Kay Lindahl: Listening as Gift, Art & Choice

The Common Good podcast is a conversation about the significance of place, eliminating economic isolation and the structure of belonging.  For this week's episode Joey Taylor speaks with Kay Lindahl about listening as a gift, art and choice before focusing on listening in groups and physical environments that make sacred listening possible.

Kay Lindahl has been described as an inspired presence with passionate energy. For the past twenty-seven years the daily practice of Centering Prayer has transforming her life. She founded The Listening Center with the mission of exploring the sacred nature of listening. Kay conducts workshops and retreats on listening as a spiritual practice. She is a Certified Listening Professional. Kay is the author for The Sacred Art of Listening, Practicing the Sacred Art of Listening and How Does God Listen?  

Quotes and works referenced in this episode:

• "To 'listen' another's soul into a condition of disclosure and discovery may be almost the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another." - Douglas Steere
• “When is the last time that you had a great conversation? A conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture. But when had you last a great conversation in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew, that you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you on to a different plain, and then fourthly, a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards.” - John O'Donhue
• Our True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh 
• Spiritual Listening Practices

This episode was hosted and produced by Joey Taylor and the music is from Jeff Gorman. You can find more information about the Common Good Collective here. Common Good Podcast is a production of Bespoken Live & Common Change - Eliminating Personal Economic Isolation. 

Transcript

One of the most compelling thing that I've found is the name of my work. Because the sacred art of listening seems to call to people. There's something about that, just that title. And so my tagline  is listening is a sacred art and a spiritual practice, there's a hunger for this. When people find out about what I do, the immediate response with most people is, oh, that's great. And, you know, we could all learn how to listen better followed immediately. Why would you talk to my husband, my wife, my sister, my brother, my, you know, somebody in their lives that they wish would listen to them better. And if we take that a little bit farther out, of course, that means we might be that person for somebody else. But it's that sense of longing to be heard, I think is very dominant in our culture that what people really want us to be heard. And somehow this sacred listening, spiritual listening, the art of listening, that all kinds of draws people into, oh, maybe that's what it is. That I'm yearning for 

 one of the things that you said in this workshop that I took with you five years ago but I remember. You quoting something about how when you listen well, you can listen another person's story into being, 

that's Douglas Steer. 

I love that so much. There's another quote  by John O'Donohue that says, when was the last time you had a great conversation in which you heard yourself saying things you never said before and received things you hadn't thought of? There's something to me that's almost ineffable about that process when you're having a conversation with somebody who listens well, the way that you show up in the conversation is surprising. You say things, you have insights,  things occur to you that wouldn't have occurred to you were not for that conversation partner listening well.

Absolutely. Absolutely. 

I wonder if you have any thoughts about that, maybe around what are the conditions that are necessary that help for that phenomenon to occur. 

I talk about that as becoming a midwife for someone else's thoughts, that we hold the space. And by holding that space, opening that space up and really listening to someone else, it creates  that opportunity for that person to be able to speak authentically and know that they've been heard. And there's something magical, almost about it. And the key  there is that the listener, be fully present. Not thinking about  how they're going to respond, not thinking that, I had something just like that happened to me. Simply being that vessel, that open space vessel, that in there, there's magic that happens. It's just like there's something occurs.  When two people listen to each other authentically, God is the electricity that surges between them. And it's that kind of thing. There's a thing that happens. There's another presence that is there with the two people when they are being listened to like that and listening to each other in that way.

That seems to be  how you talk about listening as a gift, Say more about that. How can listening be a gift to  the person who's speaking, but also the person who's doing the listening. does it act as gift? 

It's an interactive gift. It's not just for the speaker that is gaining someone really listening to them. It's also for the one who's listening, gains a new connection, a new appreciation, a new opening for themselves as well. because the more we are open to listening to someone else. the more opportunity there is for us to have some new thinking in our own lives as well. So I think it is that gift and it's the gift for the listener. It's so much of the time in our world people only half listen to us. We can repeat back words even. And that's fine, but you're really not listening to what's behind the words, what's beneath the words to the whole human being there. You're listening to words. And so this opportunity to really listen deeply and have someone really be that listening presence for you. I like that word listening presence. That's my new favorite way of talking about it. We become a listening presence for each other in the world. 

And then another way you talk about listening is as an art. Why is that so important for you and how you frame listening? 

Because I think the thing about listening as an art,  it's something that it's not just an act, something we do because something we do, we can do things up here in our heads. We be things more from our hearts and so heart listening is another way to talk about that, that when we listen from that space of heart listening, that's more like an art and it's  that openness it's that sense of what we talked about before just a minute ago about that presence of something else being there, there's those moments when time sort of stands still. You're not aware of anything else except being in that moment. You can't even talk about it in the moment. You can only talk about it after the moment. And that makes it into an art and  it's like when you're in the zone or some people say that's my moment of ecstasy when I'm in that creative process. Or if it's someone who is like a jazz musician, they say that they're in the groove. You know, they just get in that place that to me is a distinction between an art and something that you do. I play music, but when I'm really in the zone of that, that's something I be that music, I be dancing, I be whatever it is. 

When I think about a skill, I think about it in terms of its utility. What does this do,  how is this useful for me? But when I think about art, the value of art is much deeper than just what does it accomplish, and then the last thing that you say is that listening is a choice. And I think  This overlaps a lot with the work that we do here at the common good because we talked a lot about discovering and acting within our own agency, and how a lot of times we will outsource our agency to other things leaders, organizations contexts that seem to be outside of our control instead of asserting our own agency. So talk for a second about why it's important for you to define listening as a choice. 

Well, for me, it's something that's very unconscious for most of us, most of the time.  We're in a conversation and someone's speaking, and all of a sudden you realize you haven't heard a word they've said, or you've been on the other side of that, and you're talking, and you know somebody's there, they're present with you, and all of a sudden you realize they've gone away someplace, they're thinking about something else, they're not there, present with you anymore. And I think it's helpful to just be aware of that, that that's what we do. then there are those times when we choose not to listen. We're not interested in the topic. It's something that's not at all concerned with us or sometimes there's a part of us that knows that if we really do listen, we might have to change our minds about something and we're not quite ready yet to do that or willing to do that at that particular point in time. Or sometimes I think it's because there's something very profound going on in our own lives, and then we just can't have more bandwidth, we can't listen because we have nothing more to give, we're just consumed with something else, whether it's a positive or negative thing, it doesn't matter. It's just that we have something else so much on our mind that there's no room  to take anything else in. And the important thing about this is to let people know, because I really think people would rather be listened to with full attention than partial attention. There's a difference in the interaction when someone's really listening to you than when they're just partially listening to you. In my work, I've heard people call it a syndrome of CPA, continuous partial attention, that we're continuously paying partial attention to everything and we're not paying full attention to anything. 

I've heard you give the advice that if you're not ready to listen to somebody, tell them, let's try again in 10 minutes. Let's try again in an hour. I can do it maybe tomorrow. I can't do it right now. And  I love the transparency of that because there's some pressure and appearing like you are listening in this moment, instead of relying on the authentic connection of saying, I'm not ready right now, but I'll be ready to authentically connect at this time.

And I think people really appreciate that but it's very rare, we don't do that, there's a politeness thing and there's also the thing that we're so busy. It's so much going on in our lives all the time. I acknowledge that, especially in this time that we live in. And it's just it's hard sometimes to say,  I can do everything all at once. I can multitask my life. And we really can't. Our brains cannot really take care of two things at exactly the same time they do it in sequence very quickly. And it tires our brains out. And that's when we get miscommunication, misunderstandings come through because we're trying to do so many things at the same time. And our poor brains are going, help, help. Time out. 

You have some practices that you recommend for people to prepare  for listening well, so talk a little bit about what it looks like to prepare to listen well to somebody. 

 I think that all of my work now is to help prepare people to listen.  And you said something about skills before, and I think there are some wonderful skills out there. And that's not what I do. I don't teach people how to listen. I teach people how to prepare to listen. So the perfect question and the silence and reflection and presence are the three practices and so  by doing a daily practice. You develop muscle memory, just like in any kind of other thing that you want to do, you practice. Playing an instrument or something, you don't just go out there and expect to play like somebody excellent right from the beginning, you practice day by day, you do your scales and then when the time comes  to perform, you have that muscle memory that takes you into whatever it is, your skill set that you have can be used. And so it's the same with listening.  To answer your first question quickly is that  when you walk into a room, take a minute to breathe, just calm down, clear your mind, get in the present moment. That's probably one of the greatest things you can do. When you go into a room, the practice of being comfortable with silence, Is also a key practice and helping us to do that because our minds keep going 20 miles an hour all the time, and it's hard to slow that down, but once we practice being in the silence, We kinda let go of that. We learn how to let go of the noise that comes in and we learn to put it in the background so we can be in the foreground, in the present moment with the person that we're with. So the practice of becoming comfortable with silence and having a silent practice helps us when we walk into that room, we can just take that minute ' if you've had a practice, a minute is enough to  center myself. And then go into the room.  I was at a medical conference and  this doctor said that that's what he does before he walks into a patient's room. They were talking about the importance of listening for physicians, and he said that he would read up on the chart and know what was happening with that patient. But before he walked into the room, he would take the moment and ground himself, center himself, get in the present moment so he could say, good morning, John, or good morning, Mary, and be with that person rather than being with the disease that that person has or the injury or whatever it is that the person has and be with the person. 

If you're preparing to go into an interaction with somebody, and you expect it to be contentious, or maybe the person isn't the easiest for you to get along with. Do you have any advice for how to engage that situation in a way that listens well to that person and honors who they are?

Well, the honors who they are. I think that's that's key. What you just said is that each person has their own dignity is this. Separate human being and even  in contentious conversations  it takes a lot of practice because it's not easy to do. We each have our hot buttons and when somebody presses one of our hot buttons is so easy to go off on whatever that is we have an emotional attachment to it or we have this very strong deep held opinion or belief about something. But if we know what our hot buttons are. And we're in a conversation that is likely to push some of them. We can acknowledge that to ourselves ahead of time. Oh, you know, I've got this button, that button on that button. And then when that thing gets said, instead of responding to the button, you just sort of say, okay, that's just the button. I can let go for now and go back to listening to this person because it's honoring the conversation. It's honoring the person. And we don't have to agree with what they're saying, don't have to  believe what they're saying to listen to understand and have a have a sense of curiosity about this person and wonder. That's really interesting. How did you come to that conclusion, with a really genuine authentic, wanting to know, being curious, having that sense about each other, there's sometimes I think we think if we just listen to somebody long enough that they're going to come around to our way of thinking, well that means that I have this subtle agenda at the back of my head, and I'm not really giving them my full attention or the space in which to say something, and knowing that I'm not going to try to come back and make them believe like I do. And it's hard. It's really hard. 

 One of the things I love about your work is that  you put things into almost taxonomies, here's what listening is. It's an art. It's a choice. It's a gift. Here's who you listen to. You listen to source, you listen to self, you listen to others. And it feels like some of that preparation work that you're talking about is cultivating some contemplative space or some silence so that you can listen to yourself. Wow.   When I'm facilitating spaces, I noticed that when I'm listening, well, I have much stronger bodily reactions  to what people are saying. And oftentimes when I make note of that to the person who is talking, like when you said this thing, man, I really felt that in my gut,  That seems to be for me  a shorthand for intimacy.  Do you have any thoughts about that? 

what you said made me think  it's a way that people know that they've been heard. And your response,  that really got me in the gut is a way that said, I really heard what you said and I really touched me

  This is a poem written by Thich Nhat Hanh.  Our true home is in the present moment.  To live in the present moment is a miracle.  The miracle is not to walk on water.  The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment.  To appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.  Peace is all around us,  in the world, and in nature, and within us.  In our bodies and our spirits.  Once we learn to touch this piece, we will be healed and transformed.  It's not a matter of faith.  It's a matter of practice.  A meditation to go along with that is to find a comfortable place where to sit  and maybe light a candle.  Welcome the stillness  and invite the great mystery into your life.  Listen to your body.  What is your body telling you?  Is it time to rest? Eat?  Move?  Does it need to stretch?  Dance? Play?  Is it too warm? Too cold?  Are there aches and pains that need tending to?  Think about a time when you were grateful for your body.  What was that like?  What would it take to feel connected to your body again?  Listen to your mind.  What is your mind telling you?  Does it need a break?  How is it stretching you?  Whose voice are you listening to?  What are you being called to learn now?  Listen to the silence.  What is the silence telling you?  What do you hear when you find yourself in stillness?  Surrender to the emptiness.  Let go.  Journal. Meditate.  What do you notice beyond the silence?  Open yourself to new possibilities.  Listen to your heart.  What is your heart telling you?  What do you notice when your heart breaks open?  What makes your heart sing?  Create a space in which you can unfold.  Listen to your life.  What is your life telling you?  What are you present to?  We each have deep wisdom in us.  What if we held ourselves in reverence,  listen to your life,  the mystery of it, the ups and downs and the grace,  be tender with yourself and with others.  Remember that we are human beings, not human doings. 

How does listening change in group settings? And are there certain considerations  to make that context more hospitable to listening?

Great question. And I've been thinking about that a bit recently and I think listening in groups is different. And it's the same, it's both. One of the things that I I've been really trying to do in my own life where I'm involved in other groups and things is to really look at the environment. Number one, how are we sitting? Are we in rows? Are we behind tables? Or are we in a circle? And my preference is sitting in a circle, so we can see each other so and that makes a difference when we listen.  If you can get a group in a circle, it changes the dynamic of the whole conversation.

Second  my intention is that  every voice is important. It's important that every voice be heard. And somehow  in a group, it depends on the size of the group, of course. But even in a large group, you can have smaller circles within the large group. And starting off with some kind of silence, just having people whatever it is they were thinking about or doing before they sat down in the circle, ground themselves, get a little quiet, and then they can be present in this circle, in this gathering. 

I would love to talk about the physical environment . So You walk into a space and you're like, we're putting these chairs into a circle, what other things are you thinking about in order to make sure the context is set  for listening, 

That's a great question because I talk about holding space and part of creating a safe space and holding space is to look at the environment. I mean, is there a lot of trash and junk in the environment? Get rid of it if you can.  about the lighting? What's the temperature in the room?  Looking at this as though you're welcoming guests into your home and what is it about this environment that is welcoming and what is it that gets in the way of it being welcoming and it could be stuff around is distracting to people. So if you can get rid of stuff around and if it's appropriate have something in the center of the circle to mark  the core the hub of the circle. The strength of the circle and in certain groups, you can say the spiritual center. It's a sacred circle and that you can put a candle in the center or something. But that's still reminder that this is a conversation where we really pay attention to each other and attention to spirit. 

As I was reading your book, I giggled a little bit because white noise is so important for us putting down our little kids now. It's a huge part of our life. And you made the note of Making sure you minimize white noise, like if you if you can turn off a printer, if you can turn off the modem or   eliminate as much of that environmental noise as you can, which I thought was such a practical and obvious thing to do. And I've been in those spaces where you go into an lifeless, fluorescently lighted office setting and there's all these little noises that are echoing through these walls and it feels oppressive. It feels difficult to do the work in those settings, right? And so  I love that you, that you made mention of that.

What I'm finding out more at this point in my life is I'm really looking at listening as a broader, . All of life is about listening. Listening to the earth, listening to your body, and just expanding the notion of listening and  being present  in the moment and how in our world that we live in, it's hard to do that. There's so much noise in our world and it's just the practice of being, that's why I like the practice of turning things off when we can, because it takes getting used to, because we're so used to all this stuff and our brains are busy tuning it out. So I like that  as a practice is to, to just get comfortable with silence, if possible, just bit by bit, even if it's just a minute, there've been studies done that even just a minute makes a difference. It gives your brain time to reset.