BOHM’S THEORY OF DIALOGUE
http://www.irfs.com/albuquerque1994.html
LEE NICHOL: I am amazed at
how much dialogue is going on in this town. More, I think, than any place that
I know of, except perhaps
There are two things I would like to do first, and then maybe we could have an
open discussion. The first thing is to say what my feeling is about talking
about this at all, about doing dialogue and about coming together to have this
kind of meeting. To me this means trying to do justice to what Dr. Bohm worked
so hard to set in motion. It seems that it's not just with this particular
thing, dialogue, but with anything - to try to do it as rightly as you can. If
you're going to make this tile floor we're sitting on - do it well and try to
do it properly. Some things we can do that with - we make the time to do them
well because it means something to us. Other things, we just don't have the
time to do it. It's impossible to give everything such full attention. But I
think this process warrants that kind of full attention. Not because I feel
that David Bohm was some kind of magical person. To me, dialogue is not the be
all and end all of the world, or the perfection of everything. But I do think
it's an interesting and important process, and I have a strong commitment to
it. So coming together to talk about it in detail and really home in on it is
not from some kind of ideological feeling of, "This is the truth,"
but simply of trying to do it rightly. I think it warrants that. Just like many
other things that you may do warrant that.
There are many versions of dialogue in different parts of the world. So be it.
That's the way it should be. But my own interest in dialogue is in this
particular approach. And this particular approach is, in fact, although it
doesn't always look that way on the surface, it's a somewhat challenging
process. It involves some rather subtle observations on Dr. Bohm's part that
can easily get lost in the course of trying to do it. So that's my energy for
coming here, to try to do justice to the energy and quality that Dr. Bohm
brought to it and also, just in general, to try to get it clear or right in the
theoretical sense, as much as that can be done. And then, when people come
together and are actually doing dialogue (in which really anything is the
subject matter) there is likely to be something of a different quality that can
happen in the group - if some number of people, some critical mass of people,
have got the feeling for what's really, what the thing is all about. It doesn't
mean that everybody has to see it that way but that some number of people do.
That can really affect the group in a positive way.
So all of that is what occurred to me over the course of a few conversations
about what was going on here in
What I'll do is jump right in and give a little picture, which may be 15 or 20
minutes, and then we can talk about that. At the beginning, I think the most
important thing to say is that, as I understood it from the twelve years we
worked together, Dr. Bohm intended dialogue to be a laboratory. A kind of
living laboratory. Of course in a laboratory you experiment. So what is the
experiment about? That's the question. And so much disagreement or confusion or
argument or discussion that goes on about dialogue, at least this kind of
dialogue, is rooted in certain misconceptions about what the real intention of
the experiment is. So I'll try to talk about that a little bit as best I can.
I think Dr. Bohm felt that, you know, looking at how we live now and looking
backwards through time at the history of the race, that there has always been
something "off." There's always been something amiss. We may find
pockets here and there where there's been some kind of genuine harmony created
for some period of time, but his feeling was that when we really back away and
look at our own immediate lives, and also this larger picture, that there's
something that doesn’t fit. It doesn’t mean that
everything is rotten and horrible, but that some crucial thing, some crucial
qualities don't seem to connect up and fit for people, in general - everywhere.
And so he sort of laid out his view, which is not uniquely his. His formulation
may be somewhat unique. But he did lay out a view that tried to account for why
things are the way they are in that regard.
Part of this view is that there may have been a time when people lived in
nature and lived in small groups when there wasn't so much intrinsic conflict
among people. There seems to be some evidence for that. We don't really know
for certain about that, but we can make good inferences. But whether there was
or not such a time, the crucial notion here is that when people first came
together in villages and cities, that the thinking process began to shift. The
way that our brains operate began to shift, becoming much more structured, much
more logical, much more task-oriented. And let me stress this is not a diatribe
against rationality, but simply a description of what he feels probably
happened, and what maybe could be done about it. The emphasis here is on... for
now I would use the term "picture." The mind making
"pictures," which you may call different things. We say they are
abstractions, thoughts, images, or we could just use the simple term “a mental
picture”. David used the term "thought." Some people think more in
words, some think more in pictures. I’ll use “pictures”, but substitute
whatever works best for you.
According to this way of looking at it, it is not as though when people lived
in nature they didn't make pictures. Certainly they did. It's the only way they
could do many things. But when people began to live together in more and more
concentrated circumstances, the number of pictures, the volume of thought that
was required of the brain increased – to cope, and of course, to control. This
is just historical fact, I think, that some of the underlying principles in the
structure of civilization are very subtle and pervasive prediction and control
mechanisms. To control how people act. And then as things evolved, to control
how people think. To control how people think you have to think a little bit
more than they do which means making more pictures, right? And so this whole
thing gets into a perpetual loop. Of course, technological progress is the same
process of making inventive pictures, creative ideas from mental pictures about
how something could be improved and then acting on that, experimenting, trying
and seeing what happens. But all of it is rooted in an increasing habit of
making pictures, images. In other words, there is an evolutionary shifting of
how thought-based human beings become, of how much we rely on thinking to
adapt, to create, to do whatever we do. Some evidence of this, at least for me,
is when I wake up in the morning, right away, there is a stream of thought,
instantly. The first movement of consciousness is to start thinking dozens of
thoughts; most people that I talk to have a similar experience. Not everybody,
but most people. So actually what that touches on is something crucial, very
central to dialogue. And that is, that to get into this question and begin to
open it up, requires that we consider that these are not just personal experiences.
It's not just something that happens to the individual. But there's this sheer
volume of thought and this deep orientation of using thought to connect with
the world. That is, mental pictures. That's a collective process - we don't
each get that out of the blue, but we inherit it from the world around us. It's
handed down at a very, very unconscious level, this impulse to relate in that
way.
So that's sort of a base. Whether you use those exact descriptions or not,
something of that order probably occurred over the past number of thousands of
years. And we are where we are. We have our orientation. We have the way that
we use the thinking process, for better or worse.
So the laboratory... Let's come back to that for a moment – the notion of
dialogue being a laboratory to test this hypothesis. I'll spell that out a
little bit more. It's important to realize that dialogue is not, from David
Bohm's perspective, a tool for simply improving communication. It is not a tool
for healing, at least not in a conventional way. It's not an arena for personal
catharsis. It's a space to try to make direct contact with a habit we
all share. And that habit is being collectively and individually addicted to
thought. Being driven by deep assumptions that we often think of as truths, but
that, from his perspective, are actually little clusters of mental pictures
which are set down very deep, but are not necessarily the truth. They may just
be pictures that we've made at some point because they were convenient and made
sense; now they're filed away and they automatically act. This is what he means
by "thought." It sounds very abstract, but think of this as pictures,
mental pictures that have gotten clustered up and then buried and then they act
without us having to prompt them. That's what he means by "thought."
At least that's one piece of it. And the crucial thing that he was saying is
that we all share this. I think it is safe to say that there is not one of us
in this room that doesn't basically operate out of that process, or some
version of it.
Now, so what? If that's the case, so what? I think that Bohm’s response to that
would be that acting from those buried pictures on a day-to-day,
moment-to-moment, second-to-second basis is in fact what's responsible for a
great deal of the travail and sorrow that people everywhere experience. That
we're imprisoned by those programs, by those assumptions. That we're not truly
free people. And that, again, we share this.
But part of the program and part of the picture is that this is my problem here
and your problem there and so on…that these are all individual problems that
can be resolved individually. And probably there is a lot of individual work to
be done. But the laboratory thing that I want to keep coming back to here, is
that that's what this type of dialogue is about. It's to explore that shared
difficulty of how we're living through the compulsion of mental pictures. And
it's not to say, Okay, let's take an eraser and wipe out all these mental
pictures. I don't think we could do that even if that's what we tried to do.
But it's to explore what's actually going on. How does this work? How does it
really function? Not just as a theory but viscerally, directly, in our own
experience of fear and anger and creative sharing. The whole spectrum. What's
really going on with assumptions or pictures? How free are we? How free aren't
we? Here. Now. Not just a theory but in the moment, in the dialogue. To what
extent is it possible to use the time in dialogue to have a direct encounter
with the activity of this process?
That's why we explore dialogue, and not just sit in a bedroom by yourself
meditiating – which I personally think is extraordinarily valuable too. These
are complimentary kinds of things. But in a dialogue it's harder to fool
yourself. It's not impossible. Even the whole group can fool itself about lots
of things. But the idea of this is to bring awareness or attention, a
curiosity, to why we keep acting the way that we act, into a group forum.
The idea is that you don't have to go on and on forever just talking about
dialogue, but you can talk about anything and the process will start to
show itself. So once you get moving, the content of the dialogue doesn't matter
at all. What you talk about is utterly irrelevant. What matters is the deep
cultural superstructure that comes through each person in different ways, and
to pay attention to that, in yourself and others.
So next would be, in a practical sense, to sort of elaborate on this thing: it
doesn't matter what you talk about. That's why, if there is kind of a central
principle, for lack of a better term, in dialogue, it is that there is no
agenda. Which means, for many people, they're finished with dialogue right
away when they find that out (laughter). And if they're not finished right
away, they get out pretty soon. Because it doesn't make sense to us – to get
together and give good time for nothing. But this is just it, you see. This is
the whole point. One of the little clusters of buried pictures that we also call
"meaning", is we always have to be doing something worthwhile,
tangible. “Show me a result. Tell me what I'm going to get. Give me something.”
And for many of us that's probably such a deeply held assumption that it's not
subject to doubt. It's just the way it is. That's the way we've got to live. If
we give an hour to living any other way, we feel we are throwing our time away.
But the notion for Dr. Bohm is, that's an assumption.
Now here we must be careful of saying, "That's an assumption" and
"That's assumption." That can become very mechanical, and that's
something to watch out for in dialogue. Every time somebody says something,
somebody else says, "Oh, that's an assumption." That's easy to do. In
fact it’s rather juvenile. Of course it may be true. But what's really required
is that a group as a whole, when any assumption is sort of shown, for the group
to really recognize it, see its import, and not just become good at catching
one another's assumptions. There's not much value in that, I don't think.
People do that to one another all the time anyhow. It doesn't seem to be
particularly relevant except as a springboard to go further. If you just point
out assumptions, that's not dialogue. The pointing out of assumptions is in
order for the group as a whole to get a feeling, literally, a feeling for the
power of how an assumption functions.
I remember one of the dialogues that we had at Suzanne's house. It was at the
very end of the weekend. It was a very interesting closure, in a sense. Someone
questioned whether there was any such thing as divine power or such a thing as
afterlife. And a couple of other people very quickly said things like, "I
really feel sorry for somebody that doesn't hold that belief. I can't
understand how you can live," and things like that. Well, this was at the
end of the weekend (laughter) and we never got to open that up. But there was
an electric charge in the room when these two very deeply held clusters of
meaning suddenly looked at one another and they didn't see it the same way at
all. So is that personal? In other words, is that just one person's opinion and
another person's opinion? No, there's a chance there for the whole group to
feel it. This is a collective neurophysiological experience, actually to feel
the power and the weight and the compulsive energy of these assumptions. It
communicates directly in that situation. And that's what the dialogue group is
for. It is to cradle, to create a container that is open enough,
non-directional enough, to let those different assumptions that are very deeply
held show themselves.
I got off on a tangent. What was I talking about?
PARTICIPANT: (inaudible)
NICHOL: Yeah. That's what this kind of dialogue is about. It’s not to just
stand back and watch, like a voyeur, seeing everybody else's assumption, but to
get engaged with the energy that's in these assumptions, without falling over
the deep end, which may happen too. Sometimes there are explosions in the
group. That's perfectly fine. That's one way to find out more about how
powerful the assumptions are and how deeply you hold them.
So, right, back to this question of agenda. The assumption is that we always
have to have something to do. That we need to be doing something productive.
This task-orientation, if it can be set aside in dialogue, it's very useful to
do that. Now what I find and most people find is that you usually can't set it
aside. You take that task-orientation into the dialogue with you. Fine. Just be
aware of it. Don't let it overtake you. Be aware that your task-orientation is
deeply affecting and altering your perception of everything that's going on in
the room. "What am I going to get out of this? How can I apply this? What
can I do with this? Is this useful to me or is it not useful to me?"
There's nothing wrong with all of these questions but they need to be sort of
held loosely. And to try to understand that each personal agenda that's brought
into the room is in some way subtle or overt, pushing the dialogue in a certain
direction. Just try to be aware of that. Not to say, "I've got to stop
that." That's like saying, "I've got to stop thinking." Can you
do it? It's not so easy. It's not so easy. I wouldn't say that it's impossible
but it's probably not going to happen through will power, if it happens at all.
And it's the same thing: the conflicts that get set up if you say, well, I
shouldn't have an agenda in dialogue, or I shouldn't be thinking this about
that person, or "I shouldn't" anything. Whatever is happening is the
ground of dialogue. If you're furious, if you're frustrated, if you're
physically uncomfortable, all of that is the substance of the dialogue. That's
the ground from which everybody's working, and to get into the conflict of
should/shouldn't just complicates the thing. So when that happens, paying
attention to that is important.
I had this image when I woke up this morning. I don't know if it will make
sense, but I'll try to give another image of this non-agenda thing. I remember
when I was very young in grade school, on the playground there were two types
of bars. One was straight, and parallel with the ground. You grabbed hold of
these bars. It went straight across. And that was very fun to be on. You know,
you could see how far you could go and so on. But you got on that thing and you
went in one direction. Or you could back up, but it was a straight line. I
forget what that thing is called. Parallel bars of some sort.
P: Monkey bars.
NICHOL: Monkey bars. That's it. And then there was the jungle gym. It's like a
matrix. And I had this image this morning of dialogue being like many people on
a jungle gym rather than being on the monkey bars. Because your whole body,
when you're on the jungle gym, your whole body is in it. All of your limbs are
connected. And you're having to pay attention to the movements of other people
and be sensitive to the full movement of all of the people on this thing, as
opposed to being singular and linear on the monkey bars. And that's like having
no agenda. So in dialogue we're on the jungle gym. We're really not going
anywhere in particular and we're not here to try to get something done,
generally. We're here to play. And at a certain level, dialogue is certainly of
that nature. But it's not only not going anywhere in particular, it's a whole
lot of people together, not going anywhere in particular. And that's really
very crucial to this process. To get used to that rather strange idea, because
that alone is already a movement that begins to dissipate somewhat the
addiction to making pictures and getting somewhere. It begins to open up into
other kinds of qualities. So that's why this thing of no agenda is so central
in the process.
Well, there are probably many other points that I could go on with but I think
I won't at this point. Maybe we could either talk about some of the things that
I just walked through, or talk about people's experience in dialogue so far.
P: (inaudible)
NICHOL: Discussion or whatever. I guess one thing that I'm thinking of is,
having brought up these issues, how much does that square or not square with
what people had thought about dialogue? Is it just a review or is there
anything new?
P: I get hooked into, you know, getting something out of it, achieving
something. And I'm trying to figure out, based on what you were saying, the
question keeps coming up, why am I doing this? I don't, I mean, it goes back, I
know, to wanting to receive some kind of a tangible change or a better ability
to do things or deal with things, deal with problems. I don't know. I'm trying
to figure out what, why am I doing this? Why would I want to do dialogue? I
know I'm attracted to it. I know I've done it. But I mean, is there some way
to... It's hard for me to get to a point, like you said, going and doing
something with really no attachment to getting something out of it. That's what
I want to know. It's just that kind of confusion. Am I going to be a better
person? Am I going to treat people better? What am I going to do if I go to
dialogue on Friday nights and that kind of thing. So I just don't know where to
let go, or try to let go of all of that. What I hear you saying is just going
and doing and not really having those kinds of little objectives crop up, and
most of them subconsciously. That's just what I was feeling when you were
talking. Trying to figure out how to be comfortable with this and not feel like
that I'm going to be a better person for doing it or be able to work in the
world somehow better.
NICHOL: Have you ever been driving down the road and saw something so
extraordinary that you had to stop and get out and look at it? This is a lot
like that. But the idea here, I think that, although we might not think that
sitting around and talking in a room is very extraordinary, but it's the same
feeling. It may not mean that every intention you have of getting something is
just gone. Like in the other situation, you will get back in your car and drive
on. But when you get out of the car, at least for a moment, everything opens up
and you're not totally pointed down some track.
It's not that there's something wrong if you have objectives or intentions, but
to just know how they may be affecting your sense of openness, of
non-directionality - to notice that and then let it be. At least, this is how
it is for me. I have the same situation of wanting to get something. Probably
everybody does. But I guess for me the thing becomes... Am I going to hook into
that intention because that's what's got to happen? Or am I going to let that
intention "float," just like everything else, in the room? Does that
make any sense?
P: … and see how they could be improved through the process…
NICHOL: Because I think you would find that if you tried to eradicate them you
couldn't do it.
P: Well I don't think you could get there. In some ways it almost feels like
you couldn't get there without something in you having some kind of a
mini-objective or whatever, like choosing the things that you do.
P: And also motivation. It's a motivation for coming here and doing this, and
maybe that's what gets you there.
NICHOL: That's a very interesting point about motivation. If any of you had a
chance to read the little section on the "vision of dialogue" (in On
Dialogue), that was what was central - this motivation. Like at the
football game, people want so much to be together they end up killing one
another! That's a kind of very chaotic and incoherent motivation. But I think
what David was trying to draw out was a link between that impulse and something
that, that impulse is actually connected to something deep. Even though in this
football form it's very crazy, but people want somehow to be creative together.
But wanting it and then acting on it, it immediately gets changed into
something chaotic like the football and like all sorts of other things we do.
In this vision of dialogue the notion is that group must be willing to face
that difficult space. You come together wanting something but then you find
that there are tremendous obstacles, really, to getting deeply connected and
being deeply creative. And the dialogue is a commitment to sticking with those
difficult things through time. So when you're talking about motivation, it may
be that you have some motivation of that deeper sort, in addition to the more
superficial things. That's what I find for myself. I know there's something
right about that for me, that I do want to have that kind of connection with
people and be creative together without a direction, in addition to, "What
am I going to get out of it?" There may be a whole spectrum of
motivations, some of which we share and are valuable and some of which are just
very personal and idiosyncratic, and are not particularly conducive to getting
into dialogue.
P: Is there such a thing as passive participation in a dialogue or is that the
same as voyeurism?
NICHOL: I think it's entirely possible for someone to sit through a session and
never say a word and be deeply engaged, deeply participating in the dialogue.
But if that were to go on and on and on, a person were to come for days and
never speak, I would want to question that, you know. Because, in a way, it's
not necessarily voyeurism, but it is almost maybe theft. That's putting it
strongly, but that person that never speaks is not putting something in.
They're primarily... If it goes on and on, they're primarily pulling something
out. At least that's the way it looks to me. What I'd wonder would be that
you're getting some kind of subtle pleasure from watching everybody else make a
fool out of themselves (which can happen if you really engage in dialogue).
Your vulnerabilities will come out in some way and then, you know, all kinds of
things like that will occur. And the voyeur, which probably all of us have some
portion of, simply relaxes into watching everybody else do it. Sort of
accumulating all of that. Nonetheless, tacit participation is a very
interesting notion and I think it goes on constantly in dialogue.
P: So you might examine your assumptions as part of the participation whether
it's tacit or not. And that would affect the group…
NICHOL: It very much would.
P: Is bringing it into the room unavoidable?
NICHOL: Yeah. I think that's so.
P: The mind will come in and say, yes/no, make judgments about what I am
thinking or feeling. And maybe, hooked into what you're saying here, I notice
that in some meetings, and particularly in the last one, which was very potent
for me, there was a lot of silence but the silence seemed to be very full. You
know, it wasn't flat, actually there was a lot going on, I felt, in the people
there. There was a lot going on for me. But I think I get also in the sorts of
spaces where what I offer verbally often bypasses the mind and that gets very
exciting for me. And I'm wondering if that's where I'm moving towards, is that
absolute space where I just... where the thoughts come out...
NICHOL: An important aspect of dialogue is the permission to just speak
whatever is really there without any "editing." And some people maybe
can do that right away. It's just in their nature to do that. But I think that
the more that's happening, the deeper a dialogue group will go. Because the
less editing there is, then the more truth that's coming out. More of what's
actually going on in a person or in a group will begin to show itself. On the
other hand, it's probably important to make the distinction between
heavy-handed editing and sensitivity. In other words, if a person is
"free" of editing and talks for 20 minutes straight in a dialogue
group, there's something off there. They're not being sensitive to the context
they're in, if they just go on and on. This is really not set up for that kind
of personal space. But the speaking spontaneously, as if you're angry at
someone, you would just say it, through whatever means comes out of you.
Whether it's mild or even harsh. Rather than sitting back and saying, "I
probably shouldn't say what I feel, that wouldn't be nice, it wouldn’t be
dialogical" and so on. There's a place for both of those aspects. The
"editing" can give you some space to look at your own assumptions.
That's not really editing, it’s intelligence. It has a different quality.
P: That's that creative part that I'm thinking of. The process for me of
painting, but not having a goal of putting the painting "out there."
There's something in the fine-tuning that I sometimes have inside about whether
to do this or that and then move with that and don't do this.
NICHOL: That issue comes up often because people want to know, am I supposed to
do this, or this, or this. And the answer is, "All of the above."
You're supposed to hold back and watch yourself. You're supposed to be
spontaneous. You're supposed to just jump in and expose yourself. You're
supposed to watch other people. You're supposed to engage. You're supposed to
be active. You're supposed to be quiet. And that interface, the sensitivity, is
in loosening up more and more through those different membranes and not feeling
like this is how you do it or this is how you do it, but it's all
of that. And nobody can tell anybody, ever, exactly how to do that.
Another thing that someone brought up in that same vein with some other groups,
is a rule that you don't talk to other people directly for any sustained period
of time. You only talk to the group. Now that's actually missing the point. (I
bring this out because somebody told me it came up in one of the groups here.)
What that's doing is taking a very subtle notion of David's and making it
mechanical. And the subtle notion is that if the group and individuals are
exercising sensitivity, it is entirely possible for two people to be deeply
engaged in a way that appears exclusive but it's actually relevant and alive in
the whole group. And these people that are engaged in that are actually
monitoring that, themselves, to some extent. They're watching: are they getting
so lost in something that everybody is tuning out, or is there something in
their so-called personal interchange that is very relevant to the whole group
process? Now that's... That requires some attention. It requires sensitivity.
It requires being in gray areas. What it doesn't require is making a rule that
you must talk to the group. How do you talk to the group as a whole? I don't
quite even know. I could conceive of that but, in this process, you talk to the
group as a whole through sincerity and authenticity and not through a mechanism
of speaking to some space in the center of the room. So the intention is, in
fact, to speak to the group as a whole, but not through a formula.
P: Yeah. I felt that in the group. I think we've talked before in the group
about, you know, no one-on-one. And it felt very artificial. I think we've
gotten caught in the group over "No one-to-one." I wondered about
that.
NICHOL: What other people in the group may have to do is say, "Look, I'm
going to sleep over here. What you guys are doing, you left me behind about 15
minutes ago, or 2 minutes ago." For somebody to say that, just because one
person says it doesn't mean the conversation has to stop, but that new
information is seeping into the dialogue, and the two people or three people
involved should listen to that. That doesn't mean they have to be dominated by
it, but they should let their antenna take that in. And they may have gotten
caught in a little vortex where all they're thinking about is their own argument
and where they have essentially forgotten the group. The new comment may be a
reminder. On the other hand, it may be that everybody in the room is really
connected to what is going on and one or two people aren't. But they can say
so. So maybe slowly the thing can begin to shift out of that mode but not
necessarily like (clap), "You're doing wrong, stop that!" It's not
quite that way.
P: I struggle sometimes when things are going back and forth spontaneously so
fast that there's not that listening to what's going on. The assumptions are
going around and around (inaudible)
NICHOL: Have you brought it up?
P: Sometimes. Not always.
NICHOL: What happened when you brought it up in the group? Did the group
respond?
P: (inaudible) But I wasn't the only one who occasionally that weekend said
(inaudible) explode. Just calm things down (inaudible).
NICHOL: It's interesting what you're bringing out. It's important to look at
what would be the reason for slowing down. If, as you said, it's to look at...
be able to have more space to examine assumptions, that would be the point of
slowing down. Not slowness for its own sake. And often people... There comes
this argument in many groups. One set of people doesn't want to slow down,
another does. There is certainly nothing wrong with going fast. But if the
group goes fast so often and so much that assumptions aren't being examined,
then you're not doing dialogue; that's discussion. And so the key point is not
necessarily fast or slow, but are we giving ourselves the opportunity... Are we
doing what we can here to get at, to begin to examine what’s going on.
P: The way that they process, some people need more time than others so it's
going to be really hard to agree on how much time that is, because probably not
everybody's satisfied anyway.
NICHOL: Then what will you do?
P: I guess talk about it. Or examine your assumptions about your feelings.
P: (inaudible)
NICHOL: That would be a third thing, in addition to both of which you
mentioned, which I think are important. Again, the issue of sensitivity. Let's
say that we were in that situation here, now, and four people were making an
appeal for slowing down, but a lot of other people had energy to stick with
this momentum. The question is not whether you slow down or not, and not only
whether we pay attention to assumptions or not, but are we paying any attention
whatsoever to one another? That's both an internal adjustment and a group
phenomenon. The longer the group is together, more likely, the better the group
will get at that. But, yeah, the real question that I see when you raise that
concern is, is it picked up by people's radar or not? And personally I would be
demanding to find that out. I wouldn't be demanding to say, "You have to
do it my way, you have to slow down." But at some point, if there wasn't
any evidence that anything was being heard, I would push it and I would say,
"Are you listening?"
That's where the group thing really comes in; that's where it gets beyond just
an individual or a set of individuals. I've seen in happen in groups that that
kind of awareness emerges, which doesn't mean that if somebody says, "I'm
getting lost, I want to slow down," automatically everybody says,
"Oh, okay, we'll slow down." But it means that what you said was
heard in the whole group. It may be 30 minutes later, it may be in 2 minutes,
but in some way, the fact that the whole group is listening to each person will
have a manifestation of some sort. It may not be the one you want. This is a
very real thing, actually. It can happen. Pretty straightforward.
P: (inaudible) somebody says something like that, it's almost like instead of
really exploring around that, it becomes a new rule of the moment or something.
I don't know how to explain... Like this is what we "should" be
doing. And so, to the extent that it becomes a "should," or if
there's any shame attached to it on the part of any people in the group, then I
feel like it puts a lid on the group to a certain extent. Even though the
suggestion might be good.
NICHOL: It happens all the time. The flip side of that, I think, is that you
have to be careful not to put a limitation on people being able to say they
don't like something. And that's a question of the maturity of the group. Just
like it's a question of the maturity of an individual. If your wife tells you
something about your character that's bothersome to her, how are you going to
feel about it? Are you going to say, "You shouldn't say those things to
me." Or are you going to listen, and say, "Maybe she's right, maybe
she's not. I'm going to give it some space." In the same way, a group has
to be open to anybody saying anything critical at any point, without saying,
"Don't put a rule on me." The group can hear and let it seep in. May
act on it, may not. And that requires some sensitivity too.
P: You were talking about the group maturing over time. I have a question about
the number of people in the group, the continuity of the membership.
NICHOL: Perhaps it would be good to look a little more carefully at the notion
of the group maturing over time, which will tend to happen. But it's important
also to note that groups form that are in that space right away. In order
words, you don't have to do it through time to get there, but there's a
tendency that the longer a group does it, the more likely that is. It doesn't
preclude being there right away. Thinking too much in those terms can really
tie a group up and kill a lot of great possibilities that could occur in a very
short time. But in the situation where there is an ongoing group... This is
something... This is one of the things that interests me about what's going on
here in
I have two sets of experiences. One is that with the same group of people,
through time, very interesting things occur, and it's a very good situation to
have that. Part of it has to do with trust. That's just in the nature of being
human. But I've also seen too many times to ignore, in one weekend, that same
place reached in a matter of hours with people that don't know one another at
all. The same quality can emerge there, a trust, an openness, a deep sharing.
So it's hard to say. I think it has to do with what people bring to it when
they walk into it and they sit down. Even more than whether the group's
together through time. All these things seem to figure in somehow. It's
interesting.
This again points to the issue of intention. If I’m expecting the group to
provide a good experience for me, that’s a mistake. Really, each person must
take direct responsibility for making the thing work, for internalizing what
this is about and bringing that to the circle each session. This is the
benchmark for the group’s maturity. And this is why you only have a facilitator
in the very early stages of the process.
P: When you talk of deep sharing, what is that? What is that deep sharing?
(long pause…)
NICHOL: It wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with a lot of personal
history. It could. But it wouldn't necessarily. I think that there is a kind of
sharing in dialogue that's different from that... The situation that Mark was
talking about... A person could be sitting in a dialogue group and never speak
and have extraordinarily deep sharing with the group. The springboard for it
may be something personal, but that, after you've sort of jumped off the board…
You see, people often talk about, "Oh, people are all the same, deep down
we're all one." And that may or may not be, I don't know. Finding out
about that is part of the dialogue experiment. But I do think that there is
something that we all share, and I think that that is sorrow. The sorrow has
all kinds of particular reference points: divorce, a death, identity crisis.
There's some level of sorrow that's a bit different from any of those
particular things. It has to do with, down deep we sense there's more than what
we normally have. Not in terms of a house or a car, but inner richness; and you
just can't get to it. It's something... The door is shut to that most of the
time. And speaking for myself and many other people that I talk to, that fact,
which often we're not cognizant of, could it underlie all these particular
difficulties? That fact has got extraordinary energy in it if it opens up a
little bit. The feeling of that in a dialogue group is extraordinary. And it
doesn't mean we're overtly talking about it, but we're sensing it because we
may be coming to the edge of it. The whole group, as well as individuals, may
be pushing up against that fact of something deep that’s unfinished. So to me
that’s deep sharing. But that can't be orchestrated. There's no technology for
that. It's a question of sincerity and openness.
P: Yeah. That makes sense.
NICHOL: You can take that football example. All those people connect and they
generate tremendous energy. But it’s chaotic. Whereas with this deeper energy,
people can get connected, it's not like a cesspool of self-pity. Quite the
contrary. It begins to generate a whole new level of coherent energy.
P: More about being alive. The essence is really the aliveness. That is then
what the group would share.
NICHOL: Because everybody wants that.
P: As you are talking and I'm thinking about the Consciousness School of
Buddhism, 300 years before Jesus, and they thought that thought was all there
is, consciousness was all there is. And I was sitting here wondering how can I
conceive of deep personal relating beyond my own mind? Without receiving it at
some level of mind? What else do I have besides my own language, thought and
concepts. And then I have senses. And we speak of "spirit" but I
don't know what... I mean these words like "inner richness," and
something beyond. I'm not sure it exists, you know. But I know that in our last
group, it seemed like thoughts went around the room without people trying to
say those things. The thoughts just went around when I was thinking of them.
And it was pretty interesting. But I don't know about what you're talking
about. I don't really know.
NICHOL: I don't know either. We can find out.
P: I don't think our minds often have words that describe something that
happens on that energetic level.
P: It's interesting because I majored in (inaudible) (laughter) Sometimes the
dialogue is boiling, sometimes it' calm, but I always feel fed. I don't know
that I've changed. (inaudible)
P: (inaudible) because what happens in a small group seems to be very different
from the large group and I'm not sure what that is. Because, you know, the sort
of rule of thumb, of sort of like twenty people, that's an ideal. And this
other small group, it seems to have this deep sharing. That's interesting to
me.
NICHOL: How many people are in the small group?
P: There are 8 in each… (several talking at once here)
NICHOL: (inaudible) Eight is getting a bit small for doing Bohmian dialogue.
But we shouldn’t rule it out. It's hard to say.
P: (inaudible) What is the reason for the numbers?
NICHOL: Well, a number of things. If you go below (inaudible) there will be an
inclination for the group to be more like a gathering, like a serious dinner
party or something. And a subtle sense of etiquette, which people will often
drop in bigger groups, comes into play. That's more likely to happen somehow.
But there's no iron-clad rule. You may have noticed in yourself (I have), that
you’ll say certain things to people in large groups that I might not in a
smaller group. Topics will come up in a larger group that often won't come up
in a smaller group – things that are more controversial and provocative. So
that's one virtue of a larger group. Sometimes it can work the opposite way. If
it's a larger group that's got, for whatever reason, into a pattern of
inhibition, then even those things won't happen.
I think the most important thing which numbers tend to have a correlation with,
but not necessarily, is variety of views. There will be not only a be a variety
of deeply held differences, but also a willingness to work with that and not
just to assert, "This is the way it is." You get the larger group and
you may have these differences come out, but then you have the task of doing
everything possible to make sure that that group understands why they've gotten
together at all, if they're doing dialogue. Not just to state opinions, but to
use those to work with. But that, I think, is the thing with numbers. That you
get beyond politeness and you get beyond even the kind of sharing which can
happen in a small group (and that's a very rich experience which personally I
value a lot). But if, somehow, friction is not being generated and recognized,
at least tacitly, you're not in the dialogue terrain The friction shows you more
about what you're tied to – not in terms of content, but in terms of
disposition. So that's the simplest reason for numbers.
Some people have mentioned, "Well, we had a bigger group and I was pissed
off and I didn't like it." (laughter) But that's exactly what's supposed
to happen – not as an end in itself, but as a spark. However, there may be
things you're just pissed off about because there are people who're just not...
They're being obstructionist. They're actually subverting a dialogue. That
happens too. The dialogue is not so open that you invite people in who
tacitly dislike the notion of dialogue and do everything they can do to gum it
up. That's not the point of being open in dialogue. And that happens. That has
definitely happened. People are afraid to say, "You shouldn't be in this
group," for fear that that's violating one of the guidelines of dialogue,
namely, "all points of view are welcome." But, really, the dialogue
is for people who have thought about it a little bit and say they want to try
to do it, rather than people who have thought about it and said, "I don't
want to do it, and therefore I'm going to go a dialogue group and disrupt it.”
(laughter) We should be able to say to that person, “I don't think you should
come back."
P: There's something for us, I felt like from the beginning, I felt like less
words were necessary. So then it's like, well then, is there dialogue with
shared meaning? Does dialogue get us to shared meaning once we're there?
Conversation... no, not conversation, but words or pictures are no longer a
part of the experience. So, I don't know, that's a question I was just
commenting on. I do have a question, though, and so I'm having to shift out of
"shared meaning" to be able to come up with it. But it has to do with
assumptions and... I have an assumption that the idea of dialogue is to soften
or to let go of my opinions or my assumptions. And I don't know if that's true,
if that's accurate or not. I mean I don’t know if that's really what dialogue
is about - not having assumptions. Not having opinions and not having...
NICHOL: That's an important issue. Okay. So, for example: Somebody's talking
about a trip they went on to some place and they went to some nice cafe and
they met some nice people and they... And you've been to that same place,
right? And you thought it was pretty seedy, schlocky. You're feeling that
they're glorifying things. You're going the opposite direction. Okay, so then
you notice that. You notice, “Oh, I'm having this opinion about, or this assumption
about this person and what they’re saying." If you then have a program
inside your head that says, "And I'm going to soften my opinion..."
P: …my perception about the place?
NICHOL: You're saying to yourself, "I'm going to soften my opinion."
That can have a certain value, but it’s not quite what we’re after. In that
situation, you have tacitly committed to a subject-object relation to the
assumption. I am kind of vaguely “here’, the opinion is kind of vaguely
“there’, and my intention is to perform a kind of operation, namely, to soften
it. You may do that, and you shouldn't beat yourself over your head because
you're trying to soften your opinion. All I'm trying to say is, that it's not
quite that.
That approach is a very deep cultural conditioning, which is in fact right at
the root of our difficulties. In dialogue we are looking for a different
approach to precisely this issue. It’s more like... Here comes your opinion,
and you notice you have it (claps). Right at that second, before you start thinking,
"I'm going to soften it," when you just noticed it, there was some
awake quality, that passes instantly when you say, "And I'm going to
soften it."
P: Which is judgment?
NICHOL: Yes. Which is, "I shouldn't have the opinion. I should soften the opinion"
All right. So that fresh, immediate perception - "Ah, there's an opinion.”
That's what it's about.
P: But the awareness... It's the intention of the awareness to...
NICHOL: Awareness has no intention, except perhaps to be aware. It has no
agenda. That's why we have no agenda, right? From the most general group level
where we have no pre-set topic, to this most subtle level of cognition, where
awareness has no agenda. It is a continuum. So, no agenda with regard to your
assumption, except to be aware of it. That is suspension. At that point we can
go in two different directions. One direction is to try to change the
assumption. The other direction, having suspended, is to allow the assumption
to “flower” within your entire organism. Instead of trying to alter it, let
yourself feel its “meaning” – how it charges the organism emotionally,
psychologically, neurophysiologically. Sense the living movement of it. This is
the beginning of proprioception. We begin to explore whether or not we can
proceed without the observer – the “me” – trying to control everything.
Softening the opinion is still in the domain of the observer controlling its
world.
P: (inaudible) How does that fit in with the idea of sometimes you might want
to push out opinions, and sometimes you might want to suspend it and just watch
it. Because then if you say that you're going to suspend it and watch it you’re
still doing something with your thought, right then, that maybe also alters the
fresh immediate perception you were talking about.
NICHOL: You're right. But doing that alters it far less than saying, "I'm
going to change it." What we're really doing is playing around with giving
that awareness maximum opportunity to re-emerge again and again. But once you
commit to changing your opinion, you're on another track altogether. And that
doesn't mean that when you try to suspend that you're going to be able to do
it. Quite frankly, it's challenging to do that. We say... we talk about it like
we can easily do it. It's not that easy.
P: And if that awareness comes back again, then we can make a space for
(inaudible)
NICHOL: Right. And the thing about putting it out, which, this is very
important. Putting it out into the group... That's when you're moving from the
individual level into a whole other thing. You're pitching this out to the
group. That's where the image of this room being the inside of one person's
head, and each of us being thoughts in that head, that's where that possibility
comes into play. This is my image. It's not David's, but I find it useful. To
what extent, when you just pitch something out there, can the group begin to
play with doing, as a group, what you did with that opinion, which is just to
be aware of it, to take it in, pay attention to it, rather than constant
reaction, bouncing, percussive stuff going on. Things get very
interesting at that point.
P: (inaudible)
NICHOL: Yes. Just like you will inside yourself, if you're trying too hard to
do it. But to whatever extent the individuals in the group are playing around
with this awareness inside themselves, that enhances the likelihood that the
group as a whole will be able to do it whenever an individual pitches out there
something provocative or bizarre. At that point there is the possibility that
the distinction between inside and outside begins to dissolve. That thought,
knowing, intelligence, awareness, begin to move in ways that transcend the
individual – and perhaps even the group.
What that touches on, maybe it's relevant to look at this a little more deeply.
What is the relationship of suspension to proprioception, the notion of
proprioception? Okay. So we've got this thing again of my opinion about this
person's cafe story and their experience. And not only I disagree with the
experience they're relating, but actually, I don't like them! (laughter) So I'm
noticing that, and then I notice that I'm trying to soften it. Well, that's
okay. Suddenly that's what you're paying attention to. You're not
saying, "I shouldn't be trying to soften it." You're just paying
attention to the fact that that's what you're doing now. You moved from having
your feeling about them to trying to alter your feeling.
Okay, but anyhow, there it is. And whatever's going on, whether you succeed at
paying attention to it or whether you don't, you notice it. It's out there. And
so the notion of suspension is just hanging it in front of you. Rather than
just saying, "I really do hate this person and I'm so sick of him, and
blah, blah, blah." Or saying, "I shouldn't feel this way." You're
just trying to see that it's so, right? And I think for most of us, to do that
means standing back from it a little bit. Standing "over there." It
means pulling away from feelings. Pulling back from them somewhat. I think the
reason for doing that is simply... It's like putting a flag out. "Oh,
that's what's happened." That's one way of looking at suspension. But
that's limited, right? It's not to say it's bad. It's a starting point.
Suspension is just that – it’s a starting point. So you've taken this thing
that's coursing through you and you sort of set it "over there" and
look at it, suspend it. Well, then what? Then what happens? That's where the
proprioception comes in. With the suspension, you have some awareness but after
that initial kind of understanding, you are sort of analyzing it, right? Like
you're looking at a book over there or you're looking at your hand; and it's
from the outside in. Your awareness is... You're looking at something.
Your attention is pointed at some object. This may sound abstract, but it's
really important; it has very concrete consequences.
With proprioception you take that "object" and you pull it back to
you. Why do you do that? Why do you pull that object (which is your anger, your
disgust), why do you pull that back to you? Having noted it and put a flag on
it, you're not quite running on automatic. There's some little awareness,
however fleeting it might be and however confused you may be about what you're
doing. You have at least sort of singled that out, and you've got your eye on
it. You've just got. .. You've got your eye on your disgust. But to get into
this issue of proprioception, the point is to have a deeper experience of that
disgust, than just holding it over there and looking at it. In other words,
you've got to merge back with it, but differently from how you were merged
with it before you noticed it. It's got to be brought into the body. This
is not the whole story of proprioception, but it's a really useful way of
thinking about it. That having suspended something that's maybe explosive, you
keep bringing it back in and, as you're bringing it closer and deeper, back
into your awareness, that is, you're letting yourself feel it more fully,
rather than holding it at bay. You're watching the relation, as much as you
can, between your thoughts, your feelings, your body, your blood pressure, your
adrenalin, your whole state of consciousness. Proprioception puts you in a more
dangerous position because you run the risk of being consumed by it again. But
there may be no other way to truly understand these explosive states of energy
than by being fully in them. In that case, you have awareness from the inside
out, not from the outside in. That's how you get started. Once you've sort of
gotten an orientation, "Oh, this is what's going on," then you start
pulling back into it and feeling it and experiencing it neurophysiologically,
much more richly. And that's awareness from the inside out.
P: Does that have thought, too? You did say thought but you don't actually analyze
it.
NICHOL: Right. That's a good point. And you may find yourself analyzing it and
you shouldn't beat yourself over the head if you do. But analyzing it is not
quite where it's at in this case. It's almost like a sixth sense which is
watching the relation between your body, your feelings, your thoughts. Watching
what happens as you... again, no agenda. You're not trying to do anything with
it. You're just watching the strangeness of it all.
I should emphasize not to get caught in the terminology. The terrain we’re
talking about is actual, but the terminology – suspension, proprioception,
awareness, etc. – is highly relative. What Bohm is talking about is something
that has been engaged with for thousands of years – it is what tantric
practitioners do, it is what Krishnamurti talked about, and many others. If we
get caught in the tone of the terminology, we will tie ourselves in knots. Try
to see what the words point to, and go there. Be creative. Explore. Make it
your own.
*************TAPE GAP***********
NICHOL: That little guy or girl that stands... what's it called, the
homunculus? They came up with a name for it! It's the little person in your
head that looks at everything you do. We often think that that is the same as
awareness. From this perspective that's a side channel of awareness. It's one
little tangent of awareness. I think there's a much deeper ability to perceive
things like anger or joy or whatever. It's not rooted in... See, that observer
is your personality. It's your personal history. Can you observe anger,
disgust, without your personal history? That's one way of putting the question.
It's not an easy thing to do but I don't think it's impossible.
P: How can you describe the other perception that is not your personal history?
NICHOL: I don't know that it can actually be described. I don't mean to sound
mysterious, but I think that that's right on the other edge of everything a
description is. So, having said that, then you might give it some attributes. I
would just say awakeness. It's just the quality of being awake before your
personal history enters the picture and takes over. And I also think that
that's going on in everyone of us hundreds of times a day, at some level. But
every time that awareness or awakeness sees something, this deep compulsion of
the thought mechanism comes in, which is personal history but also collective,
taught to us through the civilization, it won't let that awakeness stay awake.
It likes to put it back to sleep. And it happens so fast and it's so overpowering
that that seems to be all there is. So for dialogue, to come back to this
laboratory thing, is experimenting with all of this together. And seeing what
happens. This is very different from what it's often portrayed to be.
P: I'm not really sure about personal history, really. What that is. And I try
to observe when judgment comes in to mind and I've got values about what I feel
or what I'm thinking. That would stop just staying alive to what is inside me.
Judgment certainly stops that.
NICHOL: Yes, but where does that come from?
P: Well, that's what comes from personal history. I mean, my inner judge would
definitely come from personal history. But I'm trying to think of how else
personal history makes (inaudible) A younger part of me which would get sort of
enraged and impatient and that would be the feelings that sort of take over and
dominate. I wouldn't be holding myself in that sort of bowl, but that I would
be spilling over in some way. Both those aspects would stop what you're
describing from happening.
NICHOL: That's right. That's exactly right. Your gushing over is the flip side
of judging yourself. I mean, they don't look the same, but they have the same
effect - which is to quash your awakeness. You're right. But that doesn't mean
don't do either one of them.
P: No. I think I would be (inaudible) could lose it very easily, and I do lose
it easily. I flip into judgment and then I flip into passion and impatience and
anger or something else that would stop that, just being with that.
NICHOL: Something occurs to me. Have you ever been in dialogue, or any
situation, where you had something pointed out to you, about you, that was very
shocking, and you were so shocked that for a while, maybe an hour or maybe a
day, all you could do, really, was look at what had been said to you? And then,
after that period of time passed, then you started getting very angry at that
person. And all the mechanisms turn on about why they're wrong, and everything
contrary to what they said. But there was some space in which what you really
did was listen to what they said. Because you were so shocked that's about all
you could do. I don't know if you've had that occur or not.
P: Maybe I've been too careful, but I've had it occur where I've been very
excited and loving and so, you know... When you first gave that example, I
thought of the negative. Then I thought of something opposite, so that I would
get sucked up in the other direction. Not being angry but just extolling the
other person, and so that's the same... I mean...
NICHOL: Other side of the coin. That’s right. So what I am trying to allude to
is that quality of mind which we often associate with disorientation – that
there is some extraordinary awareness in that quality. But our whole cultural
system tells us, when we get in that space, "Shut that down and straighten
it up." Right? "Get it right, get back on track." Rather than
realize that there may be a great deal of value in that condition, what feels
like chaos. That's one predisposition that I think we probably all share, is to
stay away from that place. And it doesn't always have to manifest itself as
disorientation, but it often does and that's often a good signal, you know, to
say, here's something. And a dialogue group may avoid that. You watch and
you'll see that the group will tend to work very hard not to allow that to
really come out.
P: To avoid suffering?
NICHOL: Well, of course. But this is a particular kind of suffering. It's
different from, say, a death. Although a death can produce this, but let's
say... just through the provocation of our own interchange we can get into that
deeply disorientated space. That's more confusing, in a way, than a death. A
death (claps) is clear, unequivocal. With this other thing, we're making it.
We're in it. It's a dynamic living thing, right there, and it's therefore more
threatening, in some ways, and therefore we really tend to keep away from that.
So I would encourage any of the groups, not to set out mechanically to try to
get to that space, but if people are alert and sensitive, it will show its head
now and then - and somebody can call it and say, "What's going on here?
Can we look a little further into this?" You don’t have to mandate that,
but you can open up a space to allow that disorientation to grow a little bit.
That can be very productive. It's not a rule. The opposite is what usually
happens, is the point that I'm trying to make. That the group will work very
hard to avoid this.
P: It seems that we stay away from that in some way, both individually and...
NICHOL: Trying to find out if we can move into that is what this process is
about. If we see that our habitual orientations are part of our difficulty,
then a little disorientation might be useful. It's not a dictate. It's a
curiosity. And we do that together.
P: And the benefit of that being? (laughter)
P: You can charge more per hour! (laughter)
P: Because it is so disorienting, to resist it, you know. But it's like... I'm
serious, what is in it, to move into that space?
P: Well, see, this is where moving past that edge, past that... I have a lot of
excitement about. I really don't know the "value." I couldn't put a
value on that.
P: The value is that it's all unknown. So that means that there are open
possibilities.
P: That's valuable to some people but not to others. I'm asking that as a
question.
P: I guess I am asking about, you know, just in general how we move as human
beings, the difficulty of facing that spot and staying there. It's almost like,
what in us would cause us to want to stick with that thought that's very
disorienting? Maybe I'm being too rational about it. Maybe it goes back to that
deeply shared suffering that you were talking about earlier, and somehow to tap
into that has some value for humankind or whatever. But when you're at that
point of real chaos and disorientation... I'm trying to think of another
thought that would keep me going toward that as opposed to all the multitude of
thoughts that would keep you backing away from that place.
NICHOL: I think it's a fair question. It is tricky. Because to say anything
about it runs the risk of depriving you of coming to your own sensibility about
it. The only thing that I could say about it that doesn't distort the whole
issue has to do with two things. One, you know, if you try to picture in your
mind experiences where you've had incredible lucidity. You see straight through
something. Deep understanding about something that was an enigma to you, or
bothering you, and suddenly the light went on. That's sort of cognitive, but at
a more emotional level this would be deep love. I think those two things
actually are related. My feeling about what's going on in that
disorientation/chaos state is that the same thing is potentially emerging.
Whereas in the first case, your personality is saying, "This is all very
nice," and in the second case, your personality is saying is saying,
"To hell with this." (laughter) The disorientation is actually
resisting a big open thing. And sometimes you don 't resist it. So what looks
like hell... It may be something deep that is worthwhile. Maybe.
P: But then again I think we get into an assumption that going through the hell
is worthwhile. I think that would influence the group in terms of a pull.
NICHOL: So that would be an assumption. Like any other assumption, you don't
want to go in there and try and chop its head off, you just want to see if it
is affecting the living quality of doing this. It may be a proper incentive one
second. And the next second it may be a deep distortion. So I don't think we
could say absolutely black or white that it's a wrong thing. But to bear in
mind that it is very likely to distort where you're going if you're not aware
of this.
P: Well I think then we get into comfort and discomfort, and value about both
of those. I think we've gotten to that in the Friday group about 3 weeks ago.
And I was in a quandary about that. But I think again... I think you're right.
I think that that needs to be talked about.
NICHOL: Or not. (laughter) You just can't say.
P: Yeah. The family in the sitting room. But it's bound to come up again. At
least I think it has to come up in me!
P: Seems like the quality of connectiveness or avoidance, or disconnectiveness
or something.
P: Or holding it inside. You know, having trouble putting it in a group
"bowl."
NICHOL: And sometimes there's no difference between holding it and putting it
in a bowl.
P: It comes out anyway.
P: I'm thinking about the question of courage, and I have a lot more questions
than I do answers. I've done a lot of hang-gliding, and this takes a lot more
courage than that. It's strange, because all that's really going on here in our
discussion is sounds, all of this comes from sounds.
NICHOL: You’ve really put you’re finger on it.
**TAPE ENDS**
© 1994, 2006 Lee Nichol