The Importance of Listening

Krishnamurti on Listening and Love

From: The Awakening of Intelligence by J. Krishnamurti

Brockwood Park, October 7, 1972

 

I have loved reading Krishnamurti because he helped me to deeply reflect. The following quote I have found to be true and reinforces what Carl Rogers talked about all of his life.

Pat

 

Krishnamurti : “I think this is what really takes place. When you were

talking to me—I was noticing it—I was not listening to your words so much. I was

listening to you. I was open to you, not to your words, as you explained and so on. I

said to myself, all right, leave all that, I am listening to you, not to the words, which

you use, but to the meaning, to the inward quality of your feeling that you want to

communicate to me.”

 

Bohm: “I understand.”

 

Krishnamurti: “That changes me, not all this verbalization. So you can talk to me

about my idiocies, my illusions, my peculiar tendencies, without the conscious mind

interfering and saying, “Please don’t touch this, leave me alone!” . . .

What I am saying is: don’t listen to me with your conscious ears but listen to me

with the ears that hear much deeper. That is how I listened to you this morning,

because I am terribly interested in the source, as you are. You follow, Sir? I am really

interested in that one thing. All this is the explicable, easily understood-- - but to

come to that one thing together, feel it together! You follow? I think that is the way

to break a conditioning, a habit, an image which has been cultivated. You talk about

it at a level where the conscious mind is not totally interested. It sounds silly, but

you understand what I mean? . . .

But you see the truth, that as long as the mind is conditioned there must be conflict.

So you penetrate or push aside my resistance and get to that, get the unconscious to

listen to you, because the unconscious is much more subtle, much quicker. It may be

frightened but it sees this danger of fear much quicker than the conscious mind

does.

 

Bohm: To reach the unconscious you have to have an action which doesn’t directly

appeal to the conscious.

 

Krishnamurti: Yes. That is affection, that is love. When you talk to my waking

consciousness, it is hard, clever, subtle, brittle. And you penetrate that, penetrate it

with your look, with your affection, with all the feeling you have. That operates, not

anything else.”

 

Inner Work, Meditation, Strengthening the Witness and Enlightenment

At first, as I do therapeutic inner work the contents of my brain are me.

As I talk with someone about the contents – how I hate myself, can’t do anything right, how I could I have screwed up in that job interview, failed that test, could not make the relationship work etc.  – I become more aware of myself. I start getting insights etc. What I am doing as I am first beginning to reflect on myself, islearning to strengthen my ability to observe – to become the witness of my own thinking, feelingand doing.  I think I am my thinking, feeling and doing! Ken Wilber calls this “a case of mistaken identity.” A shift is taking place to being the observer of all the contents in my mind – all thoughts and feelings that I am having.

Wilber calls this “strengthening the Witness.” As I do inner work these contents have less and less a hold on me. Dan Brown would call this hold, “the grab”. The grab takes us away from being present as the contents of my mind grab me and keep me ruminating as I do thought elaboration. As I do inner work the contents of the mind have less and less a hold on me. My mind becomes more quiet with less negative thought and feeling. As I continue to strengthen the Witness I can see the ever more subtle movements of the mind until they too have less of a grab. The mind is emptying itself and an internal order comes about in the mind. Now I am continuing to strengthen the Witness as a meditative practice. I am awakening and preparing myself for the “grace that is unearned and unexpected.” I am opening myself to enlightenment.

I do not have to work at changing anything. Change will come about through grace. I do not have to work at trying to understand why I have all these problems. What I have to work hard at is strengthening my ability to Witness.

It is healing and enlightening to be in a “we space” with others who can also be a Witness with me. And perhaps help me to strengthen my Witness.

Percept talk strengthens what Ramana Maharshi calls the “I-I”, that I call the “I-i”, that in percept is known as the “I and the me”. If I can do percept work, I tend to bypass my tendency to analyze, to disconnect or dissociate and instead have direct experiences of my thinking and feeling so that they can be released, their negative energy dissipating as I reconnect to parts of me that I have sometimes denied. The “me” in percept dissolves into the “I” of Spirit and I am now more prepared to become enlightened.

-Pat Howley

 

You Listen

The following poem was written by a client.  

 

You listen without silencing the loud, ugly cries of my pain,

You watch, without judgment, my whole being unfold

 

The details are still sharp, the bigger picture of me, whom I had lost,

is more clear

 

You see me, in all tenderness and quietly embolden me to stay there

where I am tender

Where I am simple

You are there, which makes this tender place real, and comfortable

and possibly inhabitable

 

Somehow, I am breathing deeper now

and writing poetry again.

 ~A Client