person, we become conduits to help their parts talk to each other.

When we listen to all parts of ourselves, that’s meditation.

Warm Wishes,

Christin