Hi, Quirien:
As I read through your thoughts I am reminded of a couple of ideas that seem to be percolating which I would like to share in point form as perhaps a way to enter into dialogue. No answers ....only emerging thoughts.
1. Dialogue requires perhaps a re-thinking / a shift in perception of relationship and language.
2. There is a partnership between listening and speaking in Dialogue. Each informs the other. How one listens informs how one speaks. How one speaks informs how one listens.
3. The word judgment....how might we unpack it in the context of Dialogue? Assumptions, biases, worldviews..../or a temporary stance. A stance which informs our opinions/offerings/questions....a stance that always is at an intersection willing to being transformed, or deepen as distinguished from holding onto a fixed position.
4. Invitational language....language that invites inquiry ...inquiry that arises through a deep desire to understand the other as distinguished from convincing the other of 'my' way of thinking. A willingness to be transformed, a letting go. As Carl Rogers suggested listening is about being with another in a way that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter anothers world without prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside yourself while the other is speaking.
5. Uncovering assumptions....how might one bring attention to underlying assumptions? I think it was Sam Keen who suggested that we can only tell who we are when someone is listening. A movement of listening, if you will, is the art of receptivity. Receiving, being present to, and letting go. We receive the other, fully present, and then let go, in order to receive again. This shifts listening from a transactional exchange, whereby I listen only to get something, into a way of intentionally being with another in the hope of understanding ...an understanding that is embodied and not solely in our heads. Where we become transformed, shifting perceptions, moving from conversation to communion and back again, over and under and around....pushing through ego into a synergy of universality.
6. To move through conflict and into Dialogue I am beginning to understand requires inner practice. For how can one have a courageous conversation with another if one can not have a courageous conversation with one's self? Much of what fascinates me about this work, as I am coming to understand it, is that it isn't limited to learning a particular method, skills or even intellectual understanding. It also demands that we start to shift perceptions about our relationships in light of quantum theory and to bring attention to what lives within us as well as outside of us.
No answers.....just some ruminations!
Meg