March 29, 2022
A Time for Healing
By Amba Gale
Coming out from behind our masks, what do we find?
People.
People loving, people hurting, people having turned away from any light, people grieving, people hiding, people willing to come out of hiding, to be seen again. People longing to be held, to be touched, to be loved. The last two years of Covid have affected us, perhaps in more ways than we even know, unless we look, and listen, deeply.
During this month, I enjoyed the extraordinary privilege of leading my foundational program, The Heart of Leadership, for one of my dearest clients.
In that five-day program, we entered into a “simple enduring center where all souls meet,” to quote Mark Nepo, through summoning the courage “to take off our armor and let things in.” Vulnerability was the key to speaking and Compassionate Listening was the key to healing, and allowing for the honesty and truth of the speaking to sing to the world.
What is Compassionate Listening? It is listening from the heart – heart to heart listening, you could call it, or Kokoro – to – Kokoro, as the Japanese name it. It is listening without judgment, listening without paying any attention to your own triggered responses, like fear, agreeing, disagreeing, having to fix, inserting your own agenda. It is listening from BEING, from being present, from listening for their wisdom, from listening for being contributed to. And you will be contributed to if you listen that way, for people are profoundly wise, profoundly courageous, and profoundly loving. When we provide them with a safe space to speak from their hearts, and listen from our own, we remove the barriers and blocks to their experiencing their own love, including for themselves. And ours gets to flourish as well. Listening is magic that way.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty Poustinia said, “With the gift of listening comes the gift of healing, because listening to your brother or your sister until they have said the last words in their hearts is healing and consoling. Someone has said that it is possible to ‘listen a person’s soul into existence.’ I like that.”
The morning after the first three days of leading the course, I awoke in the morning to find a beautiful sailing ship, The Adventuress, anchored in Puget Sound, outside our house. In my poetry corner, the following poem showed up.
The Adventures
By Amba Gale
Oh, sleek, slim, tall masted
sailing ship,
anchored so gracefully
outside my window, beckoning
me to all the places
I have yet to go, inside and out,
you call to me.
Now, I travel miles
each day
inside
to the still place
to turn a fleet of worthies
toward the light,
coming out of darkness, as we all have been,
cocooned in separated wombs,
some broken,
some whole.
We can now emerge,
reveal our late protected hearts.
We want to weep
to grieve
to laughe
to hug
to see the light
to show our fears and faces,
hidden for two years to the world,
to let love in
to let love out
to say, “I am here!”
“Hug me!”
Feel my heart near yours.
Touch me.
Let me touch you.
I invite you to love me,
to acknowledge my glorious imperfection,
to see who I am.
