Consistent Dialogue and Happiness
Do you remember how you felt during that conversation when the other person kept interrupting you, seeming not to pay attention to what you were saying?
Frustrated? Disappointed? Angry?
Maybe all of the above…
Listening
Listening to the other without interrupting.
Listening without waiting for our turn to speak.
Listening not without judging, but listening while being aware of our judgments.
Listening consciously in order to remain open to the difference, to what is new, to what is surprising and to what may enrich us.
This requires an effort, it requires a process. An intellectual and mental process, because our brain is so made that it responds impulsively to protect us.
What is this need or necessity that we have to answer, to argue or to debate?
To prove that we are right?
So what need is this satisfying?
To comfort ourselves from the anxiety of not being accepted?
Our fear of not being recognized?
Our anxiety of being inferior to the other?
Our dissatisfaction with not being listened to?
Not being listened to in our turn, when we have just interrupted the other in the middle of talking, thus interrupting our listening process.
What a contradiction!
One more image of our inner conflicts…
Not being aware of this inner conflict leaves us prisoner. Prisoner not of an external force, but only prisoner of ourselves.
When people ask me how to become happier, sometimes my answer is simply: “No happiness without freedom”. Of course I am not talking about the freedom to come and go or to buy this and that, but about this liberation from our inner prison.
There are of course many other opportunities in our daily lives to explore this relationship to ourselves and many other concerns to let this awareness emerge. But every opportunity is good to take, as long as we are interested in the subject of our own emancipation.
Listening, listening in consciousness is an opportunity to exercise our awareness. One more step towards our emancipation.
Awareness
In a lesson of Awareness Through Movement, the movement, or the intention of the movement are like words spoken by the one with whom we are having a conversation.
We listen, we feel and sense the sensations produced by our own movements: our induced or unconscious muscular contractions, our support points with the ground, our breathing, etc…
The sensations emerge first, then come the feelings: comfortable, easy, difficult, hot, cold, as many judgments of our own sensations.
As long as we remain at the level of our sensations, we remain curious, we are open to surprises, we remain open to the unknown.
Thus an ATM is a dialogue with ourselves, during which, sometimes or often, we do not manage to stay at the level of only listening to our sensations, and we start to judge by our feelings. The process is then interrupted.
Of course, it is not about being perfect. It is not a matter of never losing focus, but rather of including these moments in the experience, and realizing when we fall into them, simply by being aware of them.
Eventually, this inner experience, conducted as a mental exercise, has the power to complete and enrich our relationship with ourselves and others.
