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When we listen with purpose, we concentrate on keeping our listening paths open so that we can hear with attuned ears. To do so effectively, it is essential that we sharpen both our “inner and outer ears” in an effort to remove those distractions and disturbances which ordinarily interfere with harmonious listening.
Few people really listen to each other, primarily because they are self-centered or are intensely diverted by what they see. They are so accustomed to learning about others through their eyes that they do not listen on more intimate levels.
Robert Barnett, of the American Foundation for the Blind, in an interview with Mike Wallace gave a most vivid explanation of why he thought most people are afraid of the blind: “Actually the almost stark intimacy required by the blind—the direct, intense listening to each—is what frightens people who can see …. They are obliged to come out from behind facades. They can't hide behind their masks …. their false smiles … their hairdos … their Brooks Brothers suits. They know, unconsciously, that the blind man will penetrate all these camoflages and get directly to them. This, I think, is what underlies the fear”.
You can only communicate to yourself and others what you feel and believe and accept in yourself. Those who are compelled to feel they should communicate in absolute terms rather than in terms of what they actually are can easily give false impressions which will transmit erroneous and distorted messages. Every speaker inevitably talks from within himself and, unavoidably, about himself and his innermost feelings.
An individual can only perceive and listen in proportion to his relative state of psychic health. The more irrational a person's concept is of himself, the less he will be able to perceive healthily and the more he will tend to equate words with things, to select indiscriminately, and to project his own confused feelings and emotions in his communications.
When our symbolizing mechanism becomes faulty, we f