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

To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. I ran across a cartoon of a man and a woman on a first date,

and his thought bubble is saying, I can't think of

anything to say. She must think I'm a total bore. And hers is a man who can actually listen

to me. I think I'm in love. I know for myself, one of the most always gratifying experiences is when I enter a conversation

and I'm really intentional about listening and that really becomes the practice in those

moments of not planning ahead what I'm going to say, not rehearsing, really

taking in another person.

And being intentional really makes a difference.

So I love, I try to do it a couple of times a year offering talks on listening because it profoundly

changes our relationships with others and it comes from the capacity for an inner listening

to quiet the mind and take in what is happening now.

What I find for myself is that the more stressed I am, the less I am actually listening.

The more I disagree with somebody, the less I'm actually listening.

So it's really valuable to make it a whole life practice for me, to notice when I'm losing receptivity,

when I'm caught in my own judgments, and how watching how often I go on automatic and don't

really show up. It's really valuable because then it motivates me to deepen

attention. So I'm hoping you'll find that this talk does the same for you. I'm so aware one friend

brought it up in me, asked me recently, said,

does it really matter what anyone is saying in this 2024 election cycle?

Is there any real listening?

In our society, we have less and less capacity to listen.

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