Sentient Times Dec/Jan 06

From Hurt to Heart

Quieting the Mind and Listening Deeply to the Heart

By Eryn Kalish, MC

“I thought this was a class on compassionate listeningSM practice …why so much meditation and focus on dealing with what’s going on inside of us rather than on the people we’re supposed to be listening to?” a participant in a workshop asked me awhile back.

It’s a truism that we need to “get ourselves out of the way” in order to deeply listen to another person, yet very few of us can do that with much skill when we’re triggered by a conflict. We have to overcome a tremendous amount of hardwired chemical, reptilian-brain reactivity in order to put aside our own needs, judgments, fears, and anger to enter fully into another person’s space. If this were an easy thing to do, the world would look very different. Hopefully, with enough of us doing deep spiritual practices that integrate mind/body/soul/Spirit, the future for humanity will be very different than today’s rampaging violence. Meanwhile, the best way I know of to get there is to practice, which is why our workshops emphasize the deepening practices of meditation and inner work.

It is through practice that we connect with our own deep essence, which opens up the possibility of connection with the essence of another. When that occurs, listening is no longer formulaic and without heart, and the speaker can trust that we really care. When that caring heart connection is strong, compassionate listening is possible and healthy solutions that come from deep collaboration are born.

There are many practices that compassionate listeners have found useful in assisting them to get quiet enough to become deeply connected with their own essence, and thus the essence of others. While there is no substitute for having a solid, daily anchoring practice that “grounds” our energy in Spirit and the earth, in addition to meditation and prayer practices such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Akido, and meditative walking all can help. A healthy diet free of stimulants does, too, as do de-triggering practices that can be used in the moment like Heartmath’s Freeze Frame, or the Diamond Heart and similar methods for moving deep into one’s essence. The important thing to remember is that being triggered into reactivity and away from our capacity to listen to someone else is as natural as our yearning to connect—we are wired both for rage and for love, for war and for peace. If we yearn to evolve ourselves, our relationships and our world toward something more whole, more holy, we must, like the New Yorker told the tourist who asked how to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.

Eryn Kalish is Founding Principal of Workplace Connections, LLC and a Certified Facilitator of The Compassionate Listening Project. She uses practices and tools from Compassionate Listening SM, meditation, conflict resolution, organizational development, psychology and group attunement processes, to provide those involved in conflict with what they need to heal deeply at the roots. Eryn’s life mission is to help facilitate global integral solutions to conflicts and she is part of the Israeli-Palestinian training team for The Compassionate Listening Project. Send questions about your conflicts to Eryn at SenTimesReaders@aol.com.