The Sacred Art of Listening -- Nourishing Loving Relationships

The Sacred Art of Listening -- Nourishing Loving Relationships

To listen is to lean in softly
With a willingness to be changed
By what we hear 
-- Mark Nepo

What happens when there's a listening presence?

When we're fully in that listening presence, when there's that pure quality of receptivity, we become presence itself. And whether you call that God or pure awareness or our true nature, the boundary of inner and outer dissolves and we become a luminous field of awakeness. When we're in that open presence we can really respond to the life that's here. We fall in love.

This state of listening is the precursor or the prerequisite to loving relatedness. The more you understand the state of listening-of being able to have the sounds of rain wash through you, of receiving the sound and tone of another's voice -- the more you know about nurturing a loving relationship.

In a way it's an extremely vulnerable position. As soon as you stop planning what you're going to say or managing what the other person's saying, all of a sudden, there's no control. You're open to your own sadness, your own anger and discomfort. Listening means putting down control. It's not a small thing to do.

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We spend most of our moments when someone is speaking, planning what we're going to say, evaluating it, trying to come up with our presentation of our self, or controlling the situation.

Pure listening is a letting go of control. It's not easy and takes training. And yet it's only when we can let go of that controlling that we open up to the real purity of loving. We can't see or understand someone in the moments that we are trying to control what they are saying or trying to impress them with what we are saying. There's no space for that person to just unfold and be who they are. Listening and unconditionally receiving what another expresses, is an expression of love.

The bottom line is, when we are listened to, we feel connected. When we're not listened to, we feel separate. So whether it's the communicating between different tribes or religions, ethnicities, racial groups or different generations, we need to listen. The more we understand, the less we fear -- the less we fear, the more we trust and the more we trust, the more love can flow.

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The Powerful Key to Creating a Loving Relationship

Do you want a loving relationship? Most people do. Yet, most of my clients are either struggling to
find a loving relationship, or struggling to create one with their partner. Why is this so hard for so many people?

The reason is that most people haven't a clue regarding what actually creates a loving relationship. They haven't a clue because their parents didn't have a clue and neither did any of their other role models.

I'd like for you to imagine two clear glass bottles. And I'd like for you to imagine that the energy of love is the color violet. One of the bottles is empty and the other is full of violet -- so full that the violet is spilling out of the bottle.

What does this have to do with creating a loving relationship? Everything!

Imagine you are empty -- like the empty bottle. Inner emptiness indicates a lack of love -- a lack of violet, which comes from one thing -- self-abandonment.

Inner emptiness feels awful, so you try to get filled in various ways. Perhaps you use substance addictions to try to fill up -- food, alcohol, drugs. Perhaps you are addicted to pulling on others, trying to have control over getting their violet -- thinking that if you can get enough of their attention, love, approval, or sex, you will feel full.

There are many ways we've each learned to try to control getting love. What do you do? Do you give yourself up? Are you overly nice? Do you become needy, demanding, angry, critical? How do you pull on others for their love?

The problem is that everything you do to try to have control over getting another's love creates problems in a relationship. Controlling behavior often triggers the other's controlling behavior and soon you are caught in a vicious circle of anger, withdrawal, resistance or compliance -- all of which have negative consequences for a relationship.

Since we attract at our common level of woundedness -- which is our common level of self-abandonment -- it is likely that, if you are empty, you will meet someone who is also empty. At the beginning of the relationship, you try to fill each other by being on your best behavior, but since you are both empty, problems soon emerge. Neither of you have love to share so both of you end up with the same emptiness you had before you met. You then might conclude that you picked the wrong person, but this isn't the issue. The issue is that you don't have love to share because of your own emptiness, due to your own self-abandonment -- your own self-rejection.

Let's go back to the bottles. How did the one that is full of violet -- of love -- get that way? How do you get full of love so that you have plenty to share with a partner? Learning to fill yourself with overflowing love is the key to creating a loving relationship.

We live in a universe of love -- of violet. Imagine that surrounding you into infinity is the violet that is love. The person, like the bottle, who is full of love, has learned to access the love that is always available to all of us.

How To Access Love From the Universe

How do you do this? How do you access love from the universe so that you don't have to try to get love from others?

The key to this is your intent. If your intent is to have control over getting love and avoiding pain, then you will not be able to access the violet of the universe. Trying to control closes the heart and cuts off access to the Source of unconditional love that is God.

When your intent is to learn to be loving, starting with loving yourself and then sharing your love with others, your heart opens and you automatically receive love from the Source. The full person is a person who is openhearted and receiving love from the universe, and then sharing their love with their partner and others. When two people are filling themselves with love, and are loving themselves and sharing their love with each other, they create a loving relationship.

Instead of rejecting and abandoning themselves by avoiding responsibility for their own feelings with various addictions, loving people take full responsibility for their own pain and joy so that they are not needy of someone doing this for them. As I hope you can see, emptiness and neediness create the controlling behaviors that cause relationship problems. Taking responsibility for learning to love yourself, and filling yourself with love to share, creates loving relationships.

Start now with learning to love yourself by taking our free Inner Bonding eCourse.

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