Communication can be received in three ways: Positive listening, Negative listening, and Pure listening.

Negative listening occurs when we filter what we hear through boredom, disinterest, annoyance, arrogance, anger, frustration, or other negative emotions. Positive listening, on the other hand, is when we listen through the filter of interest, enthusiasm, approval, validation, excitement, and other positive emotions. In both cases, we listen through a filter of reactions and assessments, constantly validating or invalidating what others are saying.

However, when we listen through a screen of judgments and assessments, we distort the natural flow of people's experiences. When we agree with someone, we encourage them, but when we disagree or don't approve, we undermine them.

Pure listening is a quality of being and a skill that caregivers can bring to their patients and their families. It involves listening without interference, neither adding nor taking away from what is being communicated. Pure listening is like a clear mirror receiving exactly what is being said, nothing more and nothing less.

With pure listening, we don't need the conversation to continue or stop, and we don't need to understand or interpret someone's experience for them. We stay intimately connected, yet the experience is unconditioned and uncompromised.

Pure listening can create a clearing for people's suffering. There are often spontaneous periods of silence, allowing emotions to be present without needing to "do" anything about them. Patients' emotional and mental states become less identified with the content, and they have moments where they experience the unconditioned state of mind, which is exceptionally nourishing and healing.

In the space of pure listening, people's problems become our own experience. We experience their immediate reality, thoughts, and feelings as though they were our own. We are totally open and profoundly connected, with no resistance to their pain and suffering, anguish, or confusion. This is love without pity or sympathy.