Already Listening

I want to say just a few words today about another concept I learned about at the breakthrough training last week, a concept called “already-listening.” I think the rest of the world calls it “preconceived notion.” A person goes into a situation with these already-listenings. If you’ve ever seen someone wagging his head and rolling his eyes as he says, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before.” That is an already-listening.

Already listening can be much more subtle though. Our cultures can create already-listenings. Back in the mid-twentieth century the United States had an already-listening about the Soviet Union and they had one of us. And some people think we should still have that already-listening about that part of the world. You can also have an already-listening about certain parts of the country or your cross-town rival. Already-listenings need not be affixed only to enemies or opponents. You can have one for your best friend or spouse.

The point of the concept of already-listenings for the breakthrough training was that already-listening often holds a person back. They are the things people must break through. We learned it is necessary to shed already-listenings so we can approach opportunities and situations with a blank slate. And what can you do with a blank slate? You can create the world you choose.

Coupled with this concept is the notion that you don’t want to “change” things. Change causes persistence. Attempting to change something requires that you keep in your mind how things were in order to measure how they’ve changed. And that makes things stay the same.

Instead of change, you want to create something new. Forget about the past and strive toward the future.

As I pondered over this I began to recognize that if I strip my already-listenings down to a blank slate I have to do a lot of stripping. There is s lot of paint on these slates as I go through time. Already-listening stacks upon already-listening upon already-listening. So, I begin to strip away. I watch as already-listening after already-listening falls by the wayside. Eventually the clear slate appears. What do I put up there? Oh yes. Time to create. But I find a blank slate means I’ve also destroyed the thing I want to create. This is how I wrote it during the seminar.

“The anything that you create is also an already-listening. Completely turning off the already-listening creates a completely blank slate that can only receive future listenings. It’s like the electroshock therapy Robert Pirsig received in the book ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.’ And even that didn’t wipe the slate clean because the already-listening came seeping through in bits and pieces that he recorded throughout the book. The power of creating a whole new picture on the board requires the already-listening of what you want to create.”
Of course, this became absurd to me. Yet, while I agree we should shed ourselves of the negative already-listenings, we should still learn something from our histories and create the future based upon our positive desires. Any positive already-listening is worth keeping.