I am indebted to Aaron Bartlett who inspired this conversation.
We've all experienced it: that
rug-yanked-out-from-underneath feeling we get when we
think we're being listened, only to unceremoniously realize we aren't.
You're in a conversation,
face-to-face
or not, in the flesh or online (as has become de rigueur
these days). You're in the middle of making a critical point. It's a
point which you're actually creating / coming to grips with for
yourself as you speak it, just as much as you're recreating it out loud
for the person listening - in other words, your speaking is getting
both of you clear on what you're saying, just in the very
ordinary process of you saying it.
There's a sense of impending satisfaction, a tangible onset of reached
accomplishment and fulfillment as you get near the moment of being
fully and totally expressed in what you're saying ie of being fully and
totally heard (or fully gotten if you prefer). And then,
at exactly that critical moment ... the person listening
looks away, or yawns, or appears to be distracted by something else
going on (or a combination of some or all of the above) or in some
other way lets on they're not listening at all.
Your momentum is suddenly blunted, your energy build-up /
anticipation
deflated like a
balloon
by the point of a pin. The moment's gone, the opportunity lost. You're
let down. Continuing to speak is no longer an option - in any case,
you'd have to start all over if you want to make your point, and you
wonder, stopped, thwarted, frustrated, if starting over is worth it,
your trust in their listening irrevocably shaken. "Are you listening?"
you ask ... but you already know the answer. "Excuse me?" says your
listener, now feigning
attention
again, caught red-handed, "I'm sorry, what?", to which "Forget it!" or
"Oh, never mind" are two of the
common
responses.
We all have, know, and remember experiences like that when they
happened to us - which is to say when they were done to us. Yet it's
almost axiomatic that if we're to listen
others authentically, we first have to discover
we never listen,
and we never will
(as
Werner
may have said). So what we don't quite so readily remember (if we tell
the truth about it) is we've not listened others just as much as (if
not more than) they've not listened us. Why "if not more than"? The
answer is: because of the frustration inherent in such experiences,
we're likely to remember those done to us by others, more than we're
likely to remember those done by us to others.
Compare the all too
common
experiences of not listening fully and attentively, to the experiences
of listening fully, attentively, and completely, and continuing to
listen unabated until the speaker has nothing left to say, having fully
expressed all of it. This is the
world
of listening till there's nothing left. It's in total
contradistinction to / it's the complete antithesis of that other
"Excuse me?" / "I'm sorry, what?"
world
of the incomplete listening experience which is satisfying to neither
the speaker nor the listener. And compare that to thisworld
in which both the act of speaking and the act of listening
(and the act of being listened) are
satisfying to both the speaker and the listener (there's a certain
magic that goeswith complete
communication
/ complete speaking and complete listening - as
Alan Watts
may have said).
At this juncture I'd like to introduce the idea that "Excuse me? / I'm
sorry, what?" listening, is (in a word) untransformed
listening. On what basis do you assert that,
Laurence?
On the basis that there's no
presence of Self,
and no listening till there's nothing left - which requires being fully
present (and empty) to another's speaking. That would be
transformed listening: when there's
presence of Self,
and listening till there's nothing left. And please notice (so our
focus isn't distracted) that even without deploying either of those two
particular descriptors ("untransformed" / "transformed" listening),
there's a known, getable difference between their two
worlds.