The purpose of this book is to teach the art which I call “listening with love.” This is a very special kind of listening. The word love defines it. By “listening with love” I mean that one cares so much for another person that the full depth of that person’s being is heard. This is an act of love. The ultimate welfare of the other person becomes the listener’s final concern. This is also my definition of love.
Listening can be done for one’s own sake. We do this all the time, and it frequently has its own value. We listen to a lecture or a sermon not for the speaker’s sake but for our own. This is listening, but it is not the type of listening I am attempting to teach in this book.
There is also a destructive form of listening. This type is most extreme when we gain information from someone and then use it against the person in the form of labeling or, maybe, in the form of gossip. This is using the words of another for the purpose of character assassination. Perhaps I should call this type “listening with hate.”
It so happens that most people are very cautious with their speech, in that they carefully test the listener’s motive before they will reveal any important data. If they do not trust or do not know the listener’s intentions, they will simply relate trivia. This safeguards the speaker. Unfortunately most interpersonal relationships have such a high degree of uncertainty or mistrust in them that shallow, insignificant speech is all that is shared. And this is the case regardless of how desperately people are yearning to share, or how deeply they are hurting. It is simply not safe to do otherwise. That is exactly why a new art-form of interpersonal relationship is needed. What I mean by this I wish to communicate by using the term, “Listening with Love.”
When this art is practiced it becomes a powerful means to transform people and relationships. The person who listens with love can become ultimately effective, instrumental in effecting change in the lives of other human beings. And he can then free them from bondage of fear in relating to others, by inviting them to tell the secrets of their hearts, with the full confidence that nothing else will be done with these secrets than what is best for them. The highest good is that the listener will admire the speaker even more than ever before. He has revealed his distinctive uniqueness, and at that level one can do nothing else but adore him. Thus, his personhood must be declared “good.”
To listen this way one must participate with the other in the process. It is not enough simply to stare at him silently with ears open. The other needs to know at all times that one is hearing at that very moment. The best use of this kind of listening, of course, is to free the speaker to search deeper and deeper for a more full understanding and admiration of himself. Listening is then a great act of love at that moment, for it makes the other person feel whole.
Listening with love transforms what it loves. To listen totally means that one takes another’s whole life into one’s being and cares for it.
When I listen with love I open myself, my life to another person. I ask him to come in just as he is. No disguising is necessary with me. Now, for once, he need not put on a mask or distort anything. I say to him that he is a unique human being and that I will value all he can entrust to me. He can now fully reveal his inner world and I will receive the whole person by listening. The door to his inner world is his words-his own description of how he experiences it. My door to entering that world is by listening. When this is done something very meaningful happens.
An interpersonal transaction of this depth can happen only if it is done with love. It is far too risky for anyone to expose his inner life unless he has the absolute assurance that it will be used solely for his good. Love is the only guarantee one can give. It is when I really operate on the law of ultimate love that I can give someone the assurance that I will do nothing else with his life but what is for his greatest welfare.
People intuitively measure the depth of love of all persons in all interpersonal relationships. If love is felt to be genuine, they will reveal much. If it is lacking, they will remain superficial. If they sense malice in the listener’s heart, then they will say nothing important. They may even disguise and distort what they say so as to protect themselves from being mutilated by what they are sharing. But love opens the way to the full depth of another person.
Love will never hurt what it loves. Another’s person’s ultimate good is the lover’s final goal. With love as the dominating motivation in life, one goes down to the hurt, the agony, the deformity of another human being in order to heal, to correct, to bring comfort.
In listening, love has to be assured, or it is not really listening. It must liberate the speaker to unveil everything without any need to sort out what is appropriate. Everything that needs to be said will be said. It will all be held gently by the listener, to support the fact that it is very, very precious. It is, after all, another human being’s life.
In actual practice, listening with love is an art. I find it expedient to be constantly communicating my caring to the one who is talking. At times it need only be a simple affirmation like, “Yes, I see”; or “Go on, I am with you”; but my voice must carry the empathy.
At times it is necessary to restate the words that I hear to convey the assurance that I heard it all.
On other occasions it is more appropriate to ask for more feelings, with expressions like “My, that must have been painful!” or “How could you endure it?” or simply, “Oh! That is beautiful.”
Then there are times when the speaker cannot put into words his own heart’s cry. It is blatantly obvious to me so I will respond cautiously with, “What I hear you saying is…” Then I pick up all the parts of the many sentences as if they are pieces from a jigsaw puzzle and with the help of the individual I put them together. This can bring about a startling revelation or insight that was not known before.
Listening at this level is a creative act. It means that the fragmented pieces of a person are brought together into a single meaningful whole. A new life is born at the moment.
At times this is a frightening experience. The person may never have known that his life was screaming a message that he could not dare let himself hear. Now finally, it is out in the open. It has been said and someone heard it.
Sometimes it is a very pleasant surprise. The words one is saying are brought together into a single whole. It is exactly what he has been yearning to do, and accurate listening did it for him.
Is this not transformation?
There is healing power in listening. As a speaker unveils the deepest hidden material to me, he discovers that I deeply cherish all of it. Then, he gradually cares about it too. He now takes back that which he has given to me to hold temporarily.
At times it is just that part of himself which was so unbearable to him, so disgusting or even shameful, that he claims as his uniqueness. It is now a special part of his experience. Because I valued it while I held it, he now values it too. He comes out of this experience a marvelous human being equal to, although vastly different from, every other human being. This is exactly what every person has the right to claim.
He has discovered his distinctive difference, whatever that may be, and love it because I love it first. Only months earlier, he came into my presence ashamed, dejected, or severely depressed. Now he leaps for joy as he tells himself, “I am indeed a unique creature marvelously put together out of all of life’s agonies and ecstasies. That is what makes me be me, just like it makes everyone else be themselves.”
When someone has found the key to relationship—the principle of listening with love—he has a new tool to reach out to others. Much to his own amazement, it works for him also. He finds that people are not shunning him because of his ugliness, but because they fear revealing their own feelings of inner ugliness. Now as he extends his hand in love to others, people respond, much to his surprise. They also have long been waiting, in the shadows, for someone to come along with a gentle hand, a tender heart, a sensitive soul, and open ears. As they mutually share their inner fears nonjugdmentally, they discover a kinship that they have not known before, and the power of transforming love spreads.
Schmitt, Abraham. The Art of Listening with Love. Word Books, 1977. pp.9-10, 169-173
