To listen another’s soul into a condition of disclosure and discovery may be almost the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another. – Douglas Steere

I’d like to offer six key requirements of the Deep Listening process together with practical suggestions and questions to integrate Deep Listening into your daily life. I’m also providing you with a few wise quotations on listening as well as a couple of book recommendations. This is a follow-up on my blog article “Are you listening? Really listening?”, which is replete with video links and interesting tidbits of information and reflections.

What is Deep Listening?

Here are the six key points that to me constitute Deep Listening that moves us from the space of ‘Me’ to ‘We.’ This process is also known as compassionate or generative listening, among others. Perhaps we could call it “spiritual listening,” which emanates from a place of discernment, love, compassion and forgiveness. Deep Listening is contemplative and reflective in nature and is rooted in the heart.

1. Deep Listening requires our awareness and attention.
2. It can only begin when we choose to engage in it.
3. That means we make an intentional commitment to ourselves, and, of course, others when we converse and listen as whole-beings.
4. It must remain open-ended in the sense that it is not directed toward an outcome. It recognizes the possibilities embedded in each situation. It builds trust and enables true dialogue in which we suspend personal opinion and judgement. It serves as the foundation for all healthy relationships. It is the language of love for everyone.
5. It requires practice, just like any discipline in the arts or sports. We improve as we practice. Again, this requires commitment to remain open and learn.
6. It challenges us to take care of ourselves and fill our cup first so we can come from overflow, and not from substance. This is how we decrease the likelihood of projection, inference, interpretation and more.

In my view, learning to listen deeply opens the door for purposeful dialogue, both inwardly and outwardly directed. Such dialogue carries the potential for powerful transformational experiences in all relationships. It creates a shared vision that honestly considers differing points of view while remaining authentic. Because it centres on relationships–with ourselves, others and our environment–it embodies the move from ME to WE.

Since all listening is informed and coloured by our prior experiences and current beliefs and perceptions, it is of outmost importance that we keep ourselves as clear and present as possible at all times, which remains an ongoing process.

Integrating the practice of Deep Listening

Consider integrating the practice of Deep Listening into your daily life. If you are already practising Deep Listening, see where you may still have room for improvement. As you are well aware, family members tend to push our buttons more easily and often provide us with more challenges.

Here are just a few questions and suggestions to guide you in your practice.

• Set your intention to listen deeply–choose to give the gift of listening, to yourself and others.
• Notice how you feel when someone listens to you deeply.
• Identify places and relationships where Deep Listening is relatively easy for you. Pay attention to how you engage.
• Establish mini-retreats for yourself of 1-3 minutes where you connect with breath and silence.
• Practice contemplative listening, through mindfulness practice, centring prayer or walking meditation.
• In a conversation, keep silent and wait for what wants to arise and be said. Before you speak, ask yourself if what you are about to say, contributes to the conversation. Does it need and want to be said? Remember there are many other ways to connect with other.
• Practice putting your opinions aside. What might make it challenging to put them aside? Look at the potential triggers that you can detect in your reluctance to put your opinion aside.
• Gain clarity over your intentions when you engage in a conversation. Are your comments and questions meant for you to understand, learn, influence, challenge, focus attention, camouflage your own opinion, guide the exploration and more?
• Find role models that excite you and allow you to learn more about the power of Deep Listening that enables us to move from ME to We.

I trust this information may be helpful, perhaps inspiring to you. If you would like to read more, here is another essay on listening I wrote a few years ago. I'd greatly appreciate to hear from you.

The materials, suggestions and questions I have shared here with you, including in my blog article on listening, constitute part of the seminar on Listening that I offer. If you are interested in attending the Listening seminar, I invite you to contact me. Perhaps we can arrange a seminar in your area.

Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening ... when you'd have preferred to talk. — D.J. Kaufman

Recommended Readings

Hwoschinsky, Carol.  Listening with the Heart: A Guide for Compassionate Listening.  3rd ed.  Indianola, WA: The Compassionate Heart Listening Project, 2002.
-an amazingly simple, inspiring and practical guidebook to any form of meaningful dialogue

Lindayl, Kay. Practicing the Sacred of Listening: A Guide to Enrich Your Relationships and Kindle Your Spiritual Life.  Woodstock, VT: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2003.
-offers a variety of practical exercises that enhance listening from a heart-centred place

Words of Wisdom-for your contemplation

When we listen to people, our language softens. Listening may be the cardinal act of giving...I think it is the source of peace. – Paul Hawken

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery. — Joyce Brothers

Listening looks easy, but it’s not simple. Every head is a world. – Cuban proverb

You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.— M. Scott Peck

Without silence there can be no listening. We need to renew our ancient friendship with silence; it is older than our flirtation with Muzak. – Brother David Steindl-Rats

The beginning of wisdom is silence. The second stage is listening. – Hebrew sage Solomon ibn Gabirol

God speaks to us every day, only we don’t know how to listen. – Mahatma Ghandi

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life...When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other...and it is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. ...Well, it is when people really listen to us, with quiet fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way. – Brenda Ueland

When hearts listen, angels sing. – Anonymous

Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow your mind’s hearing to your ear’s natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. – Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook

To be with another in this way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another’s world without prejudice.  In some sense it means that you lay aside yourself. – Carl Rogers, on Listening

Effective listeners remember that words have no meaning - people have meaning. The assignment of meaning to a term is an internal process; meaning comes from inside us. And although our experiences, knowledge and attitudes differ, we often misinterpret each other’s messages while under the illusion that a common understanding has been achieved. — Larry Barker

The first duty of love is to listen. – Paul Tillich

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. — Ralph Nichols

There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves. — Albert Guinon

When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and go on. – Carl Rogers

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable. – David Augsberger, writer

It is the province of knowledge to speak. And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. — Winston Churchill

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in.Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. — Peter Senge

To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience for most people. It is enormously stimulating. It is small wonder that people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard so often fall speechless when confronted with one who gravely agrees to lend an ear. Man clamors for the freedom to express himself and for knowing that he counts. But once offered these conditions, he becomes frightened. — Robert C. Murphy

Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening ... when you'd have preferred to talk. — D.J. Kaufman

Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively. — Carl Rogers

To say that a person feels listened to means a lot more than just their ideas get heard. It's a sign of respect. It makes people feel valued. — Deborah Tannen,  Author and Professor of Linguistics Georgetown University