What is Symbolic Listening? Listen Deeper & Connect Better!

The definition and meaning of symbols – what we call symbolic language – is one of the cornerstones of understanding how human consciousness works. This language is revealed essentially through dreams, which we patiently learn to decode, in order to understand the messages delivered to us to guide us in our projects, our choices, our decisions, our actions, our words...

The UCM Education and Research Center has published the Source Code Dictionary for this purpose, an exciting, essential, fundamental reference, thanks to which it becomes possible to learn and understand, independently, the signals of our unconscious, the keys to our memories...

Thus, it becomes “easy” – more and more over time – to shed light on our dark zones, our invisible, the regions buried in us which are only discovered if we really decide to walk towards them.

But in the deep desire to know oneself spiritually there is sometimes hidden a widespread tendency to “just see the invisible”, that is to say to be only interested in what is happening in the inner world, with the logical consequence of moving away from the concrete presence of everyday life, to get tired of the surrounding reality, even to reject it. We fly away. We're going. Eventually, we get lost. Because it is possible to get lost in the abstract… Because we only listen to ourselves. We are sometimes only interested in ourselves and our “evolution”. And we can forget the others.

One of the explanations for this failing lies in the fact that we have lost our listening. Attentive listening at every moment of our life. Conscious listening. Just as there is symbolic language, there is also symbolic listening, alive in every interaction, every exchange, every gesture. Even every silence...

Here is a particularly striking example, taken from the testimony of a teacher: during a class assembly, a student suddenly complained of a marked discomfort felt during a lesson on health.

"Sir, I don't want to go to this lesson anymore, it disgusts me, and the lady doesn't understand anything, she doesn't listen to me. Everything disgusts me, it makes me want to vomit!"

Strong words, raw language, almost brutal; a tense, drawn, contemptuous, grimacing face…

"What did you talk about, José?"

"That was sex education, that disgusting thing, the male device. It disgusts me!"

When we then learn that José does not eat at the same table as his father, going so far as to deprive himself of meals, that they do not speak to each other, that he does not receive pocket money, that he is one of many siblings of children born to several mothers, we begin to understand why the male reproductive system disgusts him and why he no longer wants to attend sex education classes.

In this first stage of accompanying a young person in disarray, struggling with life, symbolic listening is of paramount importance. For the time being, it is a question of detecting the memories at stake, finding the roots of the malaise, understanding by heart what type of destiny has been activated...

We certainly have a particularly evocative example here, almost “obvious”, and yet… If we reflect well, with honesty, on our day yesterday, on our past week, on all of our days – are we really listening?