Practice Staying Present While Listening

Many questions have come from people asking about feeling drained after working with people for a long time. For I work in a healing capacity and often find helping professionals come to us asking for help when they find their energy to be drained by those they support. Health professionals, social workers, even hairdressers who spend much of their time listening to the problems of others can feel exhausted at the end of each day. Any advice from you would be welcome. This is Sally asking and several quite a few other people. The energy loss mostly happens if you engage too much with the mindstream of those people. Now this is for people who listen to people talk, like counselors and so on. If you engage with the mind stream that comes through the words and follow it, that tends to take energy out of you. So the art is to remain while you listen, to remain aware of your own presence, so that you don't allow the mind to link in with your mind and then pull you along. And this is why you may remember I mentioned when I used to work with individuals, I would sometimes a smile would come to my lips when I was listening to them their problems. And the smile comes because the presence is so peaceful and beautiful and it knows that that person also their essence is also that presence. So you listen to the words, but instead of being drawn into that mind stream, you allow it to go through you. So to continue to have your awareness in your inner space while you are engaged in listening. So that I would almost say at least more than 50%, if one could even quantify it. More than 50% of your attention, 70% of your attention needs to be in the energy field of presence, your stillness. And then you listen from there. Then it's not draining to listen. But if you listen with, then it draws your attention and you link into the other person's mental stream. Your mental stream unites with the other mental stream and then you get dragged along. So that almost looks as if you were a little detached. I don't know if detachment is the right word. Perhaps it is, but detachment limits it. Because you're not only detached, you're on a deeper level. You are more at one with that person than you could ever be on the mental level. So on the mental level there is some detachment, but on a deeper level there is a sense of, there is the unifying field of awareness that is there between you of presence. So there is no separation. Yes, a attachment on one level, detachment on one level. But on another level there's the realization of oneness beyond the conceptualized identity. It's again, it's a practice. It's an art. It.