Part Two: Learning to Listen
4 What We’re Listening For
The disharmony
When a Worker faces a disharmony in their life, it activates unresolved pain that is hidden in their unconscious. The work involves facing into this discomfort to heal this old wound. Then life can reflect increasingly more satisfying experiences.
When such old emotional pain surfaces, there is also some untruth hidden in their unconscious. But the Worker is not aware that such an untruth exists, or what it might be.
Our job as the Helper is to listen for the distortions in their thinking that stem from hidden untruth. Such buried misconceptions are what create duality. They split true reality into fragments which, due to their lack of wholeness, are no longer true. This leads to a distortion of reality that creates confusion and darkness.
This means the illusion of duality only exists where there is untruth, such as we find in the dark corners of our fragmented psyche.
As we listen to the Worker, we are not listening to hear what happened. We are listening for the distorted conclusion the Worker has drawn from what happened.
That’s the real cause of their disharmony.
It is by healing these distortions—by finding and unwinding the misconceptions—that we can help the Worker restore themselves to wholeness. To harmony.
We are listening for the distorted conclusion the Worker has drawn from what happened.
Hear the story, notice what’s happening
As Helpers, we pay attention to everything we notice and keep bringing it into the session. Because it’s already in the room, giving us valuable information.
For the most part, what we need to do is slow things down—to notice what’s really going on. We get out of the way, read the signs and follow cues.
The body
It’s important to keep bringing the Worker back to the experience of their body. For that’s where they will find the feelings that connect to the problem in the story.
We might notice that we’re losing the thread of what they’re saying. That’s a good time to ask for a pause. Because the same thing is likely happening with the Worker. They are losing their own connection to themselves.
Worker: (paraphrasing)… and then this happened…and then that happened… and then she said….and so I said….
Helper: I want to ask you to pause for a moment. You’re putting a lot out here for me to hear. Let’s just take a breath. How are you feeling in your body right now as you’re sharing this with me?
They’ve been running from this their whole lives. Now they’re sitting with us, telling us their story. Our goal is to help them get to what’s beneath it.
The goal is not to have the Worker stuff their story away, but to let it reveal where the Worker needs to go. Once they’re off and running, the story isn’t really needed.
The emotional charge
As the session begins, we want to align with our inner guidance during the attunement and hear what comes out of our mouths. Our words may become a thread that weaves throughout the session.
As the Worker begins telling us about the disharmony, we are tuning in to the Worker. What are they feeling as they talk?
Difficult feelings can be even harder to reach than distorted conclusions, because they, too, become deeply lodged in the unconscious regions of the Worker’s psyche. But unlike actions and thoughts, people have far less ability to immediately and directly control their feelings.
This means we must work harder—with compassion, skill and patience—to help the Worker bring them into conscious awareness. It also means that both the Helper and Worker must pray, because the ego cannot make this happen.
As Helpers, we use our ego to direct our prayers, asking for help in guiding the Worker. Throughout the process, we also guide the Worker to pray for the courage to feel their pain.
The distortion
Uncovering the truth of a situation is a very difficult task. It means we are willing to see all of the relevant factors. In the moment when a disharmony exists, the Worker can experience themselves in truth by becoming honest about what they feel. This means they drop below the story of disharmony.
In addition to surfacing painful feelings, the distortion in their thinking needs to surface. What is the untruth they are operating from? We know it exists, because of the disharmony.
We also know that the untruths in our unconscious don’t quite make sense. This is why they have sunk into the unconscious as the child has grown older. It’s also why the Worker needs to say the phrases they are hearing inside, out loud.
We listen for where the Worker contradicts themselves, or uses logic that is the limited logic of a child.
The duality
Untruths cause the psyche to fracture. As we listen, then, we want to discern where reality has become split. What represents life for the inner child of the Worker, and what feels like death?
Then how has this illusion of duality turned into a lose-lose situation, where the Worker feels stuck, imprisoned by life. For this is the inevitable outcome of becoming lost in the illusion of duality. This is what the Worker wants freedom from.
But the very notion of winning at life is illusion. Just as it’s not true that we were ever defeated, it’s not true that we can now win. More to the point, it not true that we can make the pain go away by winning.
The only way out of this error and struggle is to die into the pain of it.
We must learn to lose. Ultimately, that is how we overcome.
The Worker has to learn to lose, in the right way. This is the only way to gain back their dignity and illuminate the truth: that it won’t kill us to feel painful feelings. It’s our fight against feeling our feelings that is now our real problem.
As we do this work, we will need to die many little deaths. We must die into our pain, releasing all the painful feelings we couldn’t bear as children.
The common denominator
When there are multiple seemingly unrelated challenges going on in the Worker’s life, we look for the common denominator. The Guide teaches that everything somehow fits together as part of a bigger puzzle. So we welcome all of it.
For example, say the Worker has difficulty establishing fulfilling relationships and… also feels blocked in their career. What’s the connection? Maybe we uncover a pushy, greedy attitude and… they also experience sexual dissatisfaction. What’s the connection?
Or there’s submissiveness and lack of assertion, on the one hand, and… outright hostility on the other. We’ve got to search for the connection.
Trust that there is one.
In the end, every story eventually comes down to the same three movements:
This happened.
It hurts.
I don’t want to feel that.
Once the Worker has accessed the frozen feelings beneath the story, a big part of the work is done. Now we can begin to explore what has kept those feelings frozen.
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