What would it take to create a safe place for dialog, seeing that we are not all in the same place at the same time.
Seeing that we all have notions of truth at any given moment that we feel to be correct, else we wouldn’t have them.
Sigh sounds are welcome.
This is the challenge, the difficulty, isn’t it?
How do we all meet in the same psychological space, about the same facts, at the same time, with the same energy?
When we have different perspectives, personalities, interests, etc. Different ways of using words. Different biases and preferences.
When we each have images of each other. Different backgrounds.
The world is common to us all, life and consciousness is something we all share. And yet we struggle to meet about anything.
I’ll try this analogy.
It may sound cheesy, hopefully it doesn’t make one too uncomfortable…
My mind is the home in which I live, and where at times, all kind of “outside” guests come in.
These guests are of course peoples words, thoughts, ideas, expressed during my interaction with them. (on Kinfonet platform, in a dialogue, at the grocery store, at my parents house…)
Their thoughts are only apparently coming from their minds, I do not see the words of others as separate from my mind. Once I interact with people’s words, my mind has already let in their words, without or with some resistance.
Is my “home” a safe place or a war zone to myself ? It seems I have a huge responsibility towards my own state of mind while relating to others.
Maybe the most important message I want to communicate is: I do not make a difference between my thought and your thought. I treat both with the same importance and consideration.
Maybe we need to have the freedom to express our own notions of truth, no matter how wrong they may be.
We cannot force each other to share the same mind, the same feelings, the same comprehension.
This is quite difficult though isn’t it Crina?
Some words, or some ways of expressing words, instinctively feel safe to receive. Or rather healthy, transparent. One feels lighter for reading them.
Other ways of expressing words instinctively feel hostile, or inchoate, strained, or confused. To receive them is to experience a kind of mental indigestion.
Once we have let these words in, we have to deal with the consequences - meaning we have to be attentive in the right way. Otherwise we spit the words back out, and conflict arises.
Agreed.
Is it incumbent upon us nonetheless to at least try and find common ground, should it exist? Or do we have to sadly agree to disagree and go our separate ways? That seems strangely incongruent for a site inspired by Krishnamurti.
Great image. This is the whole issue right there in this one picture.
Yea, I agree, at times I need to do a lot of mental digestion post interaction. This is my responsibility.
But still, in a live interaction, let’s say, which is already happening, I choose “not to block the other” cause my indigestion is not caused by the other, it is my lack of understanding/clarity OF MY OWN MIND that causes it.
PS: I am referring to common interactions, I am not saying I let my self “abused” by others and after that I try to revive myself.
At times, I cut a relationship immediately and irreversibly.
We are thought trying to participate in a conversation without making it about the thinker.
Good image
So a dialogue is a multitude of various circles which to me become one large circle in which I live in.
Yes, I see what you are saying. If we block each other out, then there can be no meeting at all.
So in an ordinary communication - which is not too strained, too inchoate, too confused or too confrontational - your words are my words, and this allows the communication to be shared.
Yes
All words come out from the same. .”voice” , the voice of the dialogue. One mouth one voice.
These circles could represent each person’s different
And so on.
Divisions appear very quickly between people because
And because we each have different images of each other based on our personal background (as being intellectual, religious, gullible, cynical, aggressive, soft-hearted, incoherent, sensitive, indifferent, etc).
And yet we are all human beings.
We share the same basic consciousness.
We live in the same world. 
So why can’t our circles overlap more often? What is stopping us from meeting (at the level of mind and heart) more often?
The common ground as I see it is not the small overlap of the circles but all circles become the temporary ground, including the differences. For this reason maybe a dialogue is so challenging, as it has to include all circles in one single circle.
I don’t follow this Crina?
Surely the common ground is where the circles 
overlap?
If the circles do not overlap, then there is no common ground.
The more circles there are in a dialogue, the more challenging it is to find a central, common overlapping ground, but probably the more individual overlaps between circles also.
I had to read this twice but after having done so I think you are unto something. The central issue may very well be that we personify our ideas, rendering them real in the process. We become mini-authorities, mini-Hitlers without realizing it.
They are my ideas, and I am real so the ideas are felt as real.
Whereas if there was no personification, they would remain as ideas, ours as well as the other’s, non-threatening, just floating as it were.
We would then be cognizant of what we all here I am sure would agree with, that the description is not the described, that our ideas, no matter how true to what they are pointing at we feel them to be, are not what they are pointing at. Can never be, the truth cannot (* edited) be contained between our ears, only representations can be, What we are looking at lies beyond our images, of ourselves and of the other, as James has pointed out and the content of my mind as Crina has.
It is the creation of authority that we have to vigilant about, the thoughts becoming a thinker, taking on a reality that is not theirs to take on. It is this identification process that is common and the recognition of that, seeing that we all fall prey to that process, of making the thinker out of thought, could be the basis of great friendship. And with friendship comes trust, And freedom (to speak openly without worrying how you will be perceived). And safety. And patience. For patience, with this most difficult of problems, is everything.
As Alice said in “Alice in Wonderland”, I am not afraid of you. You are nothing but a pack of cards".
Can we regard our thoughts in like manner? Quite the challenge. Seems to me that is what we are here for. It isn’t a question of humility or changing what we think or how we think, of not applying ourselves to the subject as best we can. Something else altogether - to not let the authority of self, of personification, seep in. Or, failing that, at least be aware that it has.
( I Shall respond in 30 min)
I think this is the essential point.
Not to be so caught up in our ideas or expressions that we cannot set them aside and look at them anew.
Yes.
Yes, and that is what Krishnamurti consistently warned us about. Taking ourselves too seriously.
I agree that the overlap can be called the common ground.
But the common ground of …what ?
I look at the circles of our minds in a different way.
The small overlap of our circles is the space in which our opinions seem to be in no conflict, where our opinions “agree” in a very small limited area.
A “serious” dialogue expands into the space where our opinions do not meet, into the area which has not been seen, or explored by me.
To make such exploration possible, I proposed earlier the analogy of a larger circle, in which all minds are included. To me, that one larger and inclusive circle becomes my own mind, for the duration of the live dialogue.
ADDED NOW:
the overlap can mistakenly be seen as a kind of the safe place we want to be in…
