conscious conversation

Good morning!  Whew, I am still full from our conversation yesterday — as if I overate a delicious meal.  Thank you all so much for participating with so much honesty and openness  — it was wonderful to see everyone so comfortable with each other in so short a time.

Interesting about the “honesty.”  I had the good fortune of having Jason and Katie sleeping at my house Friday and Saturday evenings.  I told Katie this morning that I believed her opening comment in introducing herself as “…5 months sober” set the tone for our entire group for the day.

Then I was having a conversation with Katie and Jason about sobriety and my own addictions, because I wanted their advice (which, of course, they weren’t allowed to give!) and an amazing conversation developed out of Jason listening to me.  I’ll share that in another blog entry.  I had 2 very powerful new learnings about listening.  I keep being amazed at how much I keep learning, every day, about something I know so much about.

Anyway, thank you all for engaging in the listening conversation with me and Coz.  It was a day that was everything I dreamed it could be — and more.  I can’t wait for our Thursday evening session to find out how things are going for you, and I can’t wait to be in an on-going blog conversation with all of you who are moved to participate, and I can’t wait for the next “Where Love Lives” workshop.  Thank you for helping me make my dream come true.  Dan, if you are reading this, I know it won’t mean much to you until I write either my Listening book, or my My Body-Your Body book, and having you at the workshop will live inside of me forever.  I’m so grateful to have you in my life, much less as my son.  How can’t I be grateful every second of my life for that? I love you more and more every day.

Hope to hear from some of you.  Good luck.  If blogging isn’t your cup of tea, and you’d like to continue the Listening conversation and your experiences with me via email, that would be great.  Just write to me, and if something seems worth sharing with the others on the blog, I would ask your permission.

Clint Eastwood used to say in his movies to the bad guys who were considering fighting him, “Go ahead. Make my day.”  Your coming to the workshop not only made day, it made my life.

Ed

Yesterday, my son David was talking about something very important to the two of us.  I was listening, feeding back what I thought he was trying to tell me.  Understanding what I was doing, he stopped speaking and suggested, I know you are listening to me, and then when I am done you will probably just do what you want to do anyway.

That gave me pause.  He was right.  So should I have listened?  Or would it have  been better to say, David, I don’t think I’m open to what you are saying”

The LISTENING turn can get very manipulative and controlling.  The better we are at listening, the more we need to be honest with the speaker.  This all has to do with the primary question: Whose turn it is to speak or to listen? I am saying here that maybe that fundamental question is not enough.  http://lisbepartners.com/content/view/whose-turn-is-it.html

Ed

I have a website that pertains to the value of the individual–not as a potential convert or client for religions or cults–but as the source of something sacred, creative, and NEW, for the person as well as her community.

Ed’s unique method of conscious conversation allows for this “seed within the other” to be nourished by the effective listener.  the website is about the interiority of the person, as personified in the mystical traditions of the Western religions as Sophia, the divine feminine:

www.sophiaandthedragon.com Kathleen Damiani

During a long car ride, I was listening to a conversation between two friends. The speaker, a person who is almost always quiet and laid back, starting screaming and ranting about her sister.  It was the loudest, most uncensored voice I’d ever heard her use.  She was furious.  I thought to myself, Wow, great opportunity to listen and find out what all the anger was about and maybe clear up an issue that I knew has been bothering her for quite awhile.

Before I could start listening, the speaker’s friend began responding with many of the 14 reactions.  In my opinion, her goal was to get her friend quiet and rational, to move her toward problem solving.  That is always what this speaker’s friends do with her, and always, as evidenced here, the problem does not go away long-term.  The friends’ non-listening  “works,” temporarily as it did here — she calmed down almost immediately and then headed in the direction her friend was taking her, agreeing to have a direct conversation with her sister.

The point of this blog comment:  When they were done, I suggested that listening would have been a better option during the tirade than the logic that was used.  Both defended the process they used:  “We’re friends and we have a special rapport for our communication,” “You don’t always have to listen.” etc.  Those kinds of comments imply that the the non-listening friend consciously chose not to listen in the conversation, and that the speaker was aware that she was not being listened to.  My observation was that neither was true.  The non-listening friend did not say to herself, Well, I could listen here but I don’t think that would work very well in this case. That would have been fine.  There are many reasons to choose not to listen.  That is not the issue.  The issue is that we need to acknowledge our unconsiousness in order to begin being more conscious.  That’s the first step.

Ed