HANDBOOK to HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS - Ken Keyes, Jr.

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The HANDBOOK to HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS.

---Here is a book that I read a number of years ago. I re-read much of it AND still think it's great. I highly recommend it. As a matter of fact, I challenge you to read the first 11 pages. I would almost wager that you'll want to continue!

COMPASSIONATE LISTENING MODEL

Compassionate Listening Model

Compassionate Listening helps us to awaken to what the mystics from all of the great faiths have known for centuries: that cultivating the wisdom of the heart is the key to real peace from the inside out. The intention of Compassionate Listening is to access our deepest wisdom to transform separation and conflict into an opportunity for connection, healing and peace.

Compassionate Listening is

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• A personal practice – to cultivate inner strength, self awareness, self regulation and wisdom
• A skill set – to enhance interpersonal relations and navigate challenging conversation
• A process – to bring individuals or groups together to bridge their differences and transform conflict
• A healing gift – to offer a compassionate listening session to a person who feels marginalized or in pain

Compassionate Listening was conceived by Gene Knudsen Hoffman (1919 - 2010), international peacemaker, founder of the US/USSR Reconciliation program for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and student of Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. The concepts were further developed by Leah Green, Carol Hwoschinsky, and a group of dedicated individuals who are now facilitators of the work.

As Gene originally conceived it, Compassionate Listening requires non-judgmental listening and deepening, non-adversarial questions. Listeners seek the truth of the person speaking, seeing through ‘masks of hostility and fear to the sacredness of the individual.’ Listeners accept what others say as their perceptions, and validate the right to their own perceptions. In this way, listeners seek to humanize the ‘other’. Compassionate Listening can cut through barriers of defense and mistrust, enabling both those listened to and those listening to hear themselves in new light, to change their opinions, and to make more informed decisions. Through this process, fear can be reduced, and participants will be better equipped to discern how to proceed with effective action. 

We honor Gene as the originator of Compassionate Listening and invite you to learn more about her in

“Compassionate Listening and other writings by Gene Knudsen Hoffman,” by Anthony Manousos.

Click here to learn more about this beautiful book and purchase it online.

You can also download her free  Compassionate Listening Sourcebook with a chapter by Leah Green. 

Some of Gene’s essays on Compassionate Listening are on the web at the New Conversations Initiative.

COMPASSIONATE LISTENING: WOMEN BEHIND BARs!

Compassionate Listening Behind Bars

By Andrea Cohen, Senior CL Facilitator

---Rolling up to the barbed wire fence of the Washington Corrections Facility for Women, I prepare myself for teaching some of the institution’s residents the practices of Compassionate Listening. It’s part of a program designed to help them “turn around” conflict in their lives.

 ---With all of my jewelry, money and identifying information left behind, other than the driver’s license which I’m required to give the guard for safe-keeping, I’m ready to meet the women who have voluntarily signed up for the workshop. After going through multiple levels of security and passing a number of residents clothed in loose gray sweats along the way, my colleagues and I finally arrive at the education building where approximately fifteen women are waiting for us. I know nothing about the people present – what they’re in for, how long they’ve been there, who is a wife or a mother, and whether there are some who might be there for the rest of their lives. What I see before me is a very diverse group of women curious about what we have to offer and perhaps wondering why we’ve traveled so far to offer it.

 ---After introductions, we do a brief centering and exploration of what it means to be fully present with our hearts – from that special place of beauty that lives within each of us at the core of our being. And then we do listening exercises. The women experience what it’s like to be listened to without judgment, interruption or fixing. They practice reflecting back the facts, feelings and values contained in each other’s stories. They laugh, they cry and they’re grateful. They’d like us to return, and we do. A few sessions later, I gift them with a copy of Practicing the Art of Compassionate Listening, which they excitedly read portions of to each other - clearly “getting” the power of our work and wanting more.

 ---This is just the beginning of my story about teaching Compassionate Listening to women behind bars. A number of my fellow CL colleagues on both coasts have been doing similar work with incarcerated men and women in their communities. Why do we keep going back? Because we have something important to share – skills and practices that can make a difference in the residents’ relationships with themselves, their families and the people they interact with “on the inside.” By what stroke of fortune, circumstances of birth and personal choices made am I not the one living behind barbed wire? What are these women there to teach me – about courage, patience and commitment to growth?

---Without regard to how we’ve each arrived at this moment, now is the time when, perhaps together, we can help heal our world...from the inside out. A lofty goal that truly begins one heart at a time.

The ART of COMMUNICATING - Full Audiobook

FULL AUDIOBOOK

HEARING WITH COMPASSION!

CLICK THOUGHTOON!

Thich Nhat Hanh on Compassionate Listening | SuperSoul Sunday | Oprah Wi...

The Power of Deliberate LIstening | Ronnie Polaneczky | TEDxPhiladelphia

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This Is The Kind of Listening That I Mean When I Say Be Heard + Be Taken Seriously! And...Don't Judge! I Think That The Hospital As Well As ALL Our Personal Relationships Could Be Positively Affected If We Listened With Compassionate Listening.