The Sacred Art of Listening

Tara Brach

Tara, Dharma, Selfhelp, Talks, Spiritual, Buddhist, Insight, Audio, Tarabrach, Mindfulness, Rain, Psychology, Compassion, Vipassana, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Meditation, Guided, Brach, Buddhism, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 10.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2020

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sacred Art of Listening - Just as presence is the heart of meditation, so deep listening is at the center of all conscious, loving relationships. This talk explores how our wants and fears block listening, ways we can deepen our capacity for listening, and the healing that unfolds when we truly feel heard by another (a special talk from the archives).

What happens when you’re really listening?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author.
0:21.0	I'd like to begin tonight with a story I heard from a minister who described giving a sermon
0:28.0	on Sunday and hearing two teenage girls in the back giggling and disturbing people.
0:33.0	So he says, I interrupted my sermon and announced sternly, there are two of you here who have not heard a word I've said.
0:41.0	That quieted them down. And when the service was over, I went to greet people at the front door and three adults apologize for not listening and for going to sleep.
0:54.0	In church and promised it would never happen again.
1:00.0	So tonight's talk is titled The Sacred Art of Listening.
1:06.0	And I'd like to begin by asking you in terms of inquiry, how many of you feel that you have an intention to become better listeners?
1:15.0	It's just one of those ongoing intentions. Can I just say?
1:19.0	For those of you that are listening to a podcast, that was almost everyone.
1:24.0	How many of you feel like you have quite a ways to go? You know what? That's okay.
1:31.0	It's not easy. And we have strong, strong habits of being distracted or preoccupied or when other people are talking planning what we're going to say or judging.
1:44.0	It's just like any training in presence that listening is this sacred art that comes alive when we're deliberate and we're really practicing.
1:55.0	So we need to put in the 10,000 hours. You know that we have it's 10,000 hours to have some mastery and anything.
2:02.0	It takes a commitment to bring this practice of ours, of mindfulness into relationships and really listen.
2:10.0	And without practice, we don't, without having some formal way of practicing, we don't seem to do it.
2:16.0	We have a lot of patterning. We stay in.
2:19.0	So I found that what often will motivate people is when one or more relationships start obviously deteriorating when they run into trouble.
2:28.0	And you know with your team, with your team, or with partner, or whatever, there's a misunderstanding or conflict and it just keeps spiraling.
2:38.0	And clearly it's happening because one or neither party is able to really listen in a way to understand what's going on.
2:51.0	Listening and feeling heard are really the grounds of any mature relationship, love relationship.
3:01.0	And also feeling that we are heard.
	...

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