The First Question:
What is a conversation?
How many conversations do you have in the course of a day, a week, a year, a lifetime?
Having been part of so many conversations, how do you define conversation? If you were to write your own definition of conversation would it change your response to the the question about how many conversations do you have?
Let me help you with your thinking about the meaning of conversation.
The key root to converse is a Latin word, vertare, which means to turn. Con, of course means with. Conversation as a word means “turning with.”
When I think of “turning with” two images appear: spirals and dancing.
Spirals: spinning inward to the details or outward to the expansions.
Dancing: leading and following, choreography, navigating the floor.
How do I “turn with” in the art of speaking and listening? I turn toward and in turning toward, I also turn away.
I am turning toward my conversation partner and away from myself when I listen. I am turning toward myself and away from my partner when I am speaking.
What speaking and listening is not a conversation? I think of empty phrases, reporting of data, untruths. What else?
Do I pay attention to this turning? Does it matter?
Are most of my conversations about thoughts and ideas, about feelings and emotions, or about deeds and possibilities? What does the content of the conversation tell me about my turning and what I turn with?
And the contexts of my conversations? What are they?
Do work with these questions. Any answers you come up with write them down and then turn them into questions. Wisdom lives in the next questions, so always find the next questions. Is there a conversation if there is no question? Is the question the turning?
I want to read your thoughts on conversation. Please leave a comment below.
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To learn the second question you must ask before having a conversation with a spiritual being, wait for my next post to the Inner Year blog in a few days.
November in the Inner Year is the time to pay attention to conversations with Spiritual Beings. The darkening of the Sun asks us to turn away from material existence and the surface of things. The soul is turning toward what exists beyond the surface seeking spiritual contexts and content and beings behind, beyond, below and above.
Now is the time to evolve your capacity to have conversations of all kinds and all purposes with spiritual beings. Learn the meaning, the design and the grace of these conversations.
I am offering a 4 session Inner Year teleseminar: Having Conversations With Spiritual Beings. In the teleseminar we will explore these questions and others about conversations. There are two options for this teleseminar series. The Basic is 4-40 minute presentations of content. It is essentially a lecture over the phone. You will find lots of insight and creative possibilities on having conversations with spiritual beings. However, it is not a conversation. If you want to engage in a conversation on having conversations with spiritual beings, you will want to take the Intensive Option which includes many conversations. (I didn’t make this distinction between the two learning options until I wrote this blog.) Visit here to learn more about the teleseminars.
Do invite your conversation partners in life to join you in the teleseminars. Forward this blog to all your friends.
Thank you for bringing this. As a teacher, I need to find ways to have conversations with spiritual beings everyday. And those spiritual beings include the children in my class. How do I listen to them? So often I am asking them to listen to me - not really a conversation. How do I "turn with" them and teach them to turn with me and with each other. I'm thinking - and asking...
ReplyDeleteVery interesting...my late parents often communicate with both my husband and me and sometimes with my neighbors who have some developed abilities in this area. It often has to do with risks and dangers. A few days ago, I smelled smoke in my narrow Baltimore rowhouse. I attributed it to the young couple next door burning toast or to someone burning leaves. But a battery operated Day of the Dead mobile kept going off by itself all morning.(My mother, with her Irish sense of humor is known for manifesting herself between September and New Years' by setting off toys, some of which are not battery operated at all.)I discovered that a ancient space heater in the bathroom had malfunctioned and scorched a towel. Wow! My father, Don Fancey, was an executive for the international office of IBEW in DC. Thanks, Mom and Dad.
ReplyDeleteA day earlier, after a book and author talk about Maryland Hauntings (America's Haunted Roadtrip)I had advised a young man whose mother has had a great gift as a sensistive, to be very careful when encountering spiritual beings who are not beloved and nurturing family members. I've encountered benign
beings who were strangers but I've never gone looking for those experiences. Haven't run into a malevolent disembodied type yet. I think it is important to be polite and not try to antagonize any being: animal, vegetable, or spiritual. Courtesy is usually reciprocated on any plane.
I have had so many conversations that seem one way, or go nowhere. I am not sure I have had a real conversation. I ask questions to get them answered and then come up with another question and then it eventually goes dead.
ReplyDeleteI feel as though people are into themselves and not really interested in others. I don't get to talk about myself. Then I say to myself... what is it that I am not saying to spark an interest of myself or is there really no awareness in others that they are self centered. I really love to have spiritually conversations; deep conversations that would linger and go deeper with each word, so that when I walked away I feel that I have touched that person and I feel touched. That I have some value I can walk away with and share with others in another conversation another connection.
upon reading your topic on conversations with spiritual beings, i decided to take the plunge and converse with two. the first, a spirit guide who introduced herself to me through a channeller, the second, my grandmother. i wrote my greeting to them and waited for their response. it came one word at a time which i wrote down. i have been doing intuitive exercises for a few years, building my ability to concentrate and listen. their responses were wonderful. these were balanced, two-way conversations. when i forgot to listen, i sometimes got the feeling that we were "co-creating" the answers. their receptive listening fuelled my own answers. each conversation was about a page and a half long; after that i became tired and lost receptivity to them. thank you for helping further my confidence in this skill.
ReplyDelete