Resources: Listening & Relationships
Listening is more than a communications skill, it is a capacity that arises from receptive presence and awakens our awareness. As we learn to listen inwardly, we begin to understand and care for the life that is here. And as we listen to others, that same intimacy emerges.
In the resources below, we examine the blocks to listening and the practices that cultivate this essential domain of human potential. Our focus is both on the transformational power of listening in our personal lives, and also the necessity for deep listening if we are to bring healing to our wider society.
Talks on Listening & Relationships
Path of Sacred Relatedness – Undoing the Blocks to Loving Presence
We long for soul friends, and yet often engage with each other in reactive ways - caught inside the experience of a wanting, guarded, fearful self. This talk explores practices...
The Honesty Challenge – Getting More Truthful with Ourselves and Our World
Most of us value honesty yet are not aware of how regularly we avoid facing what’s difficult inside us, and how we are less than truthful with others. This talk explores the...
The Power of Deep Listening – Part 2
Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to...
The Power of Deep Listening – Part 1
Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to...
Survival of the Nurtured – Our Path to Belonging
“We are not the survival of the fittest. We are the survival of the nurtured.”— Louis Cozolino We flourish when nurtured with love and understanding. Yet for so many, the...
Relationships – from Reactivity to Re-choosing Love
Most of us have habitual ways we create separation from others. This talk takes a look at the roots of our emotional reactivity and ways our meditation practice can foster more...
Radical Friendship: Conversation between Tara Brach and Kate Johnson
The often unseen cause of our difficulties in relationships is the societal structures that are marked by violence and domination. This conversation looks at what blocks...
Trusting the Gold: A Conversation between Tara Brach and Jonathan Foust
In this interview-style conversation, Jonathan asks Tara questions about key themes in her new book, Trusting the Gold. They include their own relationships and ways we work with...
The Sacred Art of Listening
Just as presence is the heart of meditation, so deep listening is at the center of all conscious, loving relationships. This talk explores how our wants and fears block...
Listening to the Song – Part 2 – “Removing the Fluff”
Listening is our gateway to intimacy with our inner life, each other, our earth and spirit. These two talks look at the ways that listening gets blocked and the teachings and...
Listening to the Song – Part 1
Listening is our gateway to intimacy with our inner life, each other, our earth and spirit. These two talks look at the ways that listening gets blocked and the teachings and...
Belonging to Each Other – Part 3 of 3
Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and...
Meditations on Listening & Relationships
Meditation: Cultivating Deep Listening (19:54 min.)
Deep listening expresses the purity and presence of our true nature. This meditation guides us to come into a state of listening that is spacious, receptive and profoundly...
Meditation: The Silence That is Listening (10:08 min)
Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. This meditation emphasizes the anchor of listening, and...
Meditation: Listening to Life (18:27 min)
Meditation: Listening to Life - The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening - a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen...
Meditation: Listening to our Heart (22:16 min)
True listening arouses an open receptive presence that can be truly healing. This meditation awakens a listening presence; first bringing that receptive awareness to sensations...
Meditation: Listening to our Life (17:54 min.)
A receptive listening attention brings intimacy with our inner experience and our world. This meditation guides us in listening to sounds, states of mind, sensations and the...
Meditation: Listening to Life (24:26 min.)
The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel...
Meditation: A Listening Presence (20 min.)
The receptivity of listening awakens us to the living stream of life. This meditation guides us in listening to sounds, and then listening to and feeling the aliveness of our...
Meditation: The Silence that is Listening (21:38 min.)
Listening to sound is opens up to the space of pure being. In this guided practice we begin by awakening through the body, and then explore listening to sounds and silence, and...
Meditation: The Silence That’s Listening (morning on retreat) (27:15 min.)
Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. In this guided meditation, we begin by opening to sound and...
Meditation: Mind Like a Vast Sky (18:13 min.)
This meditation opens with listening and discovering the sky-like awareness that includes changing sounds, thoughts, feelings and sensations. The sounding of bells and chimes...
Other Resources on Listening & Relationships
Blog: Being a Mirror of Goodness: An Intention for the New Year
Blog: Being a Mirror of Goodness: An Intention for the New Year Adapted from: Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAINTara Brach,...
Blog: Shifting from Blame to Love: 3 Practices for a Wise Heart
Evolution has rigged all of us with a negativity bias—a survival-driven habit to scan for what’s wrong and to fixate on it. In contemporary society, a pervasive target is our own...
Blog: The Sacred Art of Listening – Nourishing Loving Relationships
To listen is to lean in softly With a willingness to be changed By what we hear – Mark Nepo What happens when there’s a listening presence? When we’re fully in that listening...
Blog: Deep Listening: Ear of the Heart
Most of us consider listening a great virtue. We love having others listen to us with interest and care, and we hope to be good listeners ourselves. But for most of us, listening...
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