I think that listening to and hearing what people are saying are also a function of the highest level of mindfulness where you keep your expectations about what people might be saying out of the interaction. Maybe this is just total openness that allows the person's authentic self to emerge.

I think this is openness is different than having no idea of what's going on with someone and how to guide them to where they need to go. It's not a "blank slate" to project onto, although that may be a piece of it.

I think it also might be a somewhat paradoxical twin of using your own experiences and who you are to connect to what people are saying while simultaneously suspending your beliefs and expectations about how people are supposed to feel and think.

At some point, I would probably define the safety I feel in session as the one hour of my week where someone isn't "out to get me", in the non-clinical paranoid sense. Where someone is really there for me, and nothing else.

Anne