We’ve opened up new avenues of understanding by pivoting toward peace, and in this next practice we’re going to travel them. It may create a revolution in the way you relate to others and yourself, and it can be challenging. This practice came to me from the prayer attributed1 to Saint Francis that recommends, “Always seek to understand before seeking to be understood.” It’s one of those things you can read or hear and think, “Seek to understand? That sounds like a pretty good idea.” However, it’s the second part of the line where the challenge arises, bringing a tough human reality to it: “Always seek to understand before seeking to be understood.” We all love being understood. In one way or another, we’re often seeking this—but if you’re not careful, that wonderful experience of being understood, as healing and affirming as it can be, may develop into a subtle or sometimes overt demand. Even if we’re not speaking in a demanding or insistent way, we can approach interactions in a manner that demands we are understood before we understand.
I’ve met people who require they be understood all the time, often no matter the interaction. That’s their way of moving in the world; that’s their egocentric orientation. Of course, somebody who is moving through the world constantly seeking to be understood is always being frustrated, because people seem to be letting them down and this creates a constrained experience of being. So, start by recognizing that you like to be understood because it is part of life and there’s nothing wrong with it. However, since we’re trying to open up pathways through which insight can flow, I’m targeting the things that tend to create blockages in people. Seeking to be understood before seeking to understand is one such blockage, and when we remove it, awakened consciousness can stream through.
Understanding is an underappreciated art, especially today when the world seems to be moving at such a fast pace and human beings are not taking the time to listen to each other. It’s easy to fall prey to the delusion that everything we have to say needs to be heard; with social media, especially, people fulfill this narcissistic urge to share everything and to have their opinions blasted to everyone. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share or that you shouldn’t use social media; I’m getting at the psychological underpinnings that often fuel the impulse to share.
The most important person to understand you is you, because nobody is ever going to understand you in the way that you understand yourself. The funny thing that happens when you deeply understand yourself is the demand that others understand you begins to disappear. It’s nice when that melts away, because your heart opens, your mind opens, and life is more enjoyable. It can be healing to be understood, and that’s part of the affirmation you’re offering to others in this practice. It dislodges the part of us that doesn’t simply like to be understood but that is asking or even demanding to be understood, by putting the desire to understand first.
•Enter into every encounter you have today in the spirit of wanting to understand what every person says to you. It could be a grocery store clerk, it could be someone you work with, it could be a family member, it could be anyone. Put the desire to understand above the desire to be understood.
•Be as honest and clear and open as you can so that you can be understood too, but for today you’re going to shift and seek to understand first in every encounter. Seek to understand what someone’s saying, where that person is coming from, what state of mind or being that person might be in where what is being said is relevant and important to that person. In doing this, you’ll open an energetic pathway within yourself through which your own understanding can flow, through which your own insight can be embodied and humanized.
•Remember, in each encounter, with yourself and others, seek to understand before you seek to be understood. Much will be revealed by this.