Normally we don’t listen; while people talk we are thinking about what we are going to say next.

When we do listen it is generally to “roof brain chatter” – the endless routine of repetitive, predictable worries, doubts, confusions, or problems – in a way that solves nothing and keeps us stuck in drama, depression, and anxiety. This is as true for meditation and lucid dreaming as it is for normal waking life.

“Deep” listening is not merely the suspension of thinking about what you are going to say next. It is also listening to the subtext beneath “roof brain chatter.” That subtext is different from the emotional and cognitive framings and implications of what has been said, as is generally understood by psychotherapists. The subtexts addressed by integral deep listening are the priorities of life, called “emerging potentials,” that are attempting to be born within you. These are absolutely essential to access and incorporate in order to  align personal goals and life agendas with the priorities of life itself. IDL accesses your unique emerging potentials by teaching you how to interview both dream elements and the personifications of those life issues most important to you. IDL teaches you to practice integral and deep listening not only to whatinterviewed emerging potentials say, but listening and paying attention to their perspective and presence, what they “feel” like when you become them. This listening is about integrating multiple expanded identities or perspectives that understand who you are intimately, yet see your issues, problems, challenges, dreams and nightmares in broader contexts than you do. It is like traveling from a swamp with alligators and snakes, where one is easily lost to a mountain top and surveying where you are, where you’ve been, and where you want to go. Such reorienting perspectives put you in touch with your authentic self and point your forward toward your next steps toward integration, whether you are a five-year-old with a nightmare or an experienced non-dual meditator and lucid dreamer.  In the process, you learn not only how to deeply listen to yourself, but how to deeply respect and empathize with others. By implementing the recommendations that you receive from interviewed emerging potentials that make sense to you, you both test the method and learn to discriminate your authentic self from your socialized, scripted persona.

IDL is Integral,  in that it is a form of experiential multi-perspectivalism the aligns itself with Ken Wilber’s integral AQAL model that addresses all levels, lines, states, quadrants, and types. For more on AQAL,   go here.