Deep Listening: While You WAIT

Words shape the sacred space of spiritual direction, but so does silence. In a previous post, W.A.I.T.: Why Am I Talking, I explored how intentional restraint helps companions create spaciousness for Spirit. This post is the other side of that practice: what happens while you wait.

If W.A.I.T. teaches us when and why to speak, Deep Listening teaches us how and to what we attend.

Listening Beneath the Words

Deep listening is more than hearing. It is a contemplative posture, receiving another’s story with heart, body, and spirit. It invites us to notice tone, rhythm, silence, gesture, and what stirs within ourselves as we listen.

In Buddhist mindfulness, this is “listening with beginner’s mind.”
In the Christian contemplative tradition, Benedict calls it “listening with the ear of the heart.”
Indigenous and Pagan wisdom remind us to listen to wind, water, stone, and silence as teachers.
In Quaker practice, we “listen beneath the words” for the movement of Spirit.

Each path points toward the same truth: listening itself can be prayer.

Drawing by Hawthorne Post

Listening With Your Whole Self

When you are fully present, your body participates in the listening. Breath slows. Muscles soften. Attention widens.

Before speaking, or even forming a question, pause to notice:

What sensations arise as your explorer speaks?
What emotions ripple through you?
What happens in your breath and belly as silence deepens?

Your body’s wisdom helps you discern whether a response serves the seeker or your own comfort. This is deep listening in action: grounded, embodied awareness that keeps your voice aligned with sacred purpose.

The Threefold Attention

As you listen, you are attending on three levels:

To the Explorer: their words, emotions, and unfolding meaning.
To Yourself: your interior reactions, intuitions, and resonances.
To the Holy: the subtle movement of Spirit within and between you both.

Holding awareness of all three creates a living triangle of presence. None are ignored; all are received with reverence.

Practice: Listening Beneath the Words

During your next session, experiment with this contemplative practice:

Take three deep breaths before your explorer begins to speak.
As they share, silently repeat, “I am listening.”
Attend to your body as well as their words.
When you notice silence, let it expand instead of filling it.
Afterward, reflect:
- What did I hear from my explorer?
- What did I hear from within?
- What did I hear from Spirit?

Listening this way is active, though it may appear still. It builds the inner spaciousness that W.A.I.T. protects. Together, these two practices, W.A.I.T. and Deep Listening, create a rhythm of speaking and silence, giving and receiving, that allows the sacred to emerge naturally.

Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy.

— Rev. Amy

For Further Exploration

• Oliveros, Pauline – Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice – A contemplative and creative approach to awareness through sound, silence, and presence.
https://deeplistening.rpi.edu

• Palmer, Parker – Let Your Life Speak – Explores how deep listening to self and Spirit reveals authentic vocation.
https://couragerenewal.org/let-your-life-speak

• Palmer, Parker – A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life – On creating “circles of trust” where deep listening, silence, and inner wisdom can emerge.
https://couragerenewal.org/a-hidden-wholeness

• May, Gerald G. – Care of Mind, Care of Spirit – A classic text on the director’s inner stance: silence, presence, and discernment.

• Barry, William A. & Connolly, William J. – The Practice of Spiritual Direction – Explores how silence and the director’s interior response open the way for divine encounter.

• Harrow, Judy – Spiritual Mentoring: A Pagan Guide – Grounded wisdom on compassionate language and presence within Pagan and earth-based traditions.

This Heart of Sacred Tending series is ©2025 Amy Beltaine, all rights reserved. You may freely reprint any blog post, website, or print resource. Simply include the following attribution, and if you print online, make the link at the end live:

Ethical Foundations in Spirit Tending

Spiritual direction rests on sacred trust. A seeker invites us into the tender landscape of their spirit, and our response must be both reverent and responsible. Ethics is not about fear of doing something wrong; it’s about love made visible through respect, boundaries, and consent.

When we offer direction without attention to ethics, even with the best intentions, we can cause harm. When we ground our companionship in ethical awareness, we offer safety, a space where seekers can risk honesty, vulnerability, and growth. Ethics becomes a form of spiritual hospitality.

Particular Focuses

1. Consent Is Ongoing

Consent is more than a signature on an intake form. It’s a continual invitation to mutual clarity. Before beginning direction, we discuss what the relationship is and what it isn’t. We name limits: confidentiality, scope of practice, session structure, fees or donations, and how to end the relationship when the time comes.
Throughout the journey, we keep checking in. “Is this kind of reflection helpful?” “Would you like to pause here?” “Are you comfortable with this kind of question?” These small acts of consent keep the work sacred and safe.

2. Boundaries Hold the Container

Boundaries are not walls; they are vessels. They hold the relationship’s purpose and protect its integrity.
We are not therapists, pastors, or best friends. We are companions who witness, listen, and discern alongside.
Boundaries also include clear communication: we set expectations about contact between sessions, confidentiality, and what happens when ethical lines blur. For instance, if we feel strong attraction, pity, or a desire to fix, we name these movements within ourselves. Naming these realities is not shameful; it’s responsible.

3. Accountability Is a Form of Love

No one practices ethically in isolation. Supervision, peer reflection, and continuing education are our lifelines. They help us see our denial or when we've missed the mark without noticing. They help us remain responsive to the people we serve.
Supervision isn’t punishment for mistakes; it’s part of the discipline of humility. A supervisor provides compassionate support. In supervision we can say, “Something felt off,” or “What is going on with me that I want to cry after every appointment with this person,” and together we discern the next faithful step.

4. Power and Transparency

Whether we name it or not, we hold power. We are the ones a seeker looks to for guidance, recognition, or reflection. The ethical task is not to deny that power but to use it with integrity: never coercing, never manipulating, never claiming authority over another’s truth.
Transparency helps balance power: we can explain our process, our training, and our limits. We can acknowledge mistakes. We can model what it looks like to remain teachable and human.

Try It

Spend a few minutes journaling or reflecting on these questions:

When have I experienced someone’s ethical care as sacred? What made it feel that way?
What boundaries or practices help me offer spiritual conpanioning with consent and safety?
How do I respond when I realize I’ve made an ethical misstep?

Then, find one concrete way to strengthen your container — perhaps scheduling regular supervision, revisiting your disclosure statement, or practicing how you’ll talk about consent at intake.

For Further Exploration

Embracing Consent: A Foundation for Ethical Spiritual Tending and Human Connection- https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/04/embracing-consent-foundation-for.html
Spiritual Directors International: Guidelines for Ethical Conduct: A concise, widely used framework for ethical reflection. https://www.sdicompanions.org/ethicalguidelines
Carol Gilligan - The Ethics of Care - Carol Gilligan's Contributions. https://philosophynest.com/details-3408000-the-ethics-of-care---carol-gilligans-contributions.html
adrienne maree brown - Awe. Liberation. Pleasure. https://adriennemareebrown.net/
Starhawk - Regenerative Culture. Earth-Based Spirituality. https://starhawk.org/
Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness - Reflections on integrity, community, and the hidden teacher within.
Megan Devine, It’s OK That You’re Not OK - Though not about direction specifically, this book models deep presence without fixing or rescuing.

Author’s Note: The Ground Beneath These Ethics

This chapter rests on a living tradition of relational and liberationist ethics, ways of practicing care that honor agency, mutuality, and justice. Rather than focusing on fixed rules or outcomes, these approaches invite us to stay in right relationship: with self, with seeker, and with the Sacred.

Key influences include:

Ethics of Care - Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, Margaret Farley. These writers describe ethics as responsiveness to real people in real relationships.
Consent and Trauma Awareness - Staci Haines, Resmaa Menakem, Adrienne Maree Brown. Their work teaches that safety and agency are the foundations of healing and trust.
Liberation and Decolonial Ethics - Gustavo Gutiérrez, James Cone, bell hooks, and Indigenous scholars who remind us that power, privilege, and justice are spiritual matters.
Covenantal and Communal Ethics - Parker Palmer, Howard Thurman, and many Pagan and animist traditions frame ethics as an ongoing covenant of right relationship within the web of life.

Together, these streams form a relational, consent-centered, liberation-informed ethics of care — one that roots spiritual direction in humility, accountability, and reverence for individual sovereignty in community.

MoonForestBone

Wednesday, November 19, 2025