You can find space and time to let more meaning and understanding into your life. Dialogue practice can be a way to meaning, understanding, and more. You can find space and time to bring dialogue practice into your life. This blog deals with a kind of dialogue practice which you may find interesting and and more useful than you may imagine just now. This post deals with the nature of effective dialogue and its practice.
I have found that the practice works best face to face in a group. Such a dialogue practice group calls for a designate space and time. The best space or place is often quiet and private. The best time is often a bit more than an hour at a time about once a week. The time a place is for the benefit of group members ought to satisfy them. Practice groups are best when open to a wide variety of participants. Groups are open, but the number of participants is best limited to less than 40 members. Also it is best when membership is 17 or more; however, successful groups have begun with fewer.
Group practice takes time a commitment. It be best done once a week for about an hour or two persession. This is best done forever, but few of us live that long. By using the hints and suggestions found here you can give your group a good chance for successful operation bringing powerful to skills to your members. With love, even a couple can benefit from the skills learned.
Again, time for your practice is important. A good goal to aim for might be to find a time good for 20 individuals to meet once a week for an hour and a half each session. A good aim might be to meet for 40 weeks each year.
Among the first steps an individual might take is to decide how she intends to show up for group practice. Another step is to actually show up. A great third step could be to arrange to attend complete practice meetings each week for the next couple of months.
As she continues her weekly practice sessions she may observe her dialogue companions becoming more effective listeners and more cogent speakers. She could see here companions speaking up, so as to be more successfully heard. She may also come to other members listening more attentively to a member speaking to the group. She might see her good friend in the group honestly express an opinion or describe and experience she has had. She will see fellow dialoguers developing and using new dialogue skills and and attitudes, before she herself becomes aware of her development.
With your help we can continue to review the benefits of our dialogue practice. I have read of independent groups practicing this kind of dialogue for a variety of reasons, including the belief that it maintains, strengthens, and creates culture! I have begun to mention a few of the benefits in this essay. Examples are that it can: bring more meaning and understanding to our lives, improve listening and speaking skills, underline the value of showing up, provide opportunity to observe a variety of speakers and listeners, give you the chance to be listened to, and we may discover more.
When your interest in this dialogue grows you can try to find a an active group near you. Or, if you know a couple of others who share your interest, you could form your own practice group. When you begin actual practice please feel free to report your experience by clicking on "comments" below. Also know that you are free to ask questions or to make comments whenever you wish.
Some simple doings have proven helpful. For example, it seems best to form a circle with chairs facing toward the center and so offering participants a good view of one another. In that circle one often begins to see that participants begin to look less and less to a designated authority and that they avoid building a hierarchy. In such a circle they experience getting to know in a way perhaps new to them.
Participants in their own circle begin to want the words spoken there to be honest. They may even to see those words as gifts. The find that their words are listened to attentively and sometimes truly accepted as gifts. Participants share words and begin to find more meaning in that which is said.
Benefits of the dialogue are gained through practice. There are many ways to practice. Participants in the practice find that there rules(some correctly call them ways)which they learn, most of them are simple and important. They find that their are helpful suggestions available for making the practice more effective and more pleasant. Participants find that a significant number of those rules and suggestions are not completely new to them.
Most practice is easy to do and easy to understand; even so, ongoing practice is important to making them yours. Some of the steps we take may seem very simple, but they lead to good effects and your group will benefit from them. It may not seem like a step, but an example is the practice of appropriate respect and courtesy.
Dialogue practice groups are usually open, but seldom public. Open means that nearly anyone can participate when their are chairs are available. When there are more than about forty individuals who want to participate it is best to consider starting a new group. (When you are interested in discussing this further you may use the comments section below). Seldom public, means that there are usually no observers; when practic begins doors are closed. A dialogue group is not a public forum. A public forum can be, among other things, a wonderful communication container. We can benefit from having and using public forums as we can from dialogue practice groups. However, our practice groups are for teaching our self a different and perhaps higher kind of communication.
A dialogue practice group has ways, means, and aims different from those of public forums. Our ways include practice and democratic inclusion, our main means is our ongoing practice, our aims include bringing more meaning and understanding into our lives and achieving a better understanding of the assumptions and opinions of others. Participants are not interested in bringing others to their point of view. They are more interested in understanding the points of view of others. Some aim to better understand the power of thinking together. Nearly all find that they are listened to more closely than ever.
You can explore this dialogue practice more by reading other posts on this blog and by communication with us by way of the "comments" app just below this posts. You may find that you can enjoy enhanced meaning and understanding in your life and at the same time engender a bit more peace in our world. You may also find yourself becoming a stronger and more effective individual as you develop and ability to think with another.
Thank you for reading.
Bye for now.
RCS
