Learn Emergent Dialogue

tldr: An opportunity to learn and practice emergent dialogue including my own reflections on the practice and what it makes possible.

I’m no longer on Twitter (now X). I left a long time ago. And I’m glad I did. But I was an early adopter. And my twitter bio still reads:

“Interested in new ways of being-with.”

It’s what I’ve been after for a long time. New ways of being-with. The quest is what defines my facilitation work. I want us to meet and come together from a deeper, more meaningful place. A place that allows something new and unexpected to arise.

The practice of Emergent Dialogue is the most powerful way I know for truly experiencing the We-Space. A new way of being-with.

My teachers, Elizabeth Debold and Thomas Steininger are offering a three-month module: Emergent Dialogue: Interbeing and Field Intelligence, starting September 27.

A number of you have taken me up on earlier invitations to engage their work. And I’m conceiving of ways to bring us together and engage in the practice.

Emergent Dialogue:

“Empowers you to participate in a new culture of creative togetherness. Through this collective practice, you become an agent of emergence, discovering how to make yourself available to what wants to become known between us. Neither simply a method nor a technique, emergent dialogue takes the most fundamental human activity—speaking with each other—and transforms it into a powerful shared space of curiosity, reverence, meaningfulness, and potential.”

I see our culture defined by what professor john powell refers to as “the European enlightenment project of the isolated self.”

And while I see our “individuation” as a gift, a powerful development in human consciousness. I also see the extreme “hyper-individuation” of our time as a pendulum that has swung too far. A project that has taken itself to the extreme.

We now live in a culture that yields loneliness, anxiety, depression and over-medication. We are living through a crisis of meaning, connection and belonging. A culture that does not only separate us from each other, but separates us from the planet itself, from the sense of shared aliveness that brings together everything that breathes.

So what is the antidote to this crisis?

I grew up in an intentional community. I am shaped by both the gift and the shadow of an effort to come together and live together. And to do it in accordance with a set of spiritual beliefs.

I know in my bones that we know how to do collective. We have a primal knowing that allows us to subsume ourselves in a group. Whether we are talking about football games, ideological tribes, concerts, or cults.

We know how to do it.

But we lose ourselves in it.

Sometimes this can be benign, joyful and affirming. And at other times it can be terribly dangerous.

What I’m aiming for, and what emergent dialogue allows, is a way to be together without losing ourselves. Self-sovereign individuals are able to turn ourselves towards a shared-consciousness, the lived experience of a new-We, because it will not ask us to betray ourselves in order to belong.

Elizabeth and Thomas were interviewed by Amit Paul on the World of Wisdom Podcast and it is one of the best and clearest interviews I’ve seen them do. I encourage you to listen to it if you are intrigued by this work.

One of the many provocative things Elizabeth says is that when we meet in emergent dialogue, we are not trying to meet in a place of agreement, but from a place of fundamental relatedness. I find this to be an essential practice for getting over the points of stuckness that define our age of extreme polarization.

She also reminds us that when what we are aiming for is evolution at the level of consciousness, the only obstacles that we find are inside ourselves.

I find that when I allow myself to enter the depths of dialogue, the only way I can truly be in and stay in is by dropping previous knowings, and releasing attachment to ideas and concepts. The space demands of me a letting go, a trust and a presence that make for a very vibrant togetherness. It is rich with meaning and possibility.

I am curious to learn whether this speaks to you, and whether you are interested in diving deeper. Perhaps through this coming module, or maybe as we find ways to come together and practice.