Are you able to listen without judging and evaluating, putting into categories etc.?

Question

Are you able to listen without judging and evaluating, putting into categories etc.?

Answer 1

Maybe I don't define these categories in the same way.

Judging can mean damning, I don't do this, but I do use discernment, which is a form of judgement without the negative attachment.

Evaluating is pretty much the same: a natural process to discern the assonance or dissonance of a persons words as compared to my own beliefs and their own core being. As a counsellor, I can recognise when people are "out of sync" with themselves - this is an evaluation process.

Categorising - absolutely not. Putting people into boxes or labelling them doesn't serve anyone, I see the individual.

Answer 2

if i did none of these... then that which I was listening to would be meaningless to me.  

i mean, wouldn't listening to anything w/o such faculties be the reason the phrase "in one ear and out the other" came about?

if i placed absolutely no judgment, evaluation, or categorization upon that which i was listening to (or seeing, tasting, feeling, etc), then life, to me, would be nothing more than a meaningless movie of sporadic light and color, sound and taste, etc... (and even those "definitions" are a form of judgment, etc).

but, heck... what am i to know... right?

Answer 3

Who am I to judge?

Judge not others.

Answer 4

What's wrong with judging and evaluating people based on what they say? If someone says they like to get drunk and molest little kids, you should be making lots of judgements about them.

What's this stupid belief that I am not allowed to judge people based on anything I wish? If some one is wearing a "Fifty Cent" tshirt, I will judge them to be a doushebag and will have no further interaction with them. What are you gonna do about it? Make freedom of association a crime?

Also you are free to judge me based on what I just posted. All the "diversity tolerance unity" crowd will be the first to call me ignorant, racist, close-minded, etc.

Answer 5

When we hear with all of our being,there is pure listening in

which listening is not associated with judgement,evaluation,

categorisation.All these happen if we do not attend to the

situation and ego enters into the field,starts judging,evaluating,categorising.It is the past in the form of the ego that judges,evaluates,categorises.If you live in the present and listen, all this noise of the past will not be there.

Answer 6

Normally, I would love to be with people/situations without any mental gymnastics of evaluating and being judgemental. Because, by doing so I feel I am being separated, lonely, insecure and anguished! This nature of mine is often commented against me and even accused in spite of the fact that I have been very successful with my nature,- people can be so blind that they can not see beyond their noses/preconceptions! It has fetched me everything on its own, I love every bit of Creation because of it, perhaps!

Answer 7

Are you...  able to ...  listen without judging and evaluating... putting into categories...  etc...?  There seems to be a mixture of two things that are continously demonstated on this question.

"Are you" - Being in a natural state.  Something like capable of.

"Able to" - An essential part of the whole in which it operates.  Has the potential to be its highest degree at some point in it's future(s).  Is their a chance that a thing could flux between its contradictory states?  Actuality doesn't seem to be much of a contradictory state.  How does time effect our actuality?  --->   V

One of the modern philosophers said that the Ancient philosophers proceeded in such a way:  They proceeded to view particulars and from their particulars they created axioms that were the most general.  They had their name and as they constructed their axiom of general truth, they proceeded to imply that truth into everything that they believed in.  <their truth>  ??  (cont...)

Answer 8

I can't and I thank God for it, because it means that the end result of my life so far during which my brain cells have been trying very hard to connect and by doing so to create synapses carrying the impulse and establishing links, ie. associations, has been successful. Our whole life, including the so called unconscious part of it, is dedicated to this wonderful process, and the success of it distinguishes us from the less fortunate human beings with some kind of mental disease which prevents them from passing judgments and making evaluations to their own benefit, resulting in other people or institutions taking care of them.

None of the concepts you stated is necessarily negative; they are what we call experience. Even putting into categories.

I am personally against generalizations and labelling, but I think we all fall victims even of these, unwillingly and unconsciously.

As someone already said, axioms are the result of a sum of individual opinions, and there's nothing wrong with that. I can't listen employing your set of values, any more that you could with mine. And we can only listen making our own personal evaluations, which goes for all kinds of listening: music, sounds of nature or human speech.

Answer 9

Not quite. the whole package  comes in subconsciously. Judging, evaluating, analyzing all come into play in the process of listening.