The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author.

So in this class I'd like to talk about the quality of mindful listening,

and those of you that were just meditating with us got a taste of it.

So it looks for the challenges and the blessings that come.

And to begin just to share one minister described giving a sermon and having two teenage girls sitting in the group that were kind of giggling and disturbing people.

So he in a real stern way said, you know, there are two of you out there who have not heard a word I've said and that quieted them down.

And he said that when the service was over and he's standing and greeting people at the front door, there were four or five members of the parish that apologized profusely for going to sleep during his talk.

That was great.

So let me ask you this, how many of you have becoming a better listener as one of your aspirations?

It's part of your consciousness.

And for those that aren't here, most hands are up. Certainly me too.

So we know that having a true listening presence when we're with others, it's difficult.

You know, we easily tune out. We get distracted. We have a sense that we're too busy to really be here for this in this moment.

And we get caught in our own thoughts and are rehearsing what we're going to say.

So it's a challenge and yet it's a deep intuitive knowing for most of us that right at the center of any really intimate relationship is this capacity to listen.

Paul Tellak said the first responsibility of love is to listen.

I think that's so powerful. The first responsibility of love is to listen.

So it's our medium of connecting. It's our way we listen to understand.

If a child is trying to tell us something and we don't listen, we cannot understand what's going on for that child in any moment,

listening is our way of connecting.

And it's our way of establishing the heart connection.

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