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As you say, it's so much easier to listen to the 'Phenomenology' than read it, at least for my first time through. A friend of mine is reading it alongside me and his primary intention, apparently, is to perform a "vibe check", which I think is a reasonable aim for one of the most famously mystifying works of modern philosophy. This first read- and listen-through is just to get the lay of the land.
What I really appreciate about Hegel so far is just to what extent the notion of a dialectic allows me to re-contextualize everything undesirable which I experience. Whatever is seemingly contingent and degrading is, in my crude manipulation of the dialectical lens, a necessary movement into obscurity and illegibility prior to the resurgence of whatever seemed to have been lost, but was actually being refined and enriched. It doesn't seem that important whether or not all that I've read is true, so much as it benefits my philosophical processes, somehow, allows me to feel more stable, capable, and integrated into my immediate context. It's tempting to suggest that, in his elaboration of the dialectic, Hegel managed a kind of precursor to contemporary cognitive behavioral therapy.
Of course, this all comes with the risk of feeling as though I better understand what happens to me just because I've learned the word "dialectic". Very large portions of the 'Phenomenology' are going completely over my head. I was baffled by his discussion of the "super-sensible world" in which, as I recall, north is south, tart is sweet, the electron pole is the hydrogen pole, etc. But it's okay that I don't understand it very well, since there are many secondary resources out there which comment on difficult passages, and at any rate I expect to re-read it in future.