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One of my life goals is learning to listen well. Just today a friend was telling me something I knew would take a little time and I found myself half listening and half thinking of what I would say when he slowed down. Half listening is about as bad as no listening at all. One little “twick” I have learned is to repeat back to a person what they have just said to you. That shows them you were trying to listen and if you fell short, it gives them another chance to tell their story. Say something like, “Let me see if I fully heard what you were saying,” and then repeat what they said as best you can remember it. If you missed a detail or two they will still appreciate your effort to be a better listener. I think I saved a friend from suicide one time by just going to his apartment and listening for a couple of hours. Unfortunately 5 years later he did commit suicide. It felt good to me that he had five more years to play his guitar and speak at AA meetings. He was a powerful ball of energy and love when he was right. When he crashed you had to dig him out of the ground. Sometimes when you try to talk a friend into living, you sense and sometimes even know they are going to do it no matter how well you listen. This has only happened to me a couple of times. A wealthy lady asked to go to dinner and it had the overcast feeling to me of a last supper. I asked questions to bring out some of the pain and poison from her inner being. She repressed it and I am convinced she knew that night what she would do in about two months. A long-lasting depression eventually erodes the will to live. You cannot take responsibility when something like this happens. I mean, don’t say and think, “If I had been good enough he would not have done that.” All we can ever do is the best we can at that moment and it is seldom, if ever, perfect because we are only perfect at the very core of our being where the heart knows the Omnipresence of God. In other ways we will always be imperfect and learning. If you loved them and they knew it, that is the best anyone can do. Listening is like lancing a large boil on someone’s body. The old phrase “talking out your problem” is very accurate. As someone talks to a loving, understanding person, they are actually healing themselves and don’t know it. But you can realize it for them. The love energy in your being is drawing out their poison. That’s why listening is so powerful. It is the most under-estimated healing technique we have. It works to some extent with everyone but in the most powerful way with someone who really trusts you and knows his or her secrets are completely safe with you. A man once told me after I quietly listened to him bare his soul, “You cannot believe how much better I feel. It’s like feeling you have absorbed my problems and yet I know that is impossible.” The truth is that absorbing someone’s problems is the worst thing we can do. If they are in the blender, who will it help for you to get in there, too? See them in your mind stepping out of their circle of pain and see yourself stepping out with them. See yourself walking hand-in-hand with them for a ways, both of you smiling with the knowledge that you have both shared something special. The thing I love about listening is that it is one spiritual skill you can get better at every day of your life.
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