Following our western logic, I am often tempted to believe that, at these Scharmer levels, a higher level is better. Thus, I often find myself trying to maintain a state of generative listening. Then often something else appears: a need to function in a more practical and easy way: coordinating instructions, listening in a seminar as part of an audience. With each of these experiences, I realize that in listening, all four levels are necessary and perhaps the art consists in learning to occupy the most relevant level.

It’s more elaborate than just deciding which level is most appropriate. Listening from the highest levels also requires making available internal resources of empathy, time, disposition, openness, tolerance. The more I try to practice generative listening, the more I realize that I don’t always have the internal state necessary for it to happen. Sometimes it is a very predominant idea in my head that conditions my ability to listen openly and actively. The same is true with empathic listening: sometimes I come from a situation that has generated frustration, or anger, and until I can recycle those emotions, it can be very difficult to offer empathy or an emotional container for another person. I find it difficult to offer compassion and empathy when I need just that.

And what’s remarkable is that the precise emotional recycling I need in those situations can easily be generated through the same conversation—another one perhaps, or the same one with a twist. The conversational turn that an exchange requires to be an emotional recycling container has to do with the recognition of the needs of each one of the parties and the shared inquiry about the state of those needs at the time of the exchange. From the understanding that all human beings share the same needs (they only differ in their valence, time and strategies to satisfy them), the CNV has extensively promoted the practice of sharing our needs and the feelings we have from the satisfaction or not of the same. Share our internal state and listen to the internal state, in these same terms, of the other person.

Meditation also allows us to incubate the internal conditions that allow us generative listening. The mere practice of awareness of our breathing in the present moment increases our coherence and equanimity. It can help us tune in or at least identify our feelings and emotions.

We can gain a deeper perspective also through meditation. During the conversation we can visualize roots towards the earth from our points of support (feet, knees, buttocks). Thus we can connect with the loving matrix of creation: Gaia. After taking root, we return to listening with that deep connection. We can then offer a considerably wider channel for emotional recycling and more prosperous and nutritious soil for opening up the spectrum of possibility. Deep ecology can offer us an explanation of this.

Along with deepening my meditative practice, I have also received the gift of deep ecology through Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects, which has invited me to think about myself from a completely different perspective. Instead of thinking of humanity (and me as part of it) as the central character of the story, deep ecology suggests that we think of ourselves as a larger living system. So I think of myself as an individual of a species, of the thousands of species that make up the effervescent crust of Gaia. The more I meditate from this consciousness (not about this one, but from this one, as a starting point), the more the idea that we are sons and daughters of Gaia, and part of her dance, resonates with me. This notion of psychology posed by deep ecology is sometimes known as ecopsychology.

The great Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, was asked, “If there was only one thing we should do to solve the challenges of humanity, what is the wisest thing we could do?” I can imagine that he closed his eyes and searched for the answer in his heart with serenity and a wide smile. “What we most need to do is listen within ourselves to the cry of the earth,” he replied.

Every time I come back to that answer, I can go back to a place deep inside of me, the place where I can hear the earth cry. This answer is a precise and powerful invitation to recognize ourselves as part of something much bigger than our species. In that space, I can understand my own emotions and reactions to Gaia’s met and unmet needs.