Humility of Listening

08/02/2019

Life is like this: sometimes sun, sometimes rain.
Fiji proverb

“Good questions are born in silence. They begin with the humility of listening,” writes Ann Pelo in an article that is the foundation of an Out of the Box Training Kit. “As a child offers her ideas, listen with self-awareness: What touches your heart? What values are ignited as you listen? What catches your attention, leaves you curious, eager to hear more?”

When we listen with self-awareness, we bring our full selves to the conversation, we stop being teachers intent on instruction, and become companions in the project of understanding.”

Pelo’s encouragement fits with author Dennis Lewis’s writing on his blog that is focused on careful listening:

“Deep listening has to do with the very essence of our relationship to ourselves and others. Deep listening requires love, being, and understanding. From the perspective of self-knowledge, self-transformation, and self-realization, to listen deeply means to welcome, to make ourselves fully available to, what is actually taking place now both in and around us. This is only possible, however, when we are inwardly quiet, alert, and sensitive, when we are in a state of receptivity.”

Source: “The Lost Art of Listening,” by Dennis Lewis, denisslewis.org, 2009

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