Looking Inward, Outward, and Beyond

When I attended my first Dialogue workshop a few years ago, I was surprised by the gentleness of the three stances: contemplative noticing or mindfulness; non-defended learning; and nonviolence.  It was as if I had Come Home:  slowing down to listen inwardly to - and notice outwardly - the relationships that exist between myself, others, and the world.

It reminded me of vacations where I would set time aside to notice the faithfulness of the ocean waves, the expansiveness of distant horizons, and the time-honored stateliness of the redwood trees.  Each of these vacay moments created awarenesses of Oneness and  Interconnection:  each provided a sense of Freedom and Invitation to live life wholly: a holy life.

Where is your focus: Dark clouds?  The horizon?
Or the Oneness of the whole picture?

Because of the workshop, I now notice that when I base life solely on my assumptions, meanings and conclusions about others, my experience of the world darkens and becomes limited to my views and experiences.  As I practice the Dialogue Skills, I become appreciative that there are many opportunities for  calmness and patience, if I but seek them out by listening beyond my understanding.  (See Dialogue San Diego posting of January 29, 2017.) 

The Dialogue Skills invite us into a number of choices:

• Do we want to be in conversation with others?
• Do we want to check out differing conclusions and beliefs?
• Do we want to seek a broader understanding of what others see and experience?
• Do we desire to be in relationship?

Are we able to look beyond?
Do we desire calming moments of clarity?

The task ahead is putting into practice these choices of inclusion and nonviolence towards others as we face a challenge: how to ask a new set of questions that encompass inward, outward and beyond - looking at the whole picture:

• What are you seeing or experiencing in the United States right now?
• Is it what others are seeing and experiencing?
• How might we move into relationship and dialogue?
• What choices are we willing to make to listen and accept differing points of view? 

Seeing the beauty beyond

Would you agree that we have a choice to slow down and see the beauty at the horizon and beyond the horizon?  If so, maybe the invitation this week is to look:

• Inward:  at the truths and values that you hold dearly.
• Outward:  at the truths  and values that others hold dearly.
• Beyond:  at conversations that honor the faithfulness of shared truths and values, provide expansive moments that broaden our horizons , and respect the stateliness of past and future growth... together! 

Blessings to you this week as you encounter the beauty of each new day.  May we seek calming moments of clarity!

Larry Gardepie
Dialogue San Diego Consulting

Doors and Dialogue: Barriers or Sacred Thresholds?

Have you ever thought about how many phrases or idioms use the image of a door?  Here are a few, and I am sure you can add to this list!

• Be at death's door.
• Knocking on Heaven's door.
• Get a foot in the door.
• Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
• You make a better door than a window. 
• Behind closed doors. 

Take a minute and let the images come to mind: doors as barriers; wondering what is happening behind the door; or getting past closed doors.

Closed, colorful doors may still be seen as barriers

During a recent Dialogue Learning Group meeting, Darcy and Bob used the image of a door to talk about how we experience barriers and dialogue.  Just think of those times when a  relationship or conversation is blocked or stopped by misunderstanding, mistrust, or doubts.

Learning to distinguish between locks,
knockers, and handles

What would happen if we looked at the door differently, re-imagining the door not as a barrier but as an opportunity.  For instance, ponder the hardware that adorns many doors:  the lock, the knocker, and the handle.  Would our lives be any different if we saw these as distinct aspects of an invitation:

• The Lock - as an invitation to respect the door and the contents behind it.
• The Knocker - as an invitation to request entry.
• The Handle - as an invitation to cross the sacred threshold of the life beyond the door.

Sacred thresholds: seeing opportunity

The gift of dialogue, I believe, is the ability to distinguish these different aspects of the door.  We are invited to move from seeing only a barrier to understanding the gift that each person brings to the conversation.

The Invitation and the Gift become the Sacred Threshold that the door protects and honors, the ability to welcome and be welcomed into an awareness of and compassion for the Other.  Dialogue allows the door to be opened freely and willingly.

Questions to consider this week:

• What Doors am I experiencing right now?  How might I re-imagine them?
• How might I respect and honor the Lock and the Gift behind the Door?
• When might I use the Knocker to seek an invitation into another person's life?  Can I hear and accept:  Wait!  Not yet! ?
• Am I aware of and respectful of the Sacred Thresholds as I pass through the Door and move beyond?

And, another door-related phrase to end this reflection:  Open Sesame, the magical phrase that opened the mouth of the cave in One Thousand and One Nights, to the treasures within!

May Doors, Dialogue and Sacred Thresholds open new treasures for you this week as you seek to understand and to be understood!

Larry Gardepie

The Hope Effect: Rippling Outward Gently

Fields trips!  Remember the excitement as a young child - getting out of the classroom and not having to study?!  Little did we know that the field trips were designed to teach us lessons not found in the text books!

Growing up in the Central Coast of California, there were numerous places to go on field trips:  the agricultural nurseries, greenhouses, seed farms and fields of the Salinas Valley; the manufacturing plants of Peter Paul, Nestles, Firestone and Schilling McCormick; the historical sites of several California Missions, Monterey Presidio, and Steinbeck's Cannery Row; and the natural beauties of the tide pools of Point Lobos, the redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains, and the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in Pacific Grove.

The world expanded for me through these field trips: the world of discovery and education.  What memories come to mind when you think of your childhood education?
 

Hope Begins:  Beauty is Born
(Monarch Butterflies Need Help, Chicago Sun Times)

Recently, the Monarch butterfly came to mind when my Dialogue mentor used the 'Butterfly Effect' as an illustration of the importance of practicing our dialogue skills.  You may be familiar with the Butterfly Effect if you have studied weather patterns or chaos theory.  It states that a small and sensitive cause may have a large impact on a later state.  Example:  the fluttering of a butterfly's wings could impact a typhoon weeks later around the world. 

I mused with my mentor that the divisions and and struggles in our current political and social lives seem like a tidal wave rather than the gentle ripples that occur when we attempt to dialogue: slowing down, listening, reflecting, and asking questions to understand.  Where is there hope when people seem to rush to judgment or make decisions without dialogue or discourse?  These impulses seem to dwarf the steps attempted by dialogue.

Hope Supports
(Disappearing Monarch, The CommonSenseCanadian)

As I reviewed articles about the migration of the Monarch Butterfly from Canada to Mexico, one story noted that a single gene is responsible for their ability to migrate.  The impact of this one gene causes millions to travel thousands of miles, filling the skies and trees with a beautiful mosaic of fluttering wings in motion.
 

Hope Emerges
(An Increase in Numbers, Daily Mail-UK)

Do you think there is a gene that would help us as we move through the changes ahead?  Could the gene create a need to connect rather than divide?  Could it be a desire to improve ourselves and others rather than diminish?  Could it provide a hope to be understood and to understand?

I believe that practicing dialogue skills will help us find the answers to these questions.  It would be an opportunity to move from Either - Or thinking to hearing and thoughtfully exploring Both - And options.  All may be true!
 

Hope Transforms
(http://www.monarch-butterfly.com/)

Let's take a field trip together this week!  As an exercise to transform ourselves from our insulated ways of being to a singular and collective beauty, let's turn on the 'migration gene' by practicing one or more of the Dialogue Skills suggested by Chris Argyris and his colleagues:

•  Combine advocacy with inquiry
   Invite others into your viewpoint, allowing them to explore and understand.
  ("What do you think?")
•  Illustrate abstract interpretations with concrete information
   Provide information or data that supports your claim.
  ("This is what I read or considered in my approach.")
•  Share your thought process; check for agreement along the Ladder of Inference
   Seek to understand assumptions, meanings, and conclusions.
  ("This is how I came to this conclusion...")
•  Look for contradicting data and alternative explanations
   Test the conclusions by seeking new ideas and other experiences.
  ("Are you aware of any other information or thoughts?)
•  Support making mistakes in the service of learning
   Overcome defended responses by learning from mistakes.
  ("Oops!  I didn't consider that perspective.")
•  Notice your own impact on a situation
   Become aware of how different roles and communication styles impact dialogue.
  ("I noticed that you became quiet and didn't respond.  Was it because of...?")
•  Experiment to test different views
   Use various methods to test other explanations.
   ("Let's try it your way.")

May this week allow us to migrate away from our predictable behaviors and actions toward an interdependence on who we are meant to become together: Hope Rippling Outward!
 

Larry Gardepie
Dialogue San Diego Consulting

Hope Continues: A Time to Listen and Reflect

Have you noticed when storm clouds move in how our day-to-day activities change: limited mobility due to rain, ice or snow; layering of clothing to protect and keep warm and dry; cautious actions as we drive or walk?  The clouds signal that change is coming; and our perceptions, history, and interpretations influence the actions we decide upon.

As the storm lingers or winter progresses, we may find that our moods shift as we look toward brighter days.  But even with this shift, we may find ourselves entrenched in the protective layering that we created to survive the bleak, cold, wintry days of our past storms.

Hope Continues: storm clouds bring life-giving waters

As a child, did you sit with a friend and name the shapes you saw in the clouds as they floated by: the clouds moving on the winds that changed and reshaped the images before our eyes?

Through the eyes of a child and the lens of imagination, we created relationships that are remembered to this day.  We listened.  We reflected.  We shared.  Through this very human activity of seeking meaning and understanding, our social fabric was created and our spirits  united.

Hope Continues: calm waters reflect Beauty from Above

Looking back on the adult divisions of the past months, I have wondered when I lost the ability or desire to imagine, create, and become that Unity experienced in this childhood activity?

• Was it when I encountered others different than myself?  Maybe I don't know how to listen.
• Was it when I made choices that distanced rather than connected?  Maybe I don't see Sacred Worth and Value in Self and Other.
• Was it when the storm clouds of dissension encouraged caution?  Maybe I remain layered in ways that protect me.
• Was it when I assumed we could no longer speak our minds without accepting the Truth of Other?  Maybe I want the clouds to reflect only the shapes I see and experience.

Hope Continues: sunrises call forth hope for another day

Clouds teach us to seek out beauty: in a glowing sunrise, Hope dawning for another day; in a fading sunset , reminding us to reflect on the setting day.  Hope Continues from beginning to end when we slow down and notice the colorful scenery of Nature and Humanity surrounding us.  Rising and setting suns with ever-shifting clouds, these mark the passing days of our lives:  moments of Reflection, Awareness, Sharing, and Connection. 

We are told that we are living in historic times.  Is this true because of major players in limited events?  Or is it because each day becomes part of the historical fabric where We have played significant roles?  I choose the latter truth!  We are the clouds that shift on the human landscape, creating beautiful and sacred images!  What do you think?
 

Hope Continues: when we listen and reflect
(Images from New York Times: credits noted online)

Maybe It is time to sit back with a friend and relearn our childhood Lessons of Clouds.  As we notice and imagine, share our dreams and thoughts, let's consider these questions this week: 

• Are there clouds in your life that need to be recognized?
• What protects you from hearing another truth?
• How might you reflect on each moment and accept another person's experience?

May this week allow us to seek all the Hopes that Continue!

Larry Gardepie
Dialogue San Diego Consulting