First Semester

Three clear aims:

To enhance our ability to listen. To study and understand intuitive listening. To distinguish pastoral counseling from any form of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy.

The form of pastoral counseling we will be developing through our study of intuitive listening seeks to understand the conditions under which a person feels heard, both by herself and by the listener. It also hopes to bring into consciousness aspects of intuitive listening that are usually not conscious, and have been thought to be beyond the reach of consciousness.

We are asking whether intuition, by studying itself, can come to know itself? Or at least know more about itself?

September 8: Personal Filter
Essay: Intuitive Listening
In intuitive listening each of us has to identify our bias, our world-view. We have to be able to identify our defenses, coping strategies, beliefs, limitations. A great deal of self-study has to go into this process. We hope to understand our personal filter so thoroughly that we are not constrained to hear another person through it. The goal is not the eradication of our organizing principles but a full recognition and acknowledgment of them. We seek to become aware of their limitations so that we can, when appropriate, set them aside. Once known, we will need to clarify and acknowledge this filter to the one who is speaking. Our study of intuitive listening is not a training in mastery of techniques but is rather a meditative practice in self-awareness..

September 22: Model
When you listen through a particular school of thought you tend to be listening for the material that confirms the assumptions or theories of that school. We will find ourselves asking whether any (psychological, analytical, spiritual) school or model through which the speaker's speech is heard can actually accomplish the job of hearing this individual in her/his uniqueness? How will we hear what does not confirm our theories? This class discusses various psychological and non-psychological models to further our understanding of what a model is.

October 6: What is needed?
A) As listeners we are interested in finding out what this particular individual wants. Both what she is aware of wanting, and what she does not yet know she wants but may discover in the process of speaking to us. We may make the general assumption that people who come to speak with us want to know themselves, or discover themselves, or their true voice or their own creativity, or their spiritual path, or to ask basic questions about life and life's meaning. But even here we cannot impose this expectation or assumption on the speaker. We need something even broader, less confining. How about: people come to us to speak what is true and to be truly heard?

B) This type of knowledge, of what is wanted or needed, may grow very slowly; perhaps the initial want or need proves to be transient; perhaps it is soon forgotten and something else is discovered. Perhaps we just don't know for a long time what this individual is seeking. An intuitive listener will need to have or to develop a considerable tolerance for uncertainty, for not knowing where things are going or what exactly they are. On the other hand, during periods of uncertainty, a good listener may be able to intuit what might be getting in the way and thereby help the speaker towards its articulation. Perhaps this tolerance for uncertainty on the parts of both speaker and listener is a large part of what is needed?

October 20: Listening with the Heart
We are looking for an organizing system for our listening that is as open as possible, so that it can be used by the speaker for her own self-discoveries. Yet there must be some guide-lines, some principles of listening to organize our listening, especially now that we have seen through our filter. Pastoral Counseling is not a psychological system; it is a listening approach, which studies the optimal conditions for hearing another person in such a way that she/he can come to hear her/himself. Interesting questions arise here: Is there a goal to intuitive listening? Whose goal, the listener's or the speaker's? Does there have to be a goal? Are we willing to listen to anything? If the mind's goal is to comprehend, what is the heart's goal?

November 3: Presence
Obviously, there is something about the presence of a skilled listener that makes certain kinds of speech and self-reflection possible. What about that presence helps? If we seek to study this in detail we will learn a great deal about how to listen. Presence isn't necessarily warm but it is always alive. Can we begin to define presence? Is there a need to do so? How do we know if we are present or not? And to what degree? Why and when are we not present? What can we do about it? Should it be acknowledged to the speaker? How often do we act as if we were present when we are not?

November 17: Empathic Surrender
It seems likely that a good listener will have to be capable of empathic surrender. What do we mean by this? How do we practice it? How does it aid us in avoiding the confinements and limitations of our own world-view? It is possible that empathic surrender is a significant way to escape from the tyranny of our own limitations, our own organizing principles, and become able to enter the speaker's world. Here, we are not discussing the idea of empathy as such, but of how, emotionally, physically, spiritually, one achieves an empathic relationship to another person.

December 1: Listening Atmosphere
A) We are also studying atmosphere: in what kind of listening atmosphere does this particular individual thrive? Some people want questions answered. Some want to know about the listener. Others want an empathic but mainly silent listener. Some people like to walk around the room while they are speaking. Others like to sit on the floor. Sometimes people like to hide if they feel particularly vulnerable. Some like to start with breathing exercises or meditation. Some want to say what they have to say when they are standing at the door, taking leave of us. Some like to blurt, they will reflect later. Some want to know our response to what they are saying, others feel intruded upon by our response. How can we, as counselors, adapt ourselves to the listening atmosphere most conducive to the individual who comes to speak to us? Can we identify times when something about the other's speaking style or how they are asking us to listen is difficult, perhaps impossible, for us? What do we do then?

B) The listening atmosphere is the co-creation of listener and teller, adapted to what the teller needs to do her telling, but influenced also by what the listener needs to do her listening. How is this listening space negotiated? (I had a friend who spoke very fast; most people couldn't follow him. I was afraid to hurt his feelings by asking him to slow down. I listened carefully but often missed the point of what he was saying. One day I asked him if it were possible for him to speak more slowly and still follow his train of thought so that I myself could be more thoughtful in his presence. He seemed touched by how much I wanted to understand him and tried hard to slow down. This was one type of successful negotiation). The question here is: How would YOU initiate this type of negotiation? In the various wisdom traditions every guru, master or teacher has her own style and limitations. Ideally, each accepts herself without judgment or shame.

December 15: Narrative
In most therapeutic models, and particularly in Psychoanalysis, the listener has the responsibility for shaping the narrative, making the interpretations, providing the theoretical framework. We will question this configuration and the power dynamics TO which it gives rise. In pastoral counseling the center of authority for knowledge has shifted from listener to speaker. But how is this done? Do we, as listeners, recognize that our style of listening can both assist and stifle the development of the speaker's narrative voice? Have we, as listeners, understood sufficiently how our narrative about our own life has been shaped? The term self-realization was not invented by a psychologist, but by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poet.

January 5: Voices of the Self
We are interested in the voice of the self that arises, or comes to life, when a speaker who needs to speak meets a listener who needs to listen.

We will encounter problems with the emergence of this voice. Sometimes the listener is the problem when she does too much talking or explaining. Sometimes the problem rests within the speaker. This voice that wishes to tell its unique story is frequently silenced by the cacophony of voices that are chattering inside the teller's mind. We are interested in these voices, in knowing them intimately, in finding out what they are suggesting or advising or criticizing or whom they are blaming or accusing.

In summary: In a polemical mode we might ask whether psychology and psychotherapy have claimed as their exclusive preserve the legitimate listening space in our culture? If this were so, many people would be deprived of a listener who is able to offer the subtle, complex, spiritual and non-therapeutic possibilities of listening. Perhaps, we who offer these other options have not been careful enough to define what we are doing and how fundamentally it differs from the therapeutic approach. Our study of intuitive listening will allow us take some steps in this direction.

Second Semester: Circles, Patterns, Repetitions

Third Semester: The Study of the Emotional Life