What is dialogue?
January, 10, 2021
By Garin Samuelsen
“Some might say: ‘Fragmentation of cities, religions, political systems, conflict in the form of wars, general violence, fratricide, etc., are the reality. Wholeness is only an ideal, toward which we should perhaps strive.’ But this is not what is being said here. Rather, what should be said is that wholeness is what is real, and that fragmentation is the response of this whole to man’s action, guided by illusory perception, which is shaped by fragmentary thought.”
“The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
What is dialogue and why is it needed? David Bohm said, “If we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature, we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or otherwise defends his own ideas.” Dialogue is like a light that can shine through the darkness of ignorance and fear as well as on our wholeness. A dialogue is open and doesn’t have an end result. In a sense, it is a living communal meditation that can expose what is false and bring into focus compassion and love without trying, can create new shared meanings and insights. I wonder, can one be creative, listening and free to share if there is a purpose, a goal to be met? In a dialogue, does one need to have a purpose? If there is a purpose, who is creating the purpose?
How does one begin to see and free oneself from the great sorrow that is rooted in our conditioned ignorance, an ignorance encased by culturally dysfunctional thought patterns that are programmed into us since we were young? Presently, we are blind to our ignorance because the cultural conditioning is so strong. Because of this ignorance, we play out a drama, a dream that we call reality and believe in its existence. And these multitude of issues - racism, sexism, poverty, war, environmental degradation have not been solved for they are met with the same thought pattern that created the problems in the first place. As the Buddha said, “With our thoughts we create the world.” Through the lens of our conditioning we think reality into existence. As our cultural reality is built from the story that we are separate from the world, then we will act out this belief in all our actions. So is there a way to help bring our thought patterns and conditioning into the light of awareness and break free of our enslavement to them?
Wholeness is in actuality reality. Divisions only exist in our conditioned minds. In our dysfunctional society which is created, maintained and conditioned by education people have been taught to act like independent separate individuals. From here, it seems like the ego wants to attach itself to beliefs and possess things in order to have some sense of permanency and connection. Yet, this is an illusion and will always be in conflict with what is.
From here, because our minds are full of conflict built out of a false idea, we struggle in communication. Conversations often become debates about right and wrong between people or ideologies that groups of people believe in or people become quiet, afraid to speak out. The conversations are debates because the individual has a hard time listening to anything that is going to contradict itself and place him or her into an uncomfortable situation. “Different groups … are not actually able to listen to each other. As a result, the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.” Echoed Bohm.
This is where dialogue comes in. A dialogue can help us begin to not only see how thought creates division, but also how to tap into wholeness Yet, the paradox is that this needs to happen on its own, it can’t be forced or else it is simply another movement of our conditioning coming through.
“Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like”
From my understanding, a dialogue is purposeless. There is no known destination or place of arrival. There are shared guidelines that the group tries to follow such as listening, not interrupting, checking beliefs, assumptions and opinions, seeking understanding, and questioning. Yet, these guidelines does not mean there is purpose. A purpose presupposes that we can know what we want to get out of it. A purpose will distort the potentiality of the dialogue for it will be using conditioned reactive thought to create a direction. Once the dialogue begins, one has no idea where it will end up or what type of learning will be shared. It happens on its own. Trust is a big part of this.
Dialogue has the potential of shining light upon ignorance not only for the individual but also for the collective - for the two aren’t separate. Dialogue is a light because it helps connect oneself to wholeness and begins to see directly what divides us. Maria Popova also shares that a dialogue is “….a commitment to mutual contemplation of viewpoints and considered response.” When this commitment happens, a dialogue becomes a flow of shared open communication. A dialogue without forcing or trying pushes us to let go of individual consciousness and tap into the collective consciousness and consciousness itself. What is fascinating is change will happen on its own without being forced upon the individual or group. “Rather, the meanings are only similar and not identical. Thus, when the second person replies, the first person sees a difference between what he meant to say and what the other person understood. On considering this difference, he may then be able to see something new, which is relevant both to his own views and to those of the other person. And so it can go back and forth, with the continual emergence of a new content that is common to both participants. Thus, in a dialogue, each person does not attempt to make common certain ideas or items of information that are already known to him. Rather, it may be said that the two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together.” stated David Bohm. Once people began to share, though ideas may seem similar, there may be subtle differences, differences that can be picked up on and thought about and from here new discoveries may emerge.
For the dialogue to work, everyone needs to actively engage in open listening without judgement and without trying to influence each other. In a dialogue, one is not trying to defend their answers or beliefs. In a dialogue, one is suspending all the defense mechanisms and is open to look with openness and understanding. This is very difficult to actually do as the ego will try over and over to creep in and bring in it’s own agenda much of the time without the speaker or listener aware of this fact. We see this often in our culture where imagined sides try and defend their own positioning and blame the other for any issue that arises. This only solidifies differences and creates the potentiality for violence.
On the other hand, a dialogue, without trying or forcing, points out the ego’s game for one keeps coming back to the essential focus on listening and mutual understanding. Here, one can begin to see when one is trying to manipulate or dictate the movement of the dialogue and what is being mirrored back. “It's when we let our guard down and allow our differences and doubts to surface and interact that something authentic and original can begin to emerge, tentatively, in the spaces between us. And I've found that it's often in these fleeting and complicated moments that the heart and mind can come into synchrony, pointing to altogether novel educational possibilities. The key is to remain alert to those moments and to move with them when they arise. We know that the most effective process for discovering these layers of meaning is through interactive and iterative dialogues and that if we undertake them sincerely and openly—and patiently—we can sometimes find our way to something entirely new. We assume that individual voices speak and act for the system as a whole, and we listen carefully or a variety of voices and the competing values they represent..” shared Diana Chapman Walsh.
In a dialogue, it isn’t so much what is being said, but rather the flow of the collective and whether or not people are willing to go deeper within themselves that can lead to new insights and connections between the members. As william Issacs shared, “Dialogue... is a conversation with a center, not sides. It is a way of taking the energy of our differences and channeling it toward something that has never been created before. It lifts us out of polarization and into a greater common sense, and is thereby a means for accessing the intelligence and coordinated power of groups of people.
The roots of the word dialogue come from the Greek words dia and logos . Dia mean 'through'; logos translates to 'word' or 'meaning'. In essence, a dialogue is a flow of meaning . But it is more than this too. In the most ancient meaning of the word, logos meant 'to gather together', and suggested an intimate awareness of the relationships among things in the natural world. In that sense, logos may be best rendered in English as 'relationship'. The Book of John in the New Testament begins: "In the beginning was the Word ( logos )". We could now hear this as "In the beginning was the Relationship."
To take it one step further, dialogue is a conversation in which people think together in relationship. Thinking together implies that you no longer take your own position as final. You relax your grip on certainty and listen to possibilities that result simply from being in relationship with others“ possibilities that might not otherwise have occurred.
To listen respectfully to others, to cultivate and speak your own voice, to suspend your opinions about others—these bring out the intelligence that lives at the very center of ourselves—the intelligence that exists when we are alert of possibilities around us and thinking freshly.”
If a small group of people can consistently come together in a purposeless way to explore what arises, one has the potentiality of breaking through ignorance and seeing the wholeness within oneself, the group and the Universe. This is the journey and why it is so hard for a dialogue confronts our beliefs and thereby the inculturated story of oneself. The only way to break free is to dig into that in an open presence. The question is, is one willing to dive in, have compassion and love for those that don’t share the same views, and trust in the dialogue to give space for authentic change to happen?
