In doing something the degree of your conscious awareness is the deciding factor in the evaluation of whether you are truly doing the thing in question or if you are just performing its outwards gestures and signs but are inwardly absent from the task.
For example if someone is talking to you you can listen to it in different ways. If you are outwardly listening but are busy pondering upon a personal matter and are just nodding your head, you are not listening at all. If you are judging what you are hearing or the person talking to you, you are equally "absent" as a listener. And you will probably often find yourself in the situation where people assume that you already know things because they have told you about them, but you do not remember anything. To be seemingly listening to someone telling you about something but thinking of how you feel/experience/believe/know the same or differently from the talker is to be half listening. Because although you do not actually make an effort to be consciously there for the other, you are at least tuning into the same personal topic. Accordingly you are able to afterwards remember parts of what you have been told. To be fully listening is to leave aside your personal thoughts for the time being and to simply listen to he words and absorb them with your understanding. In this way the person talking to you will feel respected, taken seriously and even loved. However there is another way of truly listening to another person which does not involve your mind. This is by ceasing from thinking your own thoughts and not particularly paying attention to the contents of the words of your opposite either. Instead you are tuning into the level of the heart and send love and understanding via this silent channel of communication. And very possibly this has the effect of making the active talker forget what he wanted to say and to share in the silence of love.
For example if someone is talking to you you can listen to it in different ways. If you are outwardly listening but are busy pondering upon a personal matter and are just nodding your head, you are not listening at all. If you are judging what you are hearing or the person talking to you, you are equally "absent" as a listener. And you will probably often find yourself in the situation where people assume that you already know things because they have told you about them, but you do not remember anything. To be seemingly listening to someone telling you about something but thinking of how you feel/experience/believe/know the same or differently from the talker is to be half listening. Because although you do not actually make an effort to be consciously there for the other, you are at least tuning into the same personal topic. Accordingly you are able to afterwards remember parts of what you have been told. To be fully listening is to leave aside your personal thoughts for the time being and to simply listen to he words and absorb them with your understanding. In this way the person talking to you will feel respected, taken seriously and even loved. However there is another way of truly listening to another person which does not involve your mind. This is by ceasing from thinking your own thoughts and not particularly paying attention to the contents of the words of your opposite either. Instead you are tuning into the level of the heart and send love and understanding via this silent channel of communication. And very possibly this has the effect of making the active talker forget what he wanted to say and to share in the silence of love.
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