Listening from the Heart

This article describes one of many techniques developed by Adventures in Spiritual Living to encourage and support spiritual experience. This particular activity is a get acquainted process and requires a partner.

Introduction

This exercise will help you to get acquainted with another person by sharing your spiritual aspirations, goals, and values. It is called “Listening from the Heart” and it has the extra benefit of giving you and your partner the opportunity to practice being better listeners.

Each partner will take a turn talking while the other listens from the heart. Spend about 20 minutes on the exchange. Jesus advised his followers to trust and confide in one another. This exercise gives a small experience in trusting and confiding.

In his book “The Road Less Traveled,” Dr. M. Scott Peck says that the simple act of listening is one of the greatest gifts of love that you can give others. Listening can be an act of service, it can help you develop special friendships, and it can enrich your relationship with God. In fact, Listening from the Heart practices the type of friendship experience you can have with God.

“Listening From the Heart” is having an intimate conversation with another person where the object of interchange is simply that one person shares his personal hopes, dreams, goals and heartfelt experiences with his friend. The friend, on the other hand, is a good listener who is interested, understanding, appreciative, and kind.

Let me give you an example. I have a very special friend named Susan whom I have known for about ten years. Over the years we have shared each other’s hopes and joys as well as our disappointments and fears. She has listened to my frequent fears and frustrations when I am overwhelmed at my work. Her sincere confidence in my abilities gives me the confidence I need to persevere during those difficult times.

Susan has shared with me her fears of not being able to see her children grow up. Many times I have listened to her as she talked about her frustration of not being the wife and mother she thinks she should be, even though she is more involved with her children than most people I know.

If you were to meet Susan, you would never know that she has a chronic disease that could take her life. She has been in the hospital numerous times, sometimes staying for four to six weeks, and has undergone many surgeries. Her fears are real, and there is nothing I can say − but I can listen and I can pray.

What I can give Susan is a “safe place,” or a “safe friendship” to express those intimate fears and frustrations. Having someone to talk to and pray with helps put things in perspective. This is the kind of special friendship I am talking about. You may already have friendships like this. I encourage you to find friends to share your life with.

There are additional ways to enhance your listening skills and help keep the conversations going on a spiritual level. One of the first things to remember is that your friend is a child of God and that your goal in listening is simply to love him or her more.

Other things you can do to enhance your listening skills:

1. Remove any barriers within yourself and be open.
2. Let him or her know by your body language that you have plenty of time to spend.
3. Place your attention on the speaker, not on yourself, your ideas, or your answer or response.
4. Do not be critical. Release the need to change the other person or solve their problems. Instead, give encouraging responses: eye contact, nodding, smiling, and occasional comments or questions.
5. Ask your friend to express her feelings about the things she is telling you. Respect the emotional elements of her thoughts and experiences. They are often more significant than the facts.
6. Do your best to genuinely understand. Project that you care.

To Do the Exercise

When you meet with your partner-in-listening, one of you will share on the topic while the other listens from the heart. Then you will reverse roles. You will each have eight minutes to talk and eight to listen. This is not to imply that you cannot have a two-way conversation, but it is to make sure that each person has plenty of time to talk and also has the opportunity to be the listener. At the end of the sharing time, we suggest you spend the last 4 minutes praying with and for each other, either aloud or silently, as you wish.

Discussion Following the Activity

When you finish, talk with each other about your experience.

1. How did sharing with your partner make you closer as friends?
2. Did you have any special insights about the value and pleasure of this type of friendship? If so, will you share them with us?
3. What are the qualities of a good spiritual friendship? (sincerity, openness, trust, sharing)
4. How do these same qualities apply to your relationship with God?
5. In what ways can your prayer-time with God be similar to the time you just spent with a human friend?

There is a reluctance in society to speak of spiritual things. I encourage you to have at least one friend with whom you can have deep spiritual discussions. Seek out these relationships and nurture them.

Listening From the Heart is not a time to intellectualize, but rather a time to share experiences, feelings, insights, hopes and dreams. This person may also function as your prayer partner whom you can call on to join you in prayer for those special needs in your life.

Group Experience: If you lead a group in this technique, ask people to choose a partner for the activity. Then ask everyone to return to the large group and share whatever they would like of their experiences or insights.