Episode 29: Listen for the Spark of Light in Everyone You Meet

Welcome to Super Connections. I am your host, Jennifer K. Hill, helping you with the Golden Triangle of Connection, where you will super connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Join me each week as I will share from some of my favorite tips and tools for super connecting, and I'll bring in some of my favorite friends and thought leaders to help support you on your journey to super connecting to the life of your dreams. Hi friends, and welcome back for episode 29 of Super Connections Podcast. In today's episode, I'm going to teach you how to listen for the spark of light in everyone you meet. How did this come about? Well, about 9 months ago, I was in an interesting position. I found myself feeling a sense of overwhelm. Have any of you ever felt that way where you feel overwhelmed or sad or anxious? sometimes we don't even know why. Well, I was feeling much like this post the US elections last year. Now, I live in Portugal, so it didn't directly impact me, but there was a lot of divisiveness around the world between people who wanted one person or another to win or lose. And when my friend Keith Hodges— so shout out to Keith here in Lisbon— offered to give me a healing session, I thought, oh, this is great, I'd love to do that. So Keith and I get on a call one day on a Thursday morning at 10:30 AM back in December of 2024, and Keith said, Jen, what do you want to work on today? And I shared with him, you know, Keith, I've had this recurring nightmare since I was a little girl about how I had to save the world. And Keith said, okay, I can understand. That would be a little bit disheartening. And I said, yeah, it's been flaring up again right now with just all the stuff going on and divisiveness and anger in the world. Can you help? And he says, sure. So on this particular morning, I am completely sober. I'm sitting there at 10:30 AM in You know, getting ready for the session. And Keith says, all right, you ready to dive in? And he starts chanting and intoning. And next thing you know, whoosh, I have dropped right out of space and time. I'm just completely kind of floating in the ether. And something funny begins to happen. I've had this happen on a handful of other occasions, but I'll tell you. So here I am, and Keith is doing his toning and chanting, and I've kind of— space and time have just fallen away. And And the universe starts laughing at me. So I'm sitting in there and the universe is cracking up and it says, get over yourself. There is nothing and no one to save, nor has there ever been for any of you. However, your only purpose and everyone's only purpose in life— Ready for it? Is to recognize The spark of light in yourself. And then once you've recognized that spark of light in yourself, then to reflect it and help every person you meet re-remember that spark of light in themselves as well. Well, this was pretty mind-blowing. In fact, at the end of that vision here, it was like, if you haven't had deep meditations before, it's really fun. You can do guided meditations or normal or listen to music like I was in the case with my friend Keith, as he was just using different sounds and tones to get me into this altered state. And so at the end of this vision, this meditative vision that Keith's guiding me through, the last thing I was shown was a magical mirror. And instead of seeing my own face reflected back to me, I saw the face of every person I had ever met or would ever meet, really reflecting back to me that everybody we meet in some way, shape, or form is a reflection of ourselves. So how does this tie into listening? Well, fast forward to a few weeks back, I was in Paris at a mastermind with my business coach and a few other people. And I was sharing the same story in the group coaching session. And later that night, I'm having dinner and I'm sitting across from a gentleman who was in the class with me, and he looks me in the eyes and he said, Jen, what you said earlier today changed my life. And I said, what did I say? He said, the thing about listening for the spark of light in everyone you meet. So that's why this is something that I've now decided to do talks on, and I wanted to do a special episode on for you today. About how to teach you to listen from a different place than perhaps you've listened before. So how do we do it? Well, step 1, when we're talking to other people or when we're listening to other people, can you pause and can you begin to notice if you're listening to that person through a filter? Now, what was funny, what inspired a lot of this was my business coach, Jocelyn Hermosaccio, who's a brilliant thought leader. You know, was teaching us about how she listens, she was saying that most of us listen with something, with some sort of filter. She was teaching us how to listen while adding nothing and explaining that that's one of the quickest ways to dissolve pain and suffering for people is listening while adding nothing. And other times she said she might listen for the gold. What's the magic in what somebody else is saying? So that's another fun way that you could listen. Or she said she might also listen for the underlying commitment. Now I want you to reflect on the last time you had a conversation, whether it was a friend, a loved one, romantic partner, a business colleague, and see how you listen to that person. So step 1, as I mentioned earlier, is to notice the filter that you're listening to people through. Are you listening to them through a filter of, yeah, I already know that, or it's— you're a disappointment, or I don't No, I can't rely on you. So often we have these filters that are on autopilot and we're not even aware of it. So step 1, the next time you're in a conversation with somebody, see if you can pause and notice the filter that you're listening through. Once you've done that, that's a victory of human spirit, as some might say. You know, step 2 then is to begin to choose what filter you want to listen to that person through. Now you could try, as my business coach Joss taught me, to Listen while adding nothing. That's a challenging one. I'm still working on it myself. We spent half the day while we were in class that day in Paris working on listening to one another while adding nothing, and it is profound when you can try that. So you could also listen for joy in another person, or you could listen for possibility— what's there, what's possible— or as Joss calls it, what's somebody committed to. Or you can do what I call listening for the spark of light in everyone you meet. So what do I mean by that? Well, once you've identified that there is a filter, then step 2, as I mentioned, is you get to choose what the filter is that you listen through. It's just like, imagine putting a filter on your Instagram post. What is the filter that you want to perceive this person or conversation through? So then the next step, if you want to listen for the spark, See if you can listen for what matters to that person. That's what I call listening for the spark of light. So often our listening is clouded by judgments. Instead of being able to actually even hear the person, we're hearing, you know, something about, oh yeah, you said you would do that, but I can't count on you to do that. Or maybe you're not even listening to them at all. Maybe you're completely tuned off and there's not even a filter. You're running your grocery list in the back of your head while you're listening to somebody. So when we choose to, number one, let go and notice that there is a filter— so number one, acknowledge the filter, and number two, let go of that filter— then what becomes possible is becoming present with another person. And it's only in this state of being present and actively listening that you're going to begin to be able to deepen how you engage with another person. In fact, one of my great mentors will be joining us for an upcoming show, Arthur Samuel Joseph, and he was one of the first mentors I had who taught me about listening. One of his 7 rituals in his vocal awareness modality is called deeper listening, where it's not just that you're listening to the surface level, uh-huh, uh-huh, you know, you're kind of sitting there just nodding, but you're actually listening for something in that person. That will shift and transform how other people occur and how you occur. So how do we go even deeper and go into listening for the spark of light in every person you meet? So often it's easy to think that we already know how or who a person is. I had this happen recently. There was a gentleman who was new to me, and we were sitting on the terrace, And I noticed that he was name-dropping a lot, and I found myself kind of tuning out and like, you know, just not really being present with this gentleman. And then just like I was shown in that beautiful vision at the end with the magical mirror that everybody is a reflection of us, I caught myself, ooh, shoot, I'm listening to this guy through a filter. And then I started to see why is this happening? That's another thing you could do if you want to add a bonus layer on. You could ask, Why am I judging this person? What is causing me? And then I noticed with this gentleman that because he was name-dropping, I said, oh shoot, that's something I sometimes do. So in the same way that the magical mirror showed me that everybody was a reflection of me, I could see that this gentleman sitting across from me was reflecting to me one of my traits that I'm not very proud of when I name-drop or do something like that. So the moment I did that, the filters disappeared. And then from that place, I was able to listen to this gentleman for what mattered to him and to listen for— instead of the adult man who was sitting in front of me, could I see the 5-year-old who just wants to be loved and accepted? And that's really what it comes down to. I think we can get so caught up in appearances and thinking we know how someone is or isn't that we miss that joy-like little spark, that je ne sais quoi, that essence of a human being that so many of us forget that we all have. So step 1, see if you can notice that you have a filter and bring your awareness. Step 2, choose a different filter. Step 3 is then you could actually even try listening with no filter, listening while adding nothing like Jocelyn said. Or step 4 is you can see if in every person You meet, see if you can find that little spark of light, that thing about them that maybe they even forgot they had. And when you're in your deeper listening, as Arthur calls it, and you begin to reflect really deeply on what the other person's saying, then what becomes possible is you can also share that back to somebody. I remember many, many years ago, I was building my first company in the recruiting space. And this woman was sitting in front of me. She wanted a job at a law firm that we were working with. And she's telling me she has a great resume. She's telling me about the sort of job she wants. But because I was listening so deeply, I could hear that's not really what she wanted. I could hear beyond the words coming out of her mouth that what truly mattered to her was being a writer. And when I interrupted her in the interview and I said, excuse me, Can I just ask you something? And the woman was like, yes, what is it? And I said, is it possible that what you really want is to be a writer? And the woman, her face fell and she just started sobbing and she said, how do you know that? I said, I was just really listening deeply and I could hear that what you were committed to is not getting a job at a law firm, but that you're really creative and passionate and that you actually want to be a writer. And the woman was awestruck because she said, Jennifer, nobody knows that, not even Even my family or friends. So when we can begin to listen for that spark, listen from nothing, listen deeply, as Arthur calls it, something new becomes possible. There's a new space that becomes available. Maybe we'll even get into it in the episode with Arthur, but one of the other things Arthur taught me is to see the words you say as you say them. I was just doing it right there. And to see the words other people say as they say them. So however this looks for you, see if you can utilize all these tools we're talking about every week. Utilize the heart-focused breathe breathing. Quiet your amygdala. Drop in deeply. The next time you're in a conversation, whether it's with your child, your friend, your business colleague, whoever it is, I invite you to listen more deeply and see if you. So you too can listen for the spark of light in everyone you meet. Thank you.