Lately, during my holotropic processes, I have been listening a lot. To different people, situations, places – exactly as I wrote about in my previous stories. And now I also come across texts that actually say that listening heals. For example, Peter Levine, the founder of somatic experiencing, says that “trauma is not what happened to us, but what we hold inside because no empathetic witness was there to hear us.” The entire somatic experiencing method sounds to me like listening to the body’s reactions and frozen traumas.

In English, there are also many references to the method of empathetic or compassionate witness. It is a way to heal oneself and others through simply listening. Similarly, Buddhism talks about the attitude of the witness-observer, although some people may sometimes perceive it as indifference. My entirely lay impression from the teachings of Gautama Buddha is that he was an empathetic witness-observer who compassionately shared the experiences of others and helped them in this way. As the old Czech proverb says, “sharing someone’s pain means we cut it to half…”

In the book “Healing Collective Trauma” by Austrian therapist Thomas Hübl, which deals with the healing of collective traumas of the past, such as the tragic events of the Holocaust, I found a similar description of collective empathetic meditative listening-sharing. In this context, I also realized that people in the past may have known very well why they had “altars for ancestors” at home and reminded themselves of them and listened to their stories. Maybe it was a method proven by centuries on how to heal old traumas that would otherwise pass on to the next and next generations. We have abandoned this in modern times, and only recently have we discovered that there is such a thing as transgenerational trauma. In other words, we cannot escape from the traumas of our ancestors.

Although it may sound irrational at first glance, it seems that as a human race, we have a primordial collective experience that listening heals. We just forget about it at different times, and then we have to rediscover it again under the weight of accumulating traumas. That is exactly what is happening to us lately. Our civilization is a civilization of traumas and bypasses. We can no longer ignore it. Of course, we will always find another “hurrah-bypass,” enjoy it for a while, and when it no longer works, we will hopefully discover something else. We will shout even more loudly “hurrah-hurrah” because as traumas accumulate, we will need to bypass them stronger and stronger. So far, we seem to believe that it will continue that way forever…

But what if it doesn’t? What if all this effort to escape into our private, rich paradise, our enormously important business, our fifty-first dimension, high vibrations etc, only makes our existence worse? What if these are various forms of gatekeepers that lead to truly deeply understood and experienced empathetic listening?

Because when I started to truly listen during holotropic processes, I met such an “imposing gatekeeper” at one point. He was there, in front of the grandiose-looking “gate to wisdom,” and had many forms of different people who repeatedly taught me in the past that “I don’t know what I’m doing,” “I don’t understand what awaits me,” “I’m not mature enough,” and so on. I have met enough of such people, and over time, I have found with some of them that they have hardly progressed over the years and are still in the same place “in front of the gate” and “experiencedly warn” others… So I decided to listen to my “mental gatekeeper.” When you warn me, show me the truth, teach me, help me…

After a while of listening, I knew what his response was. He doesn’t know… He doesn’t know what is “behind the gate.” He has never been there… That’s why he’s standing here and warning. He’s afraid. He is the fear that everyone feels in front of the gate. He looks mature and experienced because he is made up of the fears of many people who have passed through this gate before me. That’s why he seems so imposing. But even this gatekeeper, this patchwork of fears, can be healed by listening… And what does he say about it? Of course, nothing else but “you’re not ready to listen to me,” “you’re not mature enough,” “you’re not yet able to handle it”…

So I stopped and started listening. I am who I am, fate brought me to this gate, there is a reason for it, and it has to be enough… And when I will listen to you and to all the fears of all the people who stood here before me, I will understand much more… What is maturity? It’s the summary of experiences, which also includes the experience of listening…

Surely you all know what happened next. That very gatekeeper, the embodiment of all fears and concerns – that was the real gate. Whereas the flashy, polished, glowing thing next to him, the apparent “gate to wisdom,” was just another bypass…

Certainly, listening to the stories and pains of the past and other people hurts. Surely, it is much more tempting to “be highly developed,” “be above it all,” “not let it affect us”… But how does life really teach us? By authentic painful experiences… Not by bypassing anything…

When we are able to listen to these experiences, when we are able to experience and understand together what others have gone through and what happened in the past, we will not have to go through it alone. We will change and by doing so, the world around us will change as well. Because it will no longer have to replay and mirror back to us what we are running from…

And maybe then we won’t even have to wait for someone “enlightened” to come from somewhere else to solve everything for us… As the Mayan prophecy supposedly says – at the “end of time” we will realize that we ourselves are the Ones we have been waiting for to save us…