Listening to hear

Greetings and welcome to the Bizarre Lab, in this post i’d like to touch on one of the most important gifts ever bestowed on Mankind (by “_?_” your chosen name for it.) , the ability to hear. During my studies I’ve learned a lot about how the ears work, the science of listening more or less. So many unwanted situations persist in our lives because of what we do or don’t pick up on (hearing). The issue is we can only choose from a small amount of information our ears receive, this is all we have to believe in at every and any given moment (seconds). Now when i say believe it’s based on selective auditory attention, we literally hear want we want to hear so to speak, regardless to what we think, our bodies use sound as a survival mechanism, hence the reaction of a person familiar with a real gun shot, or how parents can single out their childs voice amongst a crowd of children. All due to the process by which the temporal lobe has concentrated on the sound of the given variable. The ears have heard the sound so much that is like going over a white paper with a yellow marker…until it turns to a light gold damp branding on the paper. The deeper the stain, the easier to notice, and from a greater distance as well. You can add that the directions of the marker strokes would be like the specific patterns of that given variable, so that when the pattern is out of sync, an alarm goes off and we enter fight or flight mode. Downside is, these levels of physiology tend to lower EQ (Emotional Intelligence), leading to bad decision making.

This is all a very natural process, we just forget that virtually every part of our bodies can be exercised, what goes for singing goes for hearing. There is a catch as always, the hard part, the work, you see in order to practice listening we have to do the opposite of sound, no voice sounds or thinking sounds. This seems to be hard for most people having arguments, we have to catch that thought we just came up with before we forget and/or damn this person is making no sense or is taking forever to get to the point( like what person can truly experience forever ?). While sound travels out, imagine how difficult it would be for sound to come in completely. I’ve notice the coolest people seem very patient and attentive towards what people say, maybe they picked up on it or maybe it came natural. The point is we can all do it.

Art by JaRon Brown

When talking to one and another, how easy it is to forget what a complicated thing human speech is, no matter the language. The pattern of sound that make up talking would look crazy if we could throw paint on sound waves as it leaves our lips(probably like the splashing of waterfalls shooting out interlocking rings). As these waves reach our nervous systems and brain it’s decoded in a way, the patterns we know of but do not need to be aware of are ejected from specific attention. This also includes unfamiliar concepts, and things we’ve learned to avoid because past experiences of discomfort. Imagine a situation, A non-spanish speaking man walks into a spanish restaurant, he sits thinking about a spanish dish that he likes but doesn’t know how to say the dish in spanish. He desperately wants the Chicken chunky’s con rice and beans, so when the waitress at the counter asks for his order he just blurts out ‘ I’d like some fried Chicken Chunks with rice’. The woman isn’t familiar with the term so now she’s faced with the dilemma of this guy trying to explain, other orders need to be attended to, so to get things moving she replies ‘ dis all we hav ‘ pointing to a dried out roasted chicken in the hot pan behind her on the heaters. At first the guy gets upset, feeling insulted by her lacking comprehension of the english tongue, but ignoring what he thought he keyed in on her voice, she sound hurried, her english was very poor, more than likely she didn’t understand his swift american tongue. With a smile he asks ‘ may I see the menu por favor?’ . She returns the smile passes him the menu in which he finds all dishes with translations, and in beautiful sky blue italic bold Georgia font read Fried Chicken chunks under the bold black Chicharron De Pollo. His happiness shining alerted the woman as she seemed to have witness the man discovering his discovery. He raised the menu and pointed to his selected dish, few minutes later he walk out the restaurant a happy man. Moral is, listening saved this moment for both individuals, had the guy not listened and let his thoughts do the talking he wouldn’t have picked up the language barrier. Pretty sure all she heard was  unfamiliar patterns, not being translated as fast as it’s they were being received. He would have wanted to walk out with the desired dish but left with a side order of racist thoughts instead.

So listening to hear is a way to exercise this gift, thats what meditation is all about, quieting the mind. We are really as big as our shouts carry, which can reach up to a mile, so in proportion to that the silence we can reach matches that deepness within us. But once again the deeper you go into yourself, the darker it gets, remember we put what we don’t want to show away, preferably where no light nor eye can touch. Hearing the dark in you is the only place to find your light.

Be Good to yourself.

JaRon Brown

Here’s a link to a cool demonstration ! http://www.gocognitive.net/demo/selective-attention-auditory-demonstration

Others links used: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/eq5_raising_emotional_intelligence.htm

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/temporal+lobe

http://www.thebodysoulconnection.com/EducationCenter/fight.html