DIALOGUE – Process, Practice and Purpose

Dialogue is the free flow of meaning between two people in communication… it is a conversation among equals whose ideas, opinions or theories would be taken seriously but also be vulnerable to challenge and inquiry. (David Bohm - physicist)

Try as we may, we cannot make insights with reason or will. Something imaginative is needed. (George Santayana)

Purpose:

To commence, we want to state that the purpose of Dialogue is not to win on issues, nor to directly solve problems. Ironically, the latter may result, but not if you try to seize it directly. Secondly, we would make a distinction between dialogue and other forms of verbal communication such as instruction, conversation, transactional processes, debate and argumentation.

· Instruction presumes an authority, hierarchy or teacher-student relationship, whereas dialogue presumes a meeting of co-equals sharing a common concern that they wish to address.

· Conversation is a social interface more concerned with form than substance. Talk centers on mundane, non-controversial topics and ‘fills time’. The essential aspect of dialogue – coming to grips with a common concern – is absent in conversation.

· Transactional processes are win-win on an object level, such as in commercial or dependency situations, but the goals of each are foreseeable by both sides. There is nothing new, nothing arises that is greater than the sum of the parts.

· Debate by nature is win-lose. One party is more interested in ‘being right’ than in learning and tries to impose personal views onto the other; Dialogue on the other hand is collaborative and seeks the win-win of mutual learning, insight and growth.

· Argumentation is ‘debate’ carried to its extreme, and often is seen in belief systems and their defense by the respective adherents.

Dialogue tries to transcend the realm of authorities and arguments (which can have no end), and thus be a way of meaning. Contrary to the stereotype of ‘teacher’ and ‘student’, in dialogue the roles may well alternate back and forth and any derived insights or ‘teaching’ is co-created by the teacher-of-the-moment and the other. One’s personal truth shouldn’t be aimed at convincing the other that one is right – that would automatically elicit counter moves by the other – rather things should be allowed to be said that then stand on their own merits. Thoughts expressed belong to the couple, and are not the ‘ownership’ of either. If the couple are together in their quest, it doesn’t matter which of them gives voice to the truth between them; their insights come from their shared conscious energy. This energy of awareness is different from ‘sensitivity’, wherein each is attached to what he experiences and takes it personally.

Physicist David Bohm and teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti were instrumental in developing the concept and processes of dialogue, and Bohm felt that such shared conscious energy is a transpersonal reality that normally remains for the most part in the implicate order – hidden from the couple in their communal life. In dialogue, this energy may become ‘explicate’, in that it manifests into conscious form.

[Ironically, within family environments, a couple may become so enmeshed in their respective family roles and in maintaining their images in the minds of other family members, that they lose the ability to creatively talk together between themselves. Sometimes their images try to carry on small-talk with each other – or one’s image tries to manipulate the other’s image – but each loses sight of the partner, and their keys to evoking the new from each other atrophy. Perhaps fortunate is the couple whose adult children and other family associations have cut them loose, for then being inter-dependent on each other for nurture and support, they can cast aside their self-images and work on the development of each other in enlightened self-interest.]

Dialogue involves the evolution of co-intelligence or synergy between people – so that they can see through the veil of normal perception to what is really there – and communing together in trusting dialogue more and more becomes integral to all aspects of their way of life. Both parties learn to remain aware and try to evoke the best in self and other, knowing that negatively pointed minds joined in ‘group-think’ can create a worse consensual prison than could one mind alone.

Realization of internal and inter-personal truths is like a movement and is very different from trying to directly come to a conclusion or an answer. Yet as people realize the deeper forces, it follows that they will often take some action together on the matter, and this over time brings into effect a synchronization essential for their coupled consciousness.

Meaning ® increased consciousness ® enhanced intelligence ®synergistic action.

Keith: It is when in deep communion with you that sometimes I feel that I am just then waking up from a loneliness, sensing purpose and meaning in my life; for a moment life feels connected with – and entrained by – a field of pure Awareness: a greater Intelligence beyond the capacity of one’s personal thought processes – and wherein lies the source of all true insight, intelligence, and creativity. Often this epiphany comes after deeply listening to you when you speak from your heart, and there is a pause in our dialogue – the pause itself seems to become pregnant with meaning, as though a new Presence, or energy – envelopes and revitalizes us. And then, with the sense of awakening comes a suspension of one’s prison of personal perspectives – and joy arrives. In a heartbeat it is again fun to be here now, and co-creating a flow of meaning through our relationship. But one can’t chase this phenomenon: when it happens, it just happens. This Presence seems to come when we are both vulnerable, searching and open; It revitalizes us and gives us a taste of realization which whets our appetites for further insight – then It recedes and moves aside, leaving us to pursue our developmental work.

Marnie: Even before we engage in dialogue as such, we are probably already in communication. Perhaps not in words, but through the ‘language’ of sharing in our conjoint life. When one of us is anxious or worried, the other also is intuitively affected through this language of silent sharing. We are communicating the possibility of communicating meanings that later take conscious form in our dialogue.

Keith: When we ‘go deeper’, it seems as though we are not only bridging our internal and conjoint communication fields but often in some way we are allowed to tap into the transpersonal spheres - the universal relative to our particular or the implicit relative to our explicit. And as a couple opens themselves up to the transcendental and to the influence of the Universal field, in the process they discover – surprisingly – themselves!

Process:

Dialogue is a process whereby we can come to know ourselves, and how we think. Most of us – through conditioning – lose the skill of thinking independently, and instead just parrot opinions in general circulation. Conceptually, it may help to realize that in actuality our minds are not “locked” within our brains at all, but are actually fields that constantly interact with one another to create larger social fields that can have tremendous influences on our perceptions.

The word 'dialogue' – from Greece – means 'to go through meaning': dia - 'through' + and logos - 'meaning'. Dialogue is then the 'way' of meaning, the Tao of the logos! It is alert and intelligent people stepping aside from their egos and biases as much as possible, talking together – and discovering in their communion of spirit things formerly hidden, even insights that they might not personally wish. The important thing is that the couple agree to follow their realized truth and nothing else.

Dialogue is open-ended, non-directive and begins where practical problem-solving leaves off. The individuals are not concerned with winning arguments, coming to conclusions, solving problems, resolving conflicts, achieving consensus - or anything else other than being together as together they explore the truth and meaning behind their thoughts and perspectives. Especially they are trying to penetrate to the truth of motivations and agendas – of themselves and others. With the truth made conscious through their ‘participative consciousness’, the couple is no longer individually battling internally hidden issues – their co-discovered truth and meaning ‘sets them free’.

The theory of dialogue involves reference to an 'information field'. This field is not energy as we usually think of it, yet it influences – or ‘informs’ – all events that pass through it. When a couple or group engages in deep dialogue, their joint mind lenses into a specific information field unfolding through the energies of their interaction. Bohm saw 'informing' as to 'putting the form in' and he distinguished between normal and active information; active information is an informing from the depths of creation, and the more active the information, the less it is associated with physical energy and instead becomes integral to the organic flow of evolving consciousness. When in the flow of dialogue, sometimes all a couple has to do is ‘just get out of the way’ and become conscious of arising patterns.

Engagement with another who is going deeply within for meaning stimulates and inspires one. The other person is not simply ‘outside’ telling us things, but the faint seeds of meaning already in us are amplified and brought to our surface. A similar effect is felt when we read something that inspires us - and yet feel that we knew all this already! Meaning seeks meaning – consciousness itself strives to transmute and evolve - in contrast with beliefs or 'memes' that seek only to replicate at the expense of others. Realizing meaning is self-organization at its core, and probably underlies all that we call 'thinking' - which is misunderstood if we take to be the doing of a thinking agent. A creative person is likely to realize that she does not 'think' as such but rather participates in thinking processes.

Plato has repeatedly called “Thinking” a voiceless colloquy of the soul with itself. Everyone who has really thought knows that within this remarkable process there is a stage at which an “inner court” is questioned and replies. (Martin Buber “Dialogue”)

Marnie: I often wonder if dialogue doesn’t somehow enable each of us to lens through the other’s mind into ‘All That Is’, and thereby gain NEW insights as to truths or healing. Or perhaps we are all part of a greater hologram, and our individual part of the greater may link into another’s field of consciousness.

The neuroscientist Karl Pribam came to view the brain’s "deep structure" as essentially a hologram - a "lens", interpreting frequencies and creating information out of the neural interactions of the world. In such a scenario, is the reality we perceive real or are our brains essentially making it up? Bohm indicated – from his research in quantum physics – that the hologram might be a starting point for a new description of reality: the enfolded (implicate) order. The accepted wisdom of his time focused on secondary manifestations – the unfolded (explicate) aspect of things - not on their source – the enfolded (implicate) order. Bohm felt that the implicate field - the invisible flux that is not comprised of parts but out of which the parts arise – is an inseparable interconnectedness between all things in the universe. In Bohm’s vision, the universe contained "…a realm of frequencies and potentialities underlying an illusion of concreteness." A most extraordinary description of holographic reality is contained in an ancient Buddhist sutra:

In the heaven of Indra there is said to be a network of pearls so arranged that if you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way, each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object, and in fact is every other object.

Keith: Strangely, sometimes the same realization seems to appear to us simultaneously, as from a ‘middle field’ – almost as though we have melded into being a single tuning fork harmonized to the inflow of an insight. The new may appear in a flash in the individual inner experience of one of us, or as if by magic out of the space between us. Often the new is birthed out of contemplative silence as we ponder some comment made by either. The new is a gift of intelligence from the Void – such is the “magic in the middle” between questing minds.

“Dialogue is group magic - the experiences that inform. They are extraordinary but they are also ordinary because they happen every day in all kinds of contexts to ordinary people. They are difficult to describe, but we know when they have occurred. It is in the space between us, beyond the level of intellectual exchange, and felt in a different way than as a meeting of the minds. It is a meeting, but one of a different sort: it is a meeting of hearts, of souls, of energies, and memories, and although it exists in the realm of physical space and time, it may reflect a dimension beyond the immediate interaction.

This collective resonance is, by my definition, a felt sense of energy, rhythm, or intuitive knowing that occurs in a group of human beings and positively affects the way they interact toward a common purpose. … It is a level that operates constantly when human beings interact in the same space, whether or not they are communicating verbally. It is based on the laws of physics, that vibrating bodies in this case, human beings transmit and receive sound waves that impact one another. When waves of similar enough frequency interact, they can entrain or become one wave with greater amplitude”.

(Renee Levi – from a phenomenological study completed as part of her doctoral work in organizational systems)

Marnie: Sometimes when you speak, it feels to me that I am speaking myself. And then when I speak, I hear my own words as detached and devoid of ego. It is as if – our having done all humanly possible to deal with a concern – something more advanced than ourselves speaks through us, and carries both of us along its own stream. I have found myself saying things that had been buried deeply – or that I had never even thought of before – and thereby I find myself becoming more open to new perspectives.

Keith: Yes – sometimes when one of us speaks, something becomes revealed and illuminated to oneself, or to the other, and that leads to a further realization. Reality seems to be an evolving, step-by-step process, and each communicated ‘step’ that we take prepares us for the next step.

Practice:

To practice dialogue, to take the way of meaning, is a conscious work. It requires whatever alertness, sensitivity, maturity, love and intelligence we can muster, and the courage to become involved with the unknown. To suspend pre-judgements. This type of suspension does not mean repressing or suppressing judgements, just opening up to one’s own biases, reactions, impulses, and feelings in such a way that they can be seen and recognized not only within one’s own psyche but also be reflected back by one’s partner.

Keith: The ‘trick’ to independent thinking is to test all assumptions by their opposites, as otherwise the individual is subordinated or diminished through abdicating to consensual thinking, aka “The Cult of Mediocrity”.

Marnie: Dialogue involves both levels of listening – to the other and to oneself. In this regard, waiting is often very important – waiting to fully hear the other out - a suspension of judgment and assumptions; this freedom from assumptions and processing allows one to more fully experience another’s particular truth – or event – and at the same time one’s waiting insures that the other’s event enters one relatively undistorted. I try to first listen – subsequently there will be time to shift and engage my judgment criteria, but only then with compassion. It goes with the territory that – as I listen to Keith – he may say something that I would rather not hear; regardless, there is the necessity of valuing truth over personal sensitivity. It is too easy to get caught up in my own reactions, and in my being drowned in sentimentality – not able to self-monitor my own internal ‘truth’ signals when listening to another. It has been said that “music is not the notes, but arises from between the notes”, and similarly it takes a bit of waiting to assimilate the meaning of another’s truth.

Keith: Perhaps the pause between our individual expressions, between our words, is what is needed for greater understanding – for a message from beyond to emerge. Perhaps it is silence that, when blended into the dialogue process, is the engine that calls forth from whatever issue is on our plate at the moment, the deeper truth, the greater understanding which one alone could access. It would be like Buber’s "space between" two Thou’s, like meditation’s space between two thoughts – a kind of no-thought, energy-filled consciousness – very alive – that connects us together and to a universal source from which a different kind of knowing is possible. Perhaps with all of our normal thinking activity we are missing the greatest kind of intelligence available to us – through the simple act of staying still. Silence, then, might be one kind of reference beam for accessing a greater intelligence.

"There is nothing in all the universe so much like God as silence" (Meister Eckhart)

It is after the experience of dialogue that a couple should try to exchange their impressions as to what actually happened, and if the insights are seen as especially pivotal, put a condensation of the event into written form. This can be seen as a tripartite process of translation, from one sphere (the respective individuals) through a second (the field itself), and into a third (the conjoint meaning of the experience).

Keith: Bohm and Krishnamurti co-authored a book entitled “The Ending of Time” – this book was a transcript of a dialogue within which they examined the nature of thought [reality] and discussed the possibility of people engaging with others in a trust environment wherein they can feel safe in probing the depths so as to make conscious their realizations. Going deeper, it is seen that the interpersonal trust environment which they discussed as being necessary is but the conventional layer, that the prerequisite necessity is that one learns to trust himself and trust in his ability to be truthful in his own internal ‘dialogue’, rather than suppressing. Trust is a necessity whether one is with another, or when one is alone. Put too many taboos on what one allows oneself to think or say, and the necessary key element may never become conscious.

“I don’t want the demons taken away because they’re going to take my angels too”. (Ranier M. Rilke)

The philosopher Martin Buber placed dialogue in a central position in his philosophy: he saw it as an engagement of mystery – as though an informing presence came into the interface “Between I & Thou”. He saw dialogue as an effective means of on-going relationship rather than as a purposive attempt to reach some conclusion or to express some single viewpoint, and he urged people to speak to each other as Thou and not just as It — that is, to acknowledge the sacred, common humanity in which we share.

The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more. I feel the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with my neighbours, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The communications explorer, Renee Levi, writes in “The Sentient Heart” that – to get into the insight access mode [whether in dialogue or meditation] it is necessary to move ‘from the head to the heart’. One’s heart has another function beyond that of pumping the necessary nutrients and oxygen that enables one’s brain to think, to create, and to control. The heart has its own intelligence and is the first part of our bodies that starts the beat of our life while we are still only a few thousand fetal cells, and this beat will be with us to the end. As adults, we hopefully learn the value of referring key decisions to our heart before making judgments.

Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you…Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself…“Does this path have heart?” If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. (Carlos Castenada)

Our brains are marvellous bio-computers for data reception, analytical processing and storage, yet later in life we are often apt to be guided by our hearts than by objective reasoning. We do our head-work and take things as far as we can through relying on experience and logic, but then reach within to access a deeper pool of intelligence for guidance. We refer to this as hunch, intuition or gut-feel. In dialogue, two or more people acting in parallel in this fashion, work with their heads and then with their hearts to push each other to new heights and deeper pools of insight, and if in near proximity, their hearts actually entrain to the same one rhythm, and as the one speaks the other experiences the same joy or pain of realization as the speaker. It is as though they are bonded cells in the same body, and the truth of one is realized as the truth of another.

“Beyond the individual physical and psychological health benefits available through learning to listen to heart messages, hearts may be able to communicate with other hearts directly, exchanging messages of empathy, connection, and love that, if noticed and valued, could provide direction for future action toward a different way of living together in the world.” (Renee Levi)

Intra-personally, one’s heart is ‘I’, and one’s brain represents ‘Other’. Every organ and cell of our body has its own intelligence, and in its way contributes to the well-being of the whole. Dowsers tune in to their adrenals for remote data; our legs have their preferred paths for reverie; a corporate manager refers to the gut-decisions of the hara; the farmer’s fingers seek out the texture of his crops and hunger to feel the soil on which his family’s livelihood depends. It is important to stress the interconnectivity of heart and brain; the heart picks up where the brain leaves off, but then the ball is passed back to the brain for implementation, as the brain is the material connection with the culture and its codes, and the whole system [physical, psychological, emotional, or spiritual] is held responsible for decisions taken.

The heart is the pacesetter for one’s whole system, and when we are ‘disheartened’ and our hearts hurt because of loss in life and relationship, we are affected all over. Instrumentation indicates that the heart generates the most powerful energetic field in the body – approximately five thousand times greater in strength than the field produced by the brain. Heightened emotions arising in a human being shift the vibrational structure and intensity of his/ her own electromagnetic field and, necessarily, shift the field surrounding the person. This shift is measurable on today’s instruments, and sensitive people can tune in to the status of their own biorhythms as well as those of others. A healer employs his tuning capacity to help harmonize and restore the impaired rhythms of another’s cellular and vital symphony. Scientists at the HeartMath Institute have found that the heart’s electromagnetic field not only permeates every other part of the human body, it radiates outside of our bodies in wave form and can be measured up to eight to ten feet away with sensitive detectors called magnetometers. They have also found that not only are the electrical patterns generated by an individual’s heart detectable in his or her own brain waves using the electroencephalogram test, but the energetic information in the heart waves of one person is detectable in the brain waves of another when they touch or are in close proximity.

A couple in ‘heart-to-heart’ dialogue brings the finest of each of their individual systems – the brain-heart symphonic intelligence of each – into a conjoint state for the synergistic realization of the couple’s needed insight and knowing. And while one can’t ‘chase after solutions’ in dialogue, else the ambiance is broken, nevertheless decisions do emerge, and when a couple gets rolling, they can become very fast decision makers, because they are drawing on both their experience and their intuition, the latter being the way of direct knowing as opposed to a linear process of rationality and discursive logic. Part and parcel of this collective intuition seems to be the capacity for truly original thinking that can often lead to breakthrough solutions. In their emerging inter-dependence, they can actually observe the shifting of boundaries from the old to the new.

Dialogue can be seen as an arena in which collective learning takes place and out of which a sense of increased harmony, fellowship and creativity can arise. Its essence is learning - not as the result of consuming a body of information or doctrine imparted by an authority, nor as a means of examining or criticizing a particular theory or program, but rather as part of an unfolding process of creative participation between peers. (David Bohm)

Caveats:

· Engage dialogue only for exploring what is really important to either.

· Really listen to each other, not only the views and experiences, but the meaning the words have to the speaker, and to the listener.

· Practice the art of learning together by exploring things together, and tell ones truth without trying to make the other wrong. The actual process of exploration takes place during listening – listening not only to another but to oneself. Having said that, there is also the problem of people ‘adjusting’ to each other so that they don’t say the things that might upset each other. In this 'cozy adjustment' they can too easily be very polite to each other and avoid issues that may cause tension, but these may be the very things that are necessary to bring out in the open. Simple agreement on issues may actually mean that the dialogue has failed through the couple having not gone deeply enough into the process or into the consciousness behind it. [Dispute and contrary views are to be valued, since they bring about a rise in the couple’s energy levels. Tension in the right measure can stimulate the awareness of both and enhance their intelligence pool.]

· Avoid monopolizing the conversation. Make sure the other has a chance to speak.

· In some group situations, any discussion – let alone dialogue - may be seen as a threat to, or subversion of, the interests of the group. Group-think may be too ingrained to allow change. A group is, by definition, a conservative institution, and no group wants to be threatened by change. The most that might be hoped for in, say, some dysfunctional family situations is a change in the more superficial elements and that may naturally occur over time as people age. But any deeper change, any change that might threaten the very meaning and therefore the existence of the group or its power relations would tend to be rejected - perhaps subtly or diplomatically - because change might felt as a positional threat to some within the group, and therefore symbiotically felt by all. The essence of dialogue is not superficial ‘toleration’ but a sincere caring and desire to engage in the crucible of life with another.

· As far as is reasonable and possible, the more the conversation concerns what is happening 'now' the better. This makes it more alive. People often converse relative to things that have happened to them in the past, or on opinions they have had in the past. It may take some time to adjust to having a present moment conversation that is related to the process in hand, and bears on how we think, believe, experience, judge, conceive, etc - NOW.

· Beware the problem of ‘memes’ or mind viruses, as in groupthink. This phenomenon occurs not only in the brainwashed mindsets of cult environments, wherein some may claim superiority over the others and direct the group reality. The individuals of any group may be adversely affected through the effects of a “third party” force which serves to bind together the group’s experience: an ideology, a perceived enemy, a common cause, an idealized leader. As individuals bond around this third party force, the potential for evil against others emerges.

· Dialogue is people truly listening to people truly speaking. When we all truly speak and truly listen, we can't help but generate greater shared understanding.

· Good ideas are never wasted. In the moment they may seem to be ignored, but a seed has been planted and eventually the fruit appears – perhaps in a different guise – and is integrated into the whole.

· Speech is a ‘whole body’ thing. It is organic meaning. If a person is not prepared and developed to take it on, the kind of coupling that derives from dialogue can result in a reaction of the immune system. If one has a strong belief in being a separate entity locked into a private world, an experience of true dialogue may not be therapeutic at all but traumatic, leading to one’s rejection of others. This is sometimes witnessed in couples who are talking and ‘opening up’ and then quite suddenly one or other of them begins to be negative and apparently intent on destroying whatever meaning has emerged.

· The importance of speaking has been marginalized or trivialized, or given over to experts and teachers. What is common to almost all of us – speech – has been disregarded as a central power of our very being. Bringing to expression is a wondrous thing. Whenever someone speaks in ways that they have not spoken before, there is a movement within them. They then experience something akin to revelation. When someone says something that surprises themselves they are able to learn from – and through – their own speaking. Speaking is transformative.

· Paradoxically, the more a person authentically listens to himself, the more he is open to the other. It's very strange, but if you listen to yourself in a false way, then it cuts you off. But if you're open to yourself, and you allow an awareness of your functions, your senses, to appear, they flower, and they open to the world. It goes both ways. … one of the most important aspects of the healing force is empathy, which derives from honest listening.

· Dialogue is a way of both participants observing how their hidden attachments to values and intentions can control behavior, and will continue to do so until made conscious.

· Krishnamurti frequently expressed the need to be “hungry”– to be passionately interested in understanding the nature of relationship forces and of our own thinking processes – otherwise only words would be exchanged when talking with others. He also cautioned that dialogue cannot be forced to move away from opinions and ideas to a deeper consideration of life’s problems. The desire to move to a deeper level may be an impediment to reaching the deeper level. We are often unable to remain still and observe the fact of what is taking place inside the skin - our reactions of fear, frustration, boredom, daydreaming, the desire to get somewhere, occasionally even anger - instead we often try to move the dialogue into a domain that is practical to us. However, if participants pay attention to the movement of the thinking process, both within themselves and in others, then their dialogue may move to greater depths on its own. Krishnamurti taught that we should just observe what is taking place, without attempting to move anywhere else.

· ENJOY.

Everything that happens to us happens in our consciousness. As you read these words, they will become part of you – part of what you are aware of. They will influence you, whether you choose to discard them or accept them, depending on the degree of emotional connection you have with them. (William Isaacs “Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together”)

Acknowledgements:

The Sentient Heart by Renee Levi

Intro to the HeartMath Institute

Posted 25-11-06 by Marnie and Keith Elliott

Keith and Marnie Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site

Home	Our Stories	The Sublime	Our World and Times	Book Reviews
Marnie's Images	The Journal	Gleanings	From The Writings Of. . .	Allegories