Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference.

To make a donation, please visit tarbrock.com.

Namaste and welcome. There's a story told by Franklin Roosevelt. He often endured these

long receiving lines at the White House and he complained that nobody, when he'd greet

people, nobody really listened to what he was saying. So one time he decided to do an experiment

and with each person that he met in the line, he'd shake their hand and then eat murmur,

I murdered my grandmother this morning. And the guests responded with phrases like,

marvelous, keep it up, keep up the good work, we're proud of you, sir. God bless you, sir,

you know, whatever they just say, you know, say things like that. It wasn't until the end of the line

that the ambassador from Bolivia actually heard the words he said. And he was very non-plused

in the leaned over in Westford Wells, or I'm sure she had it coming to her.

So most of us value good listening and some deep way we get that we can't really

understand each other ourselves. We can't really connect if we're not, if there's not that

quality of listening attention. And we also, for most of us, it's a growing edge. There's some

intention to improve on that front. And often it comes to us in a jarring way that reminder that

we haven't really been listening well. And it might be that all of a sudden our partner

questions the relationship. Questions, the intimacy is there. We find out our teenage son has

gotten addicted to drugs. Or it might be that we haven't been listening inwardly and our body

falls apart in some way. Or it can happen, you know, in a spiritual way that we've realized, wow,

I've been, it's been a decade and I haven't really been attuning or aligned with my purpose,

my values. And so there's kind of a wake up that and we get that not listening creates suffering.

That if we're not attending inwardly and with each other, we really can't be present,

...