Learn to Listen

Learn to Listen

The way to plenitude has some requirements. A very essential requirement is your ability to listen. Listening is uncommon. People hear all the time, but rarely do they really listen. It has been said, with a better translation: he that has ears to hear, let him listen. How come? We all have ears to hear. Yes, but we do not use them to listen. In order to understand wisdom, you need to use what has recently been called active listening, or empathic listening. At least, sympathetic listening. There are whole courses to teach people to practice active listening.

The essential point in the art of listening is that you put yourself in a receptive, receiving mode. You are normally like a glass full of muddy water, full with your preconceived ideas, biases, thoughts referred to spiritual development, interpretations of your past experiences, unpleasant emotions, strong opinions, etc…, which fill your glass with muddy water. It is so full, that such muddy water reaches the edge of the cup and spills out. Nothing can enter into your glass, which represents your mind.

In order to listen, what you need to do is to empty your glass. You may pour your substance into a, let us say, a cup of tea, that you have available, and let your glass crystal clear, empty, ready to receive new ideas or, better, the Ancient Wisdom.

That does not mean that you are going to swallow what you are going to listen. No, no. When Do what Socrates recommends. He said that an unexamined life is not worth to be lived. Therefore, please examine what you have read or listened to, and then you may reach your sound conclusions.

My daughter, when she was a child, used to tell me the following joke: there is a duck at the edge of a pond (more common versions place a man in a bar). He has a banana in his ear. So he could hardly hear. I doubt if I should tell him the problem that he cannot listen because he has a banana in his ear. Maybe he will be upset if I get close to him and tell him what is wrong with him.

Finally, I took courage, and decided to tell him the truth:

“Hey, Sir, excuse me, but you have a banana in your ear.”

“What?” The man cannot listen to me, so I cry loud.

“I say that you have a banana in your ear”.

“What?”  The man still cannot listen to me. I speak still louder.

“That you have a banana in your ear”.

“Sorry –said the man- I cannot listen to you because I have a banana in my ear”

Je, je. You know. He knew the problem, but he did not do anything to solve it. He kept the banana in his ear, and could go on unable to listen.

So, my dear friends. Please assume an active, alert and emphatic attitude, put to work your whole attention, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, with all your heart, please be present here and now, empty your glass of water, take your banana off your ear, and listen…