Reader,
{Reader,}
There’s a question I’ve been sitting with for a while now.
When someone is speaking to you -
are you really with them?
Or are you already somewhere else,
quietly forming the next sentence,
waiting for your turn?
When the mind moved ahead
There was a time I thought I was a good listener.
I was present, attentive, nodding at the right moments.
What I didn’t see yet:
I was listening for something - for a gap, for a cue, for the moment I could respond.
The other person was still speaking.
I was already somewhere else.
What changed everything
What changed it for me wasn’t a technique.
It was sitting in circles where the only practice was this:
stay with what is actually happening in you while the other person speaks.
Not preparing. Not helping.
Just - noticing.
What moves in me right now?
What wants to lean closer?
Where does my breath change?
That shifted something fundamental.
Listening stopped being something I did with my head
and became something I did with my whole body.
It took a while to feel the difference between being in the room with someone
and being with them.
The quality of real listening
Real listening has a particular quality.
Something slows down.
You stop building.
You let what they’re saying actually arrive.
Not to be processed. Not to be answered.
Just - received.
And something shifts in the space between two people when that happens.
The person speaking feels it before they can name it.
They don’t just feel heard.
They feel met.
When presence becomes contact
There’s something that becomes possible in that quality of presence.
When you’re genuinely curious about another person’s world -
not to understand it, not to respond to it,
but simply because you want to know what it’s like to be them right now -
something opens.
You start to notice what moves in you while they speak.
A tightness. A warmth. Something that wants to lean closer.
And that - that inner movement - becomes the real contact.
Two people actually touching each other’s reality.
Not exchanging words.
Not managing the space between them.
Something transforms in that.
For both of them.
This is rare.
Why most of us struggle to listen
We can only give what we’ve experienced ourselves.
And most of us have never really been fully received.
So we do what we know.
We wait for our turn.
This is what my online sessions are built around.
A genuine protected space - where you are received as you are.
Where something in you can finally stop performing,
stop explaining,
and just be met.
If you’re curious what that feels like - reply to this email or find out more here:
Bis bald,
Johannes
Für alle die Deutsch sprechen - hier geht es zu der neuen Seite in Deutscher Sprache: https://dearmouring.berlin/
