Inner World of Yoga – Day 10
Try listening without the interrupting dialogue of the mind by focusing intently on the other. We know the only way to calm the constant dialogue of the mind is to focus completely in a specific direction.
When it comes time for you to reply, it will happen, and in a more authentic way, than if you had been evaluating and composing the whole time.
Developing true listening allows us to bypass the habit of the mind to jump into your conversations and provide judgment based on your past experiences about which you have made decisions. When that occurs, which is most of the time you are essentially living in the past and in your mind, rather than experiencing the moment. You are essentially putting the person and the conversation into a box you formed in the past and not really seeing or hearing them at all.
Engaging true listening brings you to the actual present moment in your life where you can truly listen, and see and hear the person and the conversation as they are in this present moment, without the box of memories and past judgments. This kind of true listening allows you to see the other as they really are at that moment, and opens a real connection for you with the other.
True listening is one example of how we can open ourselves to really totally experience with all levels of our being. It energetically integrates our body/mind/spirit and moves us further along to the place of being where right action, compassion, right thinking arise naturally and spontaneously from within, are not just a learned response or stress management technique pushing down a reaction from within us, but real action arising from within with no conflict occurring in the mind.
