Then you have shut the door.
Which is what? Is it your version of reality against another’s version of reality? That’s a debate. Most of our relationships are about the avoidance of reality. In a dialogue, we have the brief opportunity to face the fact of how we live.
How does that work? Could you give an example of this kind of thing happening?
Personally, I have never had insight, so I don’t know of any examples. What kind of insight might you have with a salesman? That’s the example to consider.
What door, metaphorical or otherwise can be opened or shut here by anyone? You were asking what is it that can be revealed in dialogue, and have pictured dialogue as something persons can have agency in, as though they pick and choose whether dialogue is or not. I am pointing out that is an avoidance from the outset, as dialogue is not something anyone can control, and when it occurs, as it can at any point, what gets revealed is ‘fear’, often expressed as discord or conflict. The failure to see ‘dialogue’ can occur at anytime, without anyone’s specific sponsorship of it, which is a notion born of control, means the limited notion of it being advanced here is bound to lead to blockages, since that is what it is designed to do. Dialogue can be with no specific exchange with anyone, or there be a set notion of what dialogue is and looks like, and an invocation of it, which is not dialogue at all.
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We can’t always discern what the other’s meaning is, so we ask for clarification, and we don’t always get it.
Being open and receptive to what the other has written is necessary, but less so than the writer’s need to make his/her meaning clear. Without that clarity, the burden is on the reader to do the impossible.
I think it’s a waste of your time because of your insistence on “meeting”. Why not create a dialogue forum for those who know what you mean? I suggest this because no one here, as far as I know, has ever been able to meet with you on your terms.
Sorry, I was mistaken. You have not shut the door; you have slammed it shut. But it’s up to you. The invitation remains. It’s a marvellous dream if we can drift into a dialogue at anytime with anyone; I wonder where all those people are. If it is that easy, I don’t know why you resist it now.
What are my terms? Perhaps you could explain them to me. I have stated what I mean by a dialogue as opposed to a discussion or debate, neither of which I am interested in. Join me or don’t. Only when you join me will any other of my terms become evident; everything else I have already made clear. I am happy to wait; there is nothing better to do.
What we know is that you insist on “meeting”, and that you make absolutist, all-or-nothing declarations. We expect that kind of rhetoric from Krishnamurti because we assume he knew whereof he spoke, but we don’t expect or accept it from those who are inquiring into where his words were coming from.
Here I’d say is that another has had a similar insight to my own. In reading their response to my words describing it, their words though different indicate that there is a resonance to what was seen. That we have seen the same thing in or about the ‘self’. There is a joy in that.
So what factor(s) do you see at work here in resistance to something you are calling dialogue? Humanity is in crisis because of its chronic inability to communicate or be communicated with, but that problem doesn’t magically disappear just because one invokes the almighty ‘dialogue’ on the part of oneself. That thing called fear goes very deep in the human animal and manifests all around as control, avoidance, complacency, comfort. It is my responsibility to see to all of this in myself, so I don’t feel the need to issue invites to another to reveal their self, and I wonder at the understanding of a thing such as dialogue when someone does think this way is all. Why are so convinced things are revealed through orchestrated meetings with others? Is it because you are unable or unwilling to look deeply into things for yourself?
Surely, when it is a sincere and careful enquiry, the words must come from the same place. Otherwise, what is the point? Do you think we are going to find something different from the truth?
“Sincere and careful enquiry” don’t describe your contributions to this discussion forum. Invariably, you express knowledge and authority rather than enquiry or uncertainty.
It is very simple. Fear does not exist outside of our relationships to one another; it is a peculiarly human phenomenon. So in meeting one another we are facing this fact head on. Do you want to have a dialogue?
Not true. To quote myself, “We have nothing to fear until we think of something”. Fear is easily induced without others to facilitate it.
**So, given that it’s a dialogue, we each take the role of speaker and listener. And if we are each observing what thought is doing, the incoherence is revealed, which addresses this lack of clarity.
Then leave it alone. Otherwise, if we continue, we remain at loggerheads.
I don’t get it, are you saying the “dialogues” you are trying to present to us do not provide insight (nothing is revealed)?
Surely, what you are trying to share with us must be based in some kind of experience with dialogue - either that, or it is pure conjecture?
I don’t recall off hand, any insights happening during conversations - but if you are being serious (that we need consider this ) I am willing to give it more consideration - would examples of aha! moments during conversations help? Actually, now I am imagining a scenario where someone listening to a Guru might suddenly learn something new - does this example point at “dialogue”?
However, what really troubles me so far is that you seem to be suggesting that insight requires special circumstances - for example : would it be correct to suppose that you are currently in the “correct” mental state for dialogue ? (thus we are in the lucky and rare predicament, where dialogue is actually possible)
Rather than face ‘fear’ in yourself when it arises, you want to face it in the company of a ‘stranger’? Have you done this before Paul, and what happened? Can you describe?
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