One of the most powerful things I’ve already got from the retreat I am at is about listening.
The kind of listening I have with anyone will dictate how much I’ll learn from that person and how connected I’ll be with them.
It doesn’t matter who it is or what it is being said, my listening will dictate what I’ll get out of that interaction.
There’re some people who I tend to listen deeper to and other people who I tend to not listen to at all and judge the hell out of them for speaking. We all have those.
If my dead grandfather, who I never had a chance of meeting, appeared to me live for a casual conversation, I can assure you I’d listen to him like no other person. I’ll make sure to be silent, to absorb everything he’d say, to be curious and ask a bunch of interested questions about him. And if I’d disagree with him, I’d let that marinade within me and eventually learn something from it.
That level of listening would be consciously created by me. I’d be the one who chose to show up open and available to receive what’s being said, to be touched deeply by another person’s presence.
In the same way, I can create the opposite of listening - judging.
There are dozens of moments during the day which, if I am really honest with myself, I am judging and arguing with another person - even if mentally.
I may hear people, but I am not open. I’m full of “yeah…but”s, full of hearing to disagree or waiting for my chance to speak. I am rushing in my mind and closing off from being impacted.
The value is not in what is being said, is in what I get from it. So I create the value, I create the atmosphere for insight, for learning, for connection, for love, for impact…within me.
It doesn’t matter how wise are the words that are spoken to me, if I am in judgment I might as well not hear them at all.
In the same way, it doesn’t matter how ordinary are the words being shared, I am open to being impacted, I’ll see gold in every bit of them.
Love,
Felipe