Things I Have Learned About Listening #01
Following my mom through Atlanta’s magnificent botanical gardens.
Y’all, I have so many notes, half-finished essays, voice memos, and hastily scrawled diagrams about listening that I don’t know which way is up. I have been busy since I first wrote to you all about this whole listening project in what, oh, late 2024.
And I keep getting totally paralyzed by putting everything together into One Big Important Thing, which is clearly not the way to go when it comes to making sense of the journey I’ve been on. So instead, I thought I’d start by sharing little vignettes in a series of posts titled “What I Have Learned About Listening” casually pulling together a few pieces of flotsam and jetsam into a vessel for sharing.
As always, thanks for being here.
i.
Krishnamurti once asked (and answered), in conversation with David Bohm, “is pure observation, which is actually listening, love? I think it is.”1
This, in the midst of a discussion about the trouble of knowledge, how the abstraction of insight into ideas that we act on closes the door to love and intelligence.
Krishnamurti’s sense was that only listening, attentive and open, can get around the manner in which knowledge blocks perception. In my reading, I believe he is referring to what some traditions refer to as transmission—the direct transfer of information/energy/affect from one person to another, bypassing the the entire knowledge-creating apparatus entirely.
I took this to Roma Hammel, who I have studied a form of embodied non-dual meditation with for years, and we explored it over several sessions.
What I learned is that moving from observation to listening to love is a progression, a crossing of dimensions, an integrative process of attunement that allows the whole body to receive.
Observing and listening asks us to be empty so that we can receive everything, receive love. In order to do this we must inhabit ourselves fully, deep within our core, and from this place we let go into emptiness where receiving happens.
This emptiness is the emptiness of deep listening where you can attune to the quality of love. Letting go of the eyes and ears, listening from an open heart. An aliveness and responsiveness comes in, and our hearts break open.
And with our hearts so broken open we can allow ourselves to be deeply touched by the world, and respond in kind. When we listen in this way, we are liberated.
ii.
On the other side of love is fear. Fear shuts down our ability to listen, to love.
Observation from fear is distorted. Fear affirms itself and entrenches us in a fragmented worldview. The body constricts and hardens, cutting off the ability to receive, to connect. We become isolated.
To calm our fear we create ideas, knowledge, and opinions. Back to the conversation between Krishnamurti and Bohm, Bohm wonders if we are so full of opinions that we can’t listen. Krishnamurti confirms, “you can’t listen with opinions; you might as well be dead.” 2
Fear deadens us. To ourselves, to the world, to life. We cannot receive, we cannot listen, we cannot love when we are consumed by fear. Our attention moves outward in hyper vigilance, or collapses into disassocation. When we close ourselves off this way, we are easier to control.
Anger often shows up to keep us from feeling fear. What’s interesting about anger is that it brings pleasure. Our brain likes it because anger protects us, so it rewards us with dopamine. Think of the last time you were hopping mad—feels kinda good to be righteous, doesn’t it? That’s the edge of adrenaline and endorphins doing their thing. We shout at the world, giving it our fury and rage.
Listening, love, and liberation. Fear, anger, and control. These two threads are woven into the world. We must be in remembrance of the former, lest we become subservient to the latter.
iii.
Maybe the biggest fear of all is of an inner void deep inside of us. Gemma Corradi Fiumara, an Italian philosopher of listening, writes,
“At every level in our culture the experience of an inner vacuum, the sensation of a fragile identity and the terror that in the depths of the self there is nothing—no one—insinuate themselves.3”
This fear also looks for resolution in the outer world, drawing our attention away from that which needs it most—our inner wilds. Our attention goes to the rules of the game, to those who possess power, and we wonder what, if anything, inner listening might bring us. When we pay attention outside, we can at least insure our survival.
Our greatest mistake is that we have believed the myth of the void for far too long, rather than seeking out its truth.
What I have come to learn is that the void is not empty, but a source of light, an illumination that is always with us as a guide throughout our time on this planet.
It is the door in the back of our heart through which love enters.