Learn To Be A Good Listener

[Guest guest]

Learn To Be A Good Listener

 

 

If you wish to grow in the spirit of understanding, you must let the other

person talk and prove his point to his satisfaction. Do not interrupt him,

while he is talking. You know how exasperated you become when someone

interrupts you, while you are trying to prove a point. At committee meetings,

these words have been uttered quite often:- "But let me finish!"

 

Listen more, talk less. You are made to listen. That is why you have been

given only one mouth and two ears. If we were meant to talk more and listen

less, we would have been given only one ear, right in front, and two mouths

on the two sides. How funny we would look! And, mind you, there is no door

with which to close the ears: they are always open. Before a word can be

spoken, it has to cross two fences – two rows of teeth and two lips.

 

Therefore, think twice before you talk. Never forget that of the unspoken

word, you are a master, of the spoken word, you are a slave. Words, once

spoken, cannot be got back.

 

A villager came to a town, to visit some of his relatives. In villages, till

today, they cleanse their teeth with wooden sticks. When he got up in the

morning, the villager asked for one. They told him that in the cities they

had only toothpaste tubes. The villager had never handled a toothpaste tube.

 

As he squeezed it, out flowed a foot-long strip of toothpaste. He was taken

aback. "Is there a way to sending the toothpaste back into the tube?" he

asked. They said to him:- "No way! Once the paste has come out, it cannot be

sent in!" Likewise, words which have been spoken cannot be sent in.

 

Be a good listener. Therefore, listen not only with the ears, but also with

the heart. Better than talking is listening. And better than listening is to

enter the silence within.

 

The great woman-saint of South India, Avvaiyar, prayed:- "O God, what is

happening to me? I keep on talking and talking, as though there were mouths

all over my body! When shall I cease from doing this? When shall I enter

into the silence within?"

 

Courtesy of Pravsworld

 

Sairam,

Swetha