Communication is defined as a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior. What I want to do here is to take a look at what exactly happens with this information that is being exchanged in the process, specifically in the process of verbal conversation - dialogue. In spoken dialogue between two individuals, the process of communicating becomes complex and more stratified than some would imagine it being. When one person says something to another person, the content of what has been said has one meaning, and when that other person responds to this that has been said, the content of the response has another meaning. These two meanings are not identical, between them stands a space filled with differences and similarities of elements upon which the two individuals contributing to this dialogue perceive its content and according to those elements they eventually form their own meanings of the content. From awareness of this space that both differs and connects two meanings, comes the possibility to discover new, common meaning, and this discovery is the real goal of an ideal dialogue - to create in common - to create together a new meaning, and not to make in common - to make a common thing of an already existing meaning. In order to reach this goal, dialogue must be deprived of two things: of this tendency to impose one’s own opinion and of the wishing to confirm one’s own assumptions. In other words, dialogue must draw its content not out of fixated and formed elements - opinions and assumptions, but out of the process that stands behind them - the movement of the free mind.

What is the movement of the free mind? I will try to explain what it is not - and it is not opinions. Opinion is a repercussion of a past experience, it is a product of the action of thinking. Forming of an opinion starts with an intrinsic impulse to think - we are not usually aware of this impulse, but there is always something that motivates us to start thinking, and this motivation is the impulse. The impulse is then followed by the action of thinking and the action of thinking gives birth to an opinion as its result. This opinion that we get from thinking can then create a new impulse, in other words it can motivate us to think further and with thinking further we get to create another opinion, and so this mental process happening between impulse, thinking and opinion - the process of opinions coming out of our thinking, can go on forever. The links that connect motivation (impulse), action (thinking) and the result (opinion) of this mental process are often latent, invisible to our awareness about that same process, about thinking. What I’m trying to say here is that our opinions, our thoughts, our mind, they are usually not aware of the fact that they create themselves out of this process of constant thinking and they are not aware of it because they fail to recognize the links that connect the elements of the process of thinking, they fail to notice that there exists a subtle intention to think - we don’t say “oh look I'm feeling motivated to think, I’m gonna start thinking now and will have an opinion after I’m done”, we just start thinking. If we were gonna try to bring this process of creating an opinion into awareness , we would have to make conscious effort to start perceiving the links that connect the intention and the final result of this process, we would have to develop a new form of consciousness, the consciousness of the mind about its own ways of movement. The method of reaching this level of consciousness would then be called mental proprioception - the ability of the mind to be aware of itself thinking and consequently producing thoughts and opinions.

Proprioception allows us to impart in a dialogue with content that is not coming from a place where we communicate our content based upon our opinions, but from a place where we communicate it according to the free flow of our mind. Achieving proprioception is conditioned by our ability to suspend our opinions - the ability to just be with our opinion or emotion that comes with it, without identifying ourselves with them or trying to negate them - to make them seem invalid. Suspension means to witness the existence of an opinion inside us without becoming that opinion and in the same time to transcend our primal instinct, the one that makes us defend our opinions from other opinions coming from the outside. This defensive instinct has been with us and within us since the prehistoric times when we lived in wildness, surrounded by wild beasts that presented real physical danger to people. In our modern time, we’ve kept the same principle of defense and only made changes about the roles - we are now being presented as our opinions that we identify ourselves with, opinions that became our truths, and the wild beasts are being presented as other people’s opinions. In other words, we perceive other people’s opinions as fatal attacks on the core of our beings - our opinions. In dialogue we should be aware of this instinct because as long as we are trying to fulfill this need to preserve our opinions and confirm our assumptions, we are limiting the free movement of our mind and its thinking process , and this free movement of the mind is necessary for reaching new cognitions. Another thing we’re limiting this way is intelligence, because intelligence can’t exist and develop in a place where an opinion is not open to the possibility that there could exist evidence that proves it wrong.

So to conclude this whole trip, what makes it possible for me to take part in a proper dialogue is liberating myself from the burden of my own opinions and assumptions (through proprioception and suspension) so that I can be able to see more clearly that there is other stuff going on in my mind, something that is not just my opinion, something new, something that has creative potential - potential to create, together with the person I’m talking to, new notions about the world, about solutions, about ways of functioning - to discover new meanings by allowing my mind to move freely and not just to impose what I think I know to the other person.

Thanks for reading!

• this post was inspired by David Bohm - On dialogue

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