Practicing the Sacred Art of Listening: A Guide to Enrich Your Relationships and Kindle Your Spiritual Life (The Art of Spiritual Living) - Softcover

Lindahl, Kay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1893361853 ISBN 13: 9781893361850

Publisher: SkyLight Paths, 2003

Synopsis

Poor listening leads to misunderstandings and lost opportunities. Learning to listen well requires spiritual practice.

It happens at work and at home, with strangers and close friends, in heated debates and in quiet conversations―you hear someone speaking, but often you don't truly listen.

Kay Lindahl’s highly respected workshops are attended by people from a broad range of backgrounds. Her first book, The Sacred Art of Listening, has been published to acclaim in North America, Europe and Asia. Now she offers practical, easy-to-follow advice and exercises to enhance your capacity to listen in a spirit-filled way. Using examples from her own life and her work as a teacher of the sacred art of listening, Lindahl explores the nature and use of silence, reflection and divine presence as foundational qualities of listening and shows you how you can apply these in your everyday life.

This valuable workshop-in-a-book examines the varied ways we are called to deep listening, including:

• Contemplative listening
• Reflective listening
• Heart listening
• Listening in groups
• Listening in conversations ... and more

You will find yourself inspired to discover how different your conversations will be when you stop just talking and start really listening.

About this title

About the Author:

Kay Lindahl, the founder of The Listening Center in Long Beach, California, is author of How Does God Listen?; Practicing the Sacred Art of Listening: A Guide to Enrich Your Relationships and Kindle Your Spiritual Life and The Sacred Art of Listening: Forty Reflections for Cultivating a Spiritual Practice. She is coeditor of Women, Spirituality and Transformative Leadership: Where Grace Meets Power (all SkyLight Paths).

Kay Lindahl is available to speak on the following topics:

• The Sacred Art of Listening
• The Power of Listening
• The Transforming Nature of Listening
• The Lost Art of Listening
• Is Anybody Listening?
• The Importance of Listening for Health Care Professionals

Click here to contact the author.

From Publishers Weekly:

This is a companion volume to Lindahl's first book, The Sacred Art of Listening, which provided 40 short, distinct entry points into the realm of real listening. Here, she organizes her thinking around broader themes such as "contemplative," "reflective" and "heart" listening, three modes that she says can help us to listen deeply to the divine, ourselves and one another. Lindahl hopes that people can slowly strengthen their listening "muscles" and pull themselves back from the brink of non-communication. She explores the implications of listening to friends, family, co-workers and ourselves. Calling thoughtful attention to the myriad ways we share conversation, she delineates among the formats and intentions of debates, arguments, councils, consultations, discussions, dialogues, negotiations, mediation and chitchat. The spiritual value of being present while listening shines within her clear, guileless strategies. Each chapter offers concrete techniques to practice listening, and the "Daily Practices" section is filled with ways to restore loving kindness to language. She also has clear directions for "Interfaith Cafe" etiquette, where lively conversation can spark lasting change among people of different faiths, viewpoints or life experiences. Similar to her first book, this is by turns both obvious and profound; on the whole, however, it has deep merit for all who want to reclaim the essential art of spiritual listening.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: SkyLight Paths
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1893361853
• ISBN 13: 9781893361850
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176