Deep listening is a practice that is used for anything from spiritual growth to building better communication pathways within a business or other organisation. Essentially, it is about developing the skills required to pay attention to what is being said without bringing too many of your own thoughts and prejudices into the equation. This means the ability to listen and to go beyond simply hearing the words that are being uttered. Instead, it requires the listener to empathise and relate to what is being said without jumping in with counter-arguments or other proposals. According to advocates of deep listening, the average person will be able to listen but not well enough to do so in a way that does not discriminate their needs from that of the person they are listening to. Deeper listening is often thought to be beneficial because, quite simply, it allows for a deeper understanding of the world.