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Deep Listening

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

# Reference

# Notes

“…‘To hear is the physical means that enables perception. To listen is to give attention to what is perceived both acoustically and psychologically.’ ==The goal and the reward of Cards/Deep Listening was a heightened sense of receptivity and a reversal of our usual cultural training, which teaches us to quickly analyze and judge more than to simply observe.== When I learned about Deep Listening, I realized I had unwittingly been practicing it for a while—only in the context of bird-watching. In fact, I’ve always found it funny that it’s called bird-watching, because half if not more of ==bird-watching is actually bird-listening. (I personally think they should just rename it “bird-noticing.”)== However you refer to it, what this practice has in common with Deep Listening is that observing birds requires you quite literally to do nothing. Bird-watching is the opposite of looking something up online. You can’t really look for birds; you can’t make a bird come out and identify itself to you. The most you can do is walk quietly and wait until you hear something, and then stand motionless under a tree, using your animal senses to figure out where and what it is.”