Interpertation

Interpreting what a person says, or reframing the conversation so it makes sense to you, is a barrier to listening to what the other person says. Instead of listening to what they are saying, we attempt to hear what we want to hear, rather then what is being said.

The biggest danger is once we pushed our template onto the other person, we think we know what they are saying, and we stop listening. I found myself interpreting someone today, and being interpreting by someone else. It wasn't happy once I realized this was happening.

Bruce Charlton said something interesting over at http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/peak.html:

Consciousness is so compulsive a storyteller as to be a master confabulator - consciousness will always invent a story in terms of cause and effect relations, even when it has no idea what is going on, and available data is inadequate or contradictory.

He has identified what we call downloading. Our mind fills in the missing pieces, which we then accept as truth, but really is an untruth.