"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. You can see that when you think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays."
-- Brenda Ueland
How well do we communicate with others? Often, when we are interacting with others, our attention in both speaking and listening is focused on meeting our own needs.
Our communication skills improve when we can open to be aware of the needs of the other person. When we listen, we can release the filters that serve our own needs for security and receive the message with our compassionate heart. And when we speak, we can choose words that the listener is able to receive. True communication happens when we harmonize with the other individual.
"So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it."
-- Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The first duty of love is to listen."
-- Paul Tillich
Higher Power, remind me to listen to others with a heart that is open. Remind me today that this is a "WE" program, and it isn't always about me.~wren
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"Never argue with an idiot... They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience..."
This is a nice read for me tonight. I just got back from a weekly Emotional Sobriety Workshop, and we have been learning about the emotional maturity in being a 'listener'. Kind of neat how your post went right along with what I heard and absorbed tonight.
This 'listening' is so much a part of the process that I have only just begun. It is hard to listen as a person very early on in a new way of life that requires stillness. Asking God to 'remove my need to be animated' is helping me in the very beginnings of my process. And I surely feel like a baby bird in a nest right now!!! If I don't stop peeping sometimes, I'm not going to get 'fed'.
