“Love is always the answer, whatever the question.”

— Syd Banks

When I first heard Syd Banks say this, I didn’t really understand what he meant. 

It sounded beautiful — but abstract. 

Over the years, however, life has shown me what those words really point to. One of the clearest moments came during a simple listening exercise at a conference in London in 2013. 

The conference was about NLP, and Michael Neill was the keynote speaker. Instead of giving a presentation about the Three Principles, he decided to turn his session into a small workshop. 

He introduced something called “The Listening Exercise.” 

It has since become a classic in Three Principles workshops around the world, but this was the first time I had experienced it. 

The instructions were simple. We were asked to find a partner. One person would speak for three minutes about anything they liked, while the other simply listened. 

We repeated this three times, each time with a different instruction for the listener: 

Listen to agree.

Listen to disagree.

Listen with nothing on your mind. 

I can’t remember what my partner talked about. But I do remember what happened inside me. 

It may have been the first time in my life that I consciously observed my own thinking while listening to another person. 

When we were asked to listen with nothing on our mind, something unexpected happened. 

For three minutes I had permission simply to be with another human being. 

I didn’t need to track every word.

I didn’t need to prepare a reply.

I didn’t need to say anything clever. 

I could simply be present. 

My mind became quiet — something that was quite new for me at the time. 

And as my mind quieted, something else became apparent. 

I began to hear my partner in a deeper way. Beneath his words I sensed worry and anxiety. I felt disappointment and fear. None of these things were spoken directly — they were simply felt in the space between us. 

When it was my turn to speak, I became very aware of the difference between someone who was listening to agree and someone who was listening to disagree. It subtly shaped what I said and how I said it. 

But what I remember most vividly was the experience of being listened to by someone who had nothing on their mind. 

No agenda.

No judgment. 

It felt incredibly liberating. 

It allowed me to say exactly what was on my mind without shaping it to meet another person’s expectations. It allowed me to listen to myself. It gave me the freedom to wonder and explore a thought fully without interruption or correction. 

That moment came with a very quiet feeling. 

I now recognise it as the feeling of a still mind — free from the constant internal dialogue of analysis, comparison, self-judgment and criticism. 

Clean. 

Clear. 

Loving. 

What a gift it is to listen — and be listened to — so deeply. 

At the time, I didn’t realise how important that simple exercise would become in my own life. 

But once you experience the quiet of a mind with nothing on it, you begin to recognise how rarely we actually listen that way. Most of the time we are listening through our opinions, our memories, and our stories about the person in front of us. 

A few months later, life gave me an unexpected opportunity to try listening in a completely different way. 

And it changed a relationship I had struggled with for more than thirty years. 

— 

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.”

— Rumi

 

 My father and I had always had a difficult relationship. 

He was born in Poland in 1918 and raised in a strict Catholic household. His views about life and people were very much shaped by that generation, and as I grew into my teenage years I rebelled strongly against them. 

We argued constantly. 

There never seemed to be any middle ground between us. 

For nearly thirty years we largely avoided one another. 

Then in 2005, after temporarily moving back to Poland at the age of 87, he called me and asked if I would bring him back to the UK. His physical and mental health were deteriorating and he felt increasingly vulnerable. 

So I flew out and brought him back. 

He had sold his house, so he came to live with me, my then wife, and our newborn baby, Sam. During that time he alternated between deep depression and explosive anger. 

It soon became clear that living together in a small house was not a workable long-term solution. We eventually found him a warden-assisted residential home nearby, and I continued to do most of the caring — visiting frequently, doing laundry, cooking and shopping. 

It was difficult for both of us. 

Whenever I visited, he often projected his anger at the world onto me. I would try to talk him out of his thinking — trying, as I see now, to fix him. I would explain where I thought he was wrong about people or about life. 

It never helped. 

He would only become angrier, sometimes shouting and accusing me of ruining his life. It was as though he saved all that anger for my visits. 

Over time I noticed he was forgetting words and people’s names. I suspected dementia, though his GP ruled it out. 

Before every visit I remember standing outside his door, gathering my strength and silently hoping he might be in a better mood that day. 

Then I remembered the listening exercise. 

Suddenly I saw something clearly. 

I had been listening to my father in ways that were deeply unhelpful to our already strained relationship. 

I saw that my judgments about him had become a thirty-year habit — a set of stories automatically triggered every time we were together. 

And each time I visited him, I brought those stories with me. 

I was listening to my judgments, not to my father. 

So I decided to try something different. 

I decided to listen to my father with nothing on my mind. 

To listen without the story of who I thought he was.

To listen beneath the words.

To listen soul to soul. 

One afternoon I visited him. He was sitting in his favourite armchair watching the news, already irritated about what he described as “the mess your generation is making of the world.” 

Soon the criticism turned toward me — my appearance, my supposed laziness, my lack of success. 

Normally I would interrupt and argue my case. 

This time I stayed quiet. 

He became increasingly agitated, frustrating himself as he struggled to find words. Still I stayed quiet. 

And as I listened, something surprising began to dawn on me. 

Although his anger was directed at me, it didn’t really feel personal. 

Then he began talking about his doctor, who had been urging him to come in for a check-up. My father had numerous health issues and was taking many medications. 

The doctor quite understandably wanted to examine him, but my father reacted strongly against the idea. 

Again, instead of trying to reason with him, I simply listened. 

As he spoke, I began to sense something beneath the anger. 

Fear. 

Then he said it: 

“If that doctor gets his hands on me, he’ll send me to hospital and I’ll never come home again.” 

In that moment, something shifted inside me. 

For the first time, my heart went out to him. 

Beneath the angry exterior I suddenly saw a frightened man — almost like a child afraid of the dark. 

So I listened even more deeply. 

As he continued speaking, something else happened. 

He slowed down. 

And as his mind slowed, his attention drifted toward the past. 

He began talking about the war years — something he had never spoken about before. Much of that time he had spent starving as a Russian prisoner of war.

He told me how his father had been executed by the German SS for being “a person of influence” as an architect. 

Slower still. 

He spoke about Christmases in Poland with his five sisters who adored him. 

Then he turned to me and apologised for how he had parented me — distant, strict, disciplined. It was simply the way his own father had raised him. 

The only way he knew. 

And in that moment something inside me opened. 

I realised that I loved my dad. 

Beyond all the stories I had held about him, I suddenly saw the whole human being — a life filled with love, tragedy and courage that I had never truly understood. 

Until that day, I had only ever seen his behaviour. 

Now I finally saw him. 

We sat quietly together for a long time, both of us in tears. 

Eventually he said something I will never forget: 

“Thank you, Stef. I didn’t realise you could love me so much.” 

He had never used the word love with me before. 

From that day onward, our relationship changed. 

He lived until he was 96. He was still grumpy and often angry, but there was now understanding between us — and I loved spending time with him more than I ever imagined possible. 

All because I listened deeply, beyond the words. 

In that moment we found the field Rumi spoke of — beyond right and wrong, beyond our stories, beyond the roles we play. 

That field exists within all of us. 

It appears when the mind becomes quiet enough for us to truly hear one another. 

Some people call that space presence. 

Syd Banks called it something simpler. 

Love. 

And as he so beautifully said: 

“Love is the answer, whatever the question.””

 

If you would like to spend time with speakers like this in person and hear them share their wisdom and experience in a beautiful setting in Albir, Spain in November each year, you can find tickets here www.thevivaevent.com/registration