One of the challenges that we face when we are engaging others is to listen and speak in ways that enable the participant to truly engage each person.  Basically, you should not confuse the two activities.  Listen when the other person is speaking and speak when others are listening.  Here are a few guidelines or principles I encountered recently which can help in both activities. 

• Silence creates the space for listening to God. It provides time to explore our relationship to Source. The practice of being in this silence nurtures our capacity to listen to others. 

• Reflection gives us access to listening for our inner voice. The practice of taking a few breaths before responding to a situation, question, or comment gives time for your true wisdom to reveal itself. It’s a slowing down, waiting, practicing patience. 

• Presence is the awareness of listening to another, of connecting at the heart level. The practice of taking a mundane, ordinary activity and giving it your full attention, for example, washing your hands or brushing your teeth, trains your concentration and your ability to be in the present moment with another.  

It is important to keep the ego in check if you want true communication to take place.  Often, rather than listening to what someone else is saying, we concentrate on what to say to score points or to impress others or to win the argument. 

When the conversation involves more than two people it becomes even more of a challenge.  We want to ensure that we have an opportunity to say the very important thing that will raise us up and put us in a prominent position.  Here are some rules which can encourage people to speak from the heart in these situations. 

Begin by inviting each participant to set four intentions:  

  • Speak from the heart (truthfully, including your feelings).  
  • Listen from the heart (without judgment, with an open mind).  
  • Speak spontaneously (without preplanning your response).  
  • Speak leanly (use only the necessary words; for many, this is the hardest discipline of all).  

Holy listening and holy speaking occur when we are fully present with others. If we are able to be fully present to others, we are truly in communion with them

May you be blessed to engage in holy listening and holy speaking  

I acknowledge that we are on Turtle Island, the original homelands of the many Indigenous Nations who have lived since time immemorial in Canada or as many First and other Indigenous Nations All of the lands in Canada are the subject of up to one hundred Treaties signed by the Crown in the right of Canada with these Nations.