Front End Intuition

It's easy to assume that the sign of a "passion" or "intuitive flash" is something intense. As a kid I used have intense feelings of "yucky" about something that repelled me or made me want to rebel. But over the course of my life, I've realized the quality of an impression about what makes a person happy or is a signal of engaging a talent is just as often more curious and subtle than the opposite shocking and obvious "yuck!"




For me sometimes, it's many different qualities that signal something "important to me" is going on. Those qualities of Importance are also different for each person. Here's some examples:

•  Me noticing myself musing over what "sticks out" as a logical fallacy or "not fitting." I find my mind has jumped over to a completely daydreaming type track of thought, despite the attraction of real life.

•  Perhaps a sense of effortlessness, as if I've just forgotten to feel bad in the last recent period of time where something that I had just been doing makes me happy, because it has completely absorbed my attention.

• * It does sometimes happen fast, in a "flash." The quality of my attention suddenly jumps to attention that makes time artificially slow down into a focal point. This happens in movies when the script writer wants the audience to notice an important point in the plot line. (Usually accompanied in movies with a curious sucking sound or whiplash sound effect! But such sounds don't happen in real life.)

• * Sometimes I only notice something was important in hindsight, after a calamity where I "should have known" to pay attention to a clue I was given, but it went over my head at the time. An example of this came for me in a flash of intuitive prediction where I didn't know I was getting a self-preservation warning message until after the (fortunately minor) accident had happened. I had to think back what made that predictive thought different from any other paranoia...so I could recognize it and be certain enough to act on it to become for me the useful intuitive warning it was.

Apparently, listing more of these from other people would be useful.  Because I've talked about this very subject in dinnertime conversations as one of my favorite Dialogue subjects to trot out in polite conversation. The results of doing it quite often over the course of my life are that these qualities that help people recognize intuitive messages are completely unique to each person.

What have you noticed?

Small Talk Skills

I've worked for a long time to make small talk meaningful. From my experience, even standing in line in a supermarket talking to others can be a fascinating experience, if one of us can figure out what we have to offer each other in the time we have together now.

What I look for in others to indicate what this "magic topic" might be, beyond the niceties of over-used one-liners. Now, how do I do this in such a short time? Turns out it pays off to examine the assumptions of social cliche` and come up with other avenues that yield high-interest answers.

To do this yourself, you would follow the same routine as others expect, but ask similar essential questions that are more to the point than the stock questions. I came up with these alternate questions by wondering, "Why is this common social question really being asked?"

For instance, "Where did you grow up?" This is a question with the motive to find out what environment made the person who they are. So I'd avoid asking that question in a way that will illicit the answer of a town or specific location. Instead, I might ask, "Can you describe environments that you most enjoyed playing in as a kid? What did you like about those sorts of places? Do you ever do something like that now?"

Different answers to the same question, (Why is this question being asked?) will point in alternate directions. Perhaps, this question of "Where did you grow up?" might be: to find out what subculture influenced childhood. So why not ask that as a direct question? "What sort of subculture shaped your early experience?"

Obviously, this is a technique that can offer high yield possibilities for any set of mundane conversations that would be under the heading of "small talk." It can also be a source of humor. "Where did you come from?" This can now be answered with a smirk, "My mother of course - wasn't that true for you too?"

Hunch or Prejudice?

What is the difference between an intuitive hunch and a prejudice? This is one of my virtual questions that I enjoy asking.

It's curious to me how each and every perceptual attitude that someone can adopt seems to have alternate ways of describing it. These descriptions, definitions and interpretations seem to color how the subject and person is defined to express another bias or prejudice. Some can get quite...colorful, with pointed accusations.

For instance, students often stop themselves from asking a question of a teacher out of respect for that teacher. But from the teacher's point of view,, "why don't my students ask ANY question?" In my culture, you can have rapport or you can have respect, but not both.

Another instance, it's obvious from my posting here that I enjoy to take the time to offer the benefit of my observations to other people. I've taken the time to learn to write to do this, which has been an effort for me because my talking style isn't easily translated into the forms of writing.  But now others are coming to recognize my investment of being able to write. Whenever there is recognition of "talent" or ability, people inevitably wonder why you do such a thing. They assign a motive to your actions - sometimes these motives are not what you would answer if they had asked you. In some cases, they react as if the person who has invested value in an opinion must be a proselytizer or a salesperson.

But sometimes, people complaint that I am being "too" helpful. They seem to not appreciate my motives or my open-mindedness because I don't communicate that very well.

If I come up with creative thinking ideas on their behalf without warning them or getting their permission to do so, they react strangely. They're slightly intimidated. They don't know why I can do it or why I would do such a thing for them. Perhaps they assign nefarious motives to what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. I've been accused of "co-dependence," but I just don't have the vested interests and addictions to go along with the profile. Demonstrating my ability to think has also often gotten me defined me as "analytical," as if I am an inflexible one-trick pony.  Am of the opinion that everyone has multiple talents, often undeveloped.

I've learned to actively refuse to defend myself and instead invite participation. But sometimes it just doesn't work. People misread my communicating as being upset. They don't dare to confront or engage, fearing they might offend.

Would love to open a conversation to suggestions on how to better this state of affairs, because I think this same issue affects many, many interactions with many people. Perhaps I just need to joke about it more often.

Anyone have any suggestions or explorations...stories? Probably not. Somehow, the way that I write doesn't invite comments. Not sure what to do about that.

My First Sub-Culture Artist Friend

When I was twelve I used to make art at a table where each of us who shared the table was from a different race or culture. We joked that we all made "highly integrated" art. My art table friend was American Indian girl, who encouraged me to follow her home one day after school.

When we arrived, her whole family (seven more people) were sitting on two couches that faced each other. No other furniture except a lamp, a TV on a table in the corner and a coffee table. The TV wasn't on.

I sat down, squishing myself in where they made room for me to sit as she did. She introduced me to her family. We giggled a little about something that had happened at school that day. The conversation died down. I asked what the dog's name was after some time had gone by. Another five minutes went by. Her family members told me the story, a sentence at a time from almost every person there, about how the dog arrived and came to be adopted into the family. Another long silence.

I looked at everyone. They didn't seem to be expecting anything from me, so I just sat there. We sat for about a half hour. Her mom got up and offered us all iced tea because it was hot. We drank the tea and rattled the ice cubes together. Nobody said anything for the next half hour.

Then as if on some cue, everyone got up. We said goodbye to each other and they asked me to come back again and visit. They said they really enjoyed meeting me and was looking forward to seeing me again. They were happy their daughter had such an interesting friend. I wasn't really sure why they thought I was interesting. Then I walked home, feeling lucky I'd just been in another world where I could be interesting for just sitting on a couch keeping my mouth shut.

I kept making art with her and hanging out with her at school and lunchtime, but I couldn't figure out a reason to come back to visit her at her house and she did not press me to return. She said everyone she brought over to her house did not feel very comfortable there. I wanted to be different, but at the time it was just too strange for me too. I'd never traveled before and didn't really understand that I was going to a different culture when I was really just visiting that house down the street.

Receiving Insights About Yourself From Others

Bohm had called insanity "sticking with a point against evidence that it is incorrect." But can "evidence" be seen when one is blasted with it and when there are imperfections in it, and when delivered by someone that one doesn't particularly like (which seems to be a guaranteed aspect of this process), and when "evidence" is tinged with strong, insulting words? - Irene from Dialogue

Most people cannot receive new information about themselves, even if it is skillfully and tactfully delivered. Even then, most people cannot do much about changing their behavior to take the new information to heart. So often, changing yourself takes practice, no matter how much will-power or good intentions you might have.

What most often happens is the messenger's motive is questioned, and the assummed answer is negative, paranoid and defensive. Watching the cop shows on TV, I can't help but notice that the most upset person is usually arrested.

I can think of a situation where someone might get a clue: multiple unrelated people are making the same insistent, clumsy complaint about your behavior. Only in that situation might it be likely for you to realize that this pointing everyone is doing is important, because everyone is in agreement about you without knowing each other.

For instance, here David Bohm responded with the "generalized labeling" motive. I would imagine that this was an attempt on his part to distance himself from the phenomena in order to examine the pattern. This is constructive, because then the pattern of habit could be recognized at an earlier stage when it could be more easily redirected. It also communicates his lack of personal involvement, leaving it up to you to do whatever you want with what he is saying. Obviously, David Bohm valued personal freedom.

It gets even more interesting when you trust the people with whom you are in conflict. Makes me think of my own mother's admonition that when people bother to get upset with you enough to tell you about it, it's because they care. Why is it that people can't seem to assume a loving motive? Assumming trust, we came up with the idea to make a pact with each other to signal the other person when one of us saw "we are both doing it again." This implies we are both capable to "try something different" at that point, rather than doing what the pattern dictates what we "must" do. This is not always possible; in fact, it is rare. Fortunately, we had no idea how difficult this was when we tried doing it. We were able to practice enough at it that we eventually succeeded.

The more often people are willing to go together to this unknown state and "try something different" together means sooner or later they are going to stumble on workable solutions that make it possible to do - because it seems that changing oneself takes some practice. This is the basis of Dialogue and how great relationships are made and not found.

...It's also how many psychological answers to relationship issues get hatched, but then someone seems to have to hold conferences, write a book, etc. for the insight to reach beyond whatever agreement two people privately come to in their own relationship.



I'm not sure why, but somehow in our culture, people cannot just "share their experience" without setting themselves up to be some sort of authority which parades their "right" for it to be taken seriously. The motive to have things work out for both of them can become a contest of who is going to control the outcome of the situation.

That's why I am fascinated with how couples/family groups deal with prioritizing on the fly. How do those who are in relationships determine who's needs gets answered and how long does everyone else have to wait for their needs to be answered - and how does everyone get what they need at some point? The answer to this question is fascinating, not for its content of unfairness or fairness, but because it is a some sort of a workable solution that the members of the relationship are happy with or at least find acceptable.

Reframing

I've noticed that if you are going to be making a comment about what is going on in the moment, (especially when you have a personal investment in the outcome of the course of events that may follow,) it's very tricky to make your motive be understood when your motive is the intention for mutual insight. I find that it works best to prepare the ground to be received in the spirit of what you are about to say before you say it. So linguisticallly, the first skill is called "reframing." You must redefine the frame for the audience, because it is quite likely that they will misunderstand you if you assume they are on the same page as you are.

There is also a time of arrival factor that is also important. Once people are locked into repeating a vicious circle, it's very tricky to stop repeating what is the problem. Better to wait for another time when the vicious circle is about to happen, and make your attempt to interrupt the event that you can recognize is ABOUT to happen at that time...because this sort of thing will happen again and again if it really is a problem.


Often saying something will have no effect, because the action that is going on is that people are saying something - content is being ignored. So for the content of what is being said to have an effect, communication works better if you can figure out a creative way to "change the game" of HOW the content is being delivered. This is another form of reframing. Otherwise, whatever you say will just be reacted to as if it's merely a brand of violent defense or retort driven by the interpretation of some sort of paranoid motive - the sort which is left up to the negative imagination of the person on the defensive who doesn't have enough creative ability to imagine any possible positive constructive motives for your actions.

So this is another skill that I have learned to cultivate - the ability to imagine, under duress, multiple creative, reasonable explanation for the other person's actions when it "makes no sense" that they are in conflict, not becoming violent and getting upset. This is quite a challenge because anger and other emotions tend to block creativity.

What To Do When Noticing Assumptions

What do you do when you notice an assumption?

Part of the challenge is to notice what you usually do. An indicator of something that is "sticking out" that may eventually become some sort of problem is a signal. Usually when people notice this, it more often means they must "shore up" or "justify" the need for their conclusion or assumption, reinforcing the circle and reapplying their "remedies" that are really keeping the circular problem in place.

Because their focus is on the content as being more important, they cannot see the larger picture of how they are caught in a repeating pattern. They only experience that some part of the pattern is working in the ways they intend, when it is really an out-of-control pattern that MUST repeat whether the person wants it whenever the trigger is pressed for the habit to "go off." I would say that there are "endorphin squirts" that occur in pressing the trigger originally, but often the experience of the squirting may not register any more because it, too has become habitual.

If you take away the need, I believe our systems "self correct". You do not have to "do" anything but experience the lack of need, then just wait and watch yourself. What happens next will tell you quite a bit about everything you have been experiencing. If you just get the familiar justifications for your habits, just stop again and wait. Each time you stop, your senses will wake up a little more as you take the next layer of the habitual assumption off. It seems that people are naturally sensitive underneath layers of habits.


That's why stopping yourself when you would have normally started talking is such an effective technique in Dialogue - or in any conversation. Listening will tell you more than talking, for obvious reasons. You merely interrrupt yourself right when you found a need to say something and watch what happens in yourself. You question your motive of wanting to talk, because there will be usually be feelings and needs underneath the assumptions.

So if you don't know what these feelings are or they don't surface because they are the submerged part of the iceberg, you can find out what they are by stopping yourself from going into the habit repeatedly. My experience has told me that there is often more than one need/motive/justification. Sometimes these are tricky to uncover, because the remedy of the assumption is trying to cover it up by answering the need. So this is where Dialogue comes in - you put yourself in a situation where this issue comes up again and again - and you watch what happens in yourself each time you notice the reaction.

Tammy, pictured here is an Alexander student of mine who has the rare ability to challenge her assumptions and do something different about them. Perhaps you have some more characteristics of how to notice assumptions - or you might have more 'tips' of what to do when you do notice these assumptions? I'd love to hear about them.

Quoting and Egolessness

Quoting is also an indirect way to get some idea on the table without having the responsibility of owning the idea...because it was someone else's idea, not yours, you cannot be attacked, blamed for it, made to answer a question about it, made to follow up on it - all of the attachment implied to having birthed the idea yourself...the same with quoting the historic authorship of the idea. The advantage is you can just dump it if the idea is not well-received by the group. The disadvantage is you may be asked for a book report. Then there's the advantage that you have been the source of the idea by being such a good reader and having the ability to trot out an adequate synopsis. But the disadvantage for the group is that nobody else may answer you, except with another quote that is somehow related.

So if more than one person does this, it very easily becomes an extension of the "who do you know" game.

I think the assumption behind this quoting thing, as well as the "no persona" idea is that the Freudian ego is the source of trouble. If you claim an idea as a product of your own thinking, observation or experience, it implies you "must" have a vested interest in the outcome of the conversation and this attachment is somehow forbidden. It's tricky to demonstrate that you do not have attachment to an idea that is your original one.

I think the reason people like to do this is they imagine that a lack of ownership or authorship is a sign of suspension by a willingness to dispense with any claim of authorship for original thinking.

Good think Bohm didn't impose that limitation on his own thinking!

Proprioception of Thought and Movement

I believe the way thought and movement work together are quite similar to the way thought works when it has no corresponding overt motion to express the affects of a thought. Thought has no proprioception built into it, but the judgment of movment does. But proprioception only senses differences, it is not an absolute measuring device.

Intention is responding, whether it has a word attached to it or not. Some people translate action or reaction into language before they move. It makes their movements delayed. Decision is the first part of response, but there can also be a habit that recognizes and handles reactions too.

As a technique, if you think any movement through step by step, you'll detour the "trigger" word and the corresponding sets of habits - whether they have words or not.

Commonly Habitual

There is some bramble of confusion that goes on when human perceptual abilities interpret meaning. Humans seem to imperatively send ourselves a message of a result or conclusion so very quickly. Why so quick and needfully is this done? How does it serve us for humans to be designed to be relentlessly driven? If there is a habit in place that can go into action to respond to our instantaneous interpretations or conclusions (and once the order of "go" is allowed,) humans act so automatically! This sense registers as if the action is "going off by itself," it's such a common experience. We seem to blindly follow an already defined habitual course of what we assume is a suitable response. If it has been conditioned in us, that's the way we stay.

Someone can prevent themselves from making a conclusion or an interpretation, and instead "suspend" this habitual response and the order to now go into action. Then these habitual responses can be put on "temporary pause." Doing this has an advantage; it makes it possible to choose how you prefer to react and definitely gives you more options beyond how your assumptions and conclusions will allow you to react. Once you interrupt this Perception-Interpretation = Response process you can do at least three other possibilities: you can choose to can gain more data before you make an interpretation or conclusion, you can choose to do something else more appropriate or just choose to not react indefinitely.

But this takes quite a bit of training and skill to be able to do, because the justifications that require these habits have often been imperatively shaped and installed under duress. Instead most of us only sense what is bothering us - the negative problems. We don't seem to ask the right questions about how we got to where we are now. Many disciplines and therapies address this lack of questioning, and this lack of good ideas that may need to be updated. Some people don't ever ask themselves any questions!

It seems rare for people to be able to question or suspect our own thinking strategies in this "meta" reframing way, without undermining our sense of self in my familiar subculture. But I believe the ability to question one's own means of carrying out intentions is a sign of a strength of character.

Perhaps this is because we as humans are not designed to sense our own innate habitual programming that is "doing" something - we just use it. Habits are designed to become innate and disappear into skills that we can build on. But I can't believe that we humans have a design flaw that freezes us indecisively as more habits combine with other contradicting directives. But that's what I see happening at this point in my thinking. I know that one's bias selects what one gives attention to - so what I notice everywhere is probably wrong. Nevertheless, I see it so often.

I'm wondering if suspecting the assumptions and content of the original conclusions themselves would be even more useful than going to the trouble of suspending the reaction,(as opposed suspecting the strategy that is being used to respond to it.)

Improvising Subjects in a Dialogue Group

Lots of beginning dialoguers have trouble with improvising a subject. It's something having to do with surrending how they are going to spend their time with no plan, no objective, no job, equal authority, and mostly people have never improvised a conversation in a group situation. The problem with using metaphors to inspire is that many people say they understand the example, but then it turns out they are not able to demonstrate the skills necessary to actually do what it is they say they understand.

If you like metaphors, how about this one: Imagine a group of people are teaching themselves conversationally how to speak a language. To do this, they would usually practice scripts to establish context about what are the appropriate situations to infer and interpret meaning from. So they establish so they know, not just what is being said, but the context of where and when words are happening.

In Dialogue, the group can create from scratch their own context of how meaning is assigned. To do this, they explore the meaning that comes up, so it happens gradually that meaning is assigned gradually as the similar light of recognition comes on in every participant. Those who come late to the group can't quite tell what is going on, but it just looks like something different is happening. Most of us would like the Dialogue activities to be transparent enough that someone would be able to participate if they can be observant enough to see what is happening, ie: for the Dialogue to be in English and not have to know special secrets to decipher it.

The group does this by being aware of "frames" of meaning, where the content changes in terms of what is beneath, above, aside or associated with the subject(s). So as everyone says something about what they think the subject is, the thread of meaning weaving through becomes obvious to some, is hidden from others, and goes off on tangents that never come back around for some. In the end, you'll have an experience of holding so many different points of view at once that it will spin your brain, because they all arrived at a different time.

Enlightening Different Values

Just came back from my Dialogue group. While I've been gone, the group decided to do an "experiment" to censure what they defined as "long, personal stories." This isn't a large group, and the time constraint is an hour 45 min. Tonight attending were three women and six guys. They read some blurb at the beginning of the Dialogue stating what they wanted everyone to agree to. This experiment started three dialogues ago, with an undefined ending point.

The blurb says, among other things: "...We ask that people refrain from prolonged monologues, stories or reciting personal memoirs. Anyone can feel free to remind another of this, when necessary. ..."

I was willing to do this as an experiment, making my examples shorter, less personal, etc. in the spirit of the word "prolonged." I think it is the ultimate interruption to allow anyone to call someone else down while they are saying anything in order to stop them, rather after they have spoken. It's even more unfair that these new rules continue to stand in spite that "personal," "prolonged" etc. are being defined according to the whim of the multiple enforcers.

How can anyone dare to define for another what is "personal" and what is not? As far as I'm concerned, everything someone says is personal because everyone has a point of view, no matter how they dress it up and make it appear otherwise.

Evidently, these guys who made this rule want me to edit ANY story or example. They just want everyone to say their conclusions, without any examples. Anyone who asks for clarification or examples is "egging on" the transgressor.

I refuse to agree to edit all examples and stories from Dialogue. Sometimes I need the example of a story to know what I'm saying, and I can't find my point without articulating the illustration of it. I tell stories to work out what I want to say. Also, I also need other people's examples in a story form to know what they are saying. It's someone's raw experience that interests me, not their conclusions. If I have their account, I can have the experience vicariously myself and come to my own conclusions. Not being able to ask how someone got to their conclusion without "egging their transgressions on" is a tremendous loss for me.

The other part of the experiment, (which wasn't outlined in the statement they read at the beginning,) is that if we stray off the topic, someone reminds us to come back to it. Any explanation of how the tangent relates to the topic that I offered was rejected as mere justification. I don't know about this; if the conversation can't go anywhere but the topic, where can it go that is new?

We had been talking tonight about what happens when one social group gets invaded by another social group who has a different standard of how to show respect, etc. How do you enlighten each group with differing values without alienating them?

I told about in a past dialogue years before, two new people had shown up and got into an argument while the rest of us watched. Suddenly, with no plan uttered, the entire group began to talk to the person immediately next to them. This effectively brought the two newcomers back into allowing the rest of us to talk together when someone called the chaos to order. Someone asked me if this had been prearranged and I said, no, it happened spontaneously.

Then I was accused of the no-no of telling a story from the past by someone who prefers to interrupt me quite often. Before I could get to my point, which was why are we talking about social changes we can't easily influence, when we could talk about what is happening here with this experiment.

So, how long is too long of a story? Does the word "prolonged" only apply to monologues and not to the word 'stories' that follows it? Why should I accept the censurer's standard that stories are not allowed or my story is too long? And since this was a story that was not personal or prolonged, then why is it not allowed? When does the personal become the universal? Why should I accept someone else's complaint that my story is too personal for them?

By making a little blurb, these people have said they want me to exclude myself if I don't agree with these rules. They want me to recognize their right to enforce these rules. I don't and I won't. Perhaps I should write up my own little blurb on a piece of paper that I read immediately after their little blurb? I think the absolute quality of any rule enforced during Dialogue is unfair. In fact, I care quite a bit that this rule exists in such an absolute form. A rule like this is not David Bohm style Dialogue, no matter what it's justification was to have been put in place. I'm going to continue to come to Dialogue to say that.

I was very miffed. At one point, I told the group to fuck their new rules, and stomped out and left for awhile.

Later I came back. I got to say that since we're in control of what happens here, let's talk about that instead of some vast social commentary about human nature. How do we settle a dispute when two different groups of people want to spend dialogue time in a different way? This group starts with saying they'd like less long and personal story-telling, and it escalates in a big hurry to no stories of any type, at any time. Their reaction seemed a little like the end of a marriage, where the most tiny display of a certain sickening character flaw is cause for divorce.

We talked about this some. The verdict is still out, there didn't seem to be any concensus. One of the members screamed, "No should anything!"

Next time this blurb they have made is read - I'm going to ask, "What if I don't agree with who declares the standards of what is prolonged? So what is the socially acceptable way for me to disagree with that person's standards? To include everyone, these standards of what constitutes "prolonged" to be set wider than no stories allowed, with an expressed time limit of, say, stories under a minute or two are OK but stories over five minutes aren't, for instance. The clock stops being counted when someone else talks. If someone else asks for clarification of meaning, then the time is then applied to the time of the questioner and not the person who is clarifying.

I think we just need more people in Dialogue so a few can't determine rules because there will be enough people who always disagree. I love the chaos, but I guess many people find it irritating and want to do something to "fix" it. I'm sure we can come up with other strategies that work better to invite the participation of others and invite pauses from the people who talk easily, other than the restriction of a certain style of communicating.

Authorship of Ideas and Ego

In a dialogue group I am still a member of eight years ago an interesting attitude came up about using other people's ideas as sole content. It was quite common at that time that a dialoguer would throw out an idea into the center of the room to see if other people wanted to talk about it - as if it was an idea that came from nowhere, as if they had not said it. The intent was to keep "ego" out of the attachment to the idea.

Having read an author's book was commonly being used in this group as shorthand for what a talker wanted to say - often without giving a little synopsis of the content of the book that was being cited. So it acted a little as name-dropping
sometimes, which was a problem for some people who had not read the book. Dialogue was pretty easily turned into more of a book report or info dump rather than a conversation between peers. It divided the room between those who knew the book and those who didn't and made dialogue more like a classroom.

Evidently people saw citing authors as a way of talking about the ideas without admitting it was "their idea." After investigating this assumption, it came out that talking from your own personal experience was regarded for awhile by this particular dialogue group as evidence of "ego attachment." Ego displays were, of course, to be avoided at all costs carefully by everyone because it meant people may have an "investment" for bringing up the experience. This smelled too much like a personal adgenda of what they wanted the group to do for them. Personal agendas were to be avoided because this was mentioned specifically by David Bohm as something to be avoided. If you had a personal agenda, then you kept steering the conversation back to what you wanted to talk about and that meant it wasn't free to go toward something new for everyone.

When we finally got around to talking about our conceptions of ego, what evolved was a very interesting series of observations. Many member of the group concluded to resolving to risk more personal stories of core experiences behind the various beliefs they held...and this has continued into the Dialogue group that we have today.

The group decided that many author's ideas were all valid, but really, why not admit why you are bringing them up and where it came from that made you hold them to be valuable? Essentially, we discovered as a group that people were being careful to protect their ego by not admitting authorship of their own ideas. There was a risk when the experience of how you came by your idea was not a logical one and it could be picked apart irreverently by the group.

Then the question came out of what exactly does someone have to lose by revealing your core values to a group in dialogue? Together we realized that talking about "other people's ideas" more often meant mistrust that you may be attacked by the group or someone in the group!

So we decided to "dare" to reveal core experiences to each other. We went into as a group what exactly was "attacking" and what was considered "investigation" and we explored exactly where this line was. Over time, this ongoing conversational topic evolved into a quite a codified ideal of what the group was going to put up with and for how long from people who had no clue what Dialogue was. This was a quite tolerant group of people, so there was little "rule-making" other than someone would ask for another topic when two people would get into what we joked was a "Duo-logue." Our solution for that was that another person would suggest that new topic. Also, people in the group saw a need to say something to come to the defense of someone they believed was being "attacked." This happened by identifying common debate tactics that discredit the speaker such as name-calling.

One time, two people who were strangers to Dialogue came into the group and got into a passionate, exclusive conversation they would not stop. After what we usually did for a solution described above obviously did not work, we realized we needed to invent another measure to deal with the situation. Nobody seemed to want to play the authority to remove the offenders from the room. Suddenly, the entire group of about thirty people responded in the heartbeat of one breath; every person suddenly started talking to their neighbor in multiple private conversations, drowning out the two who wanted to continue arguing in front of everyone! It was a hilarious solution - but it worked.

Anyway - those are some of the interesting things that happened in our dialogue group.

Observing Without Interferring

"You were saying something about seeing what happens without doing anything - in fact, a lot of Alexander teachers mention this - but there is something about this that I really can't understand."

Your habits are in charge of keeping things the same. Lots of people can tell after something has changed - but only a few can sense change as it is happening - and describe what is happening as it is going on. Even more rare are the times you can witness the very first thing that starts the chain of events into action. - That's almost a transcendant challenge.

Most of the time, sort of like waking up in a lucid dream, you realize that here you are in the middle of the story, doing mysterious things for reasons you don't understand, instead of the beginning that you would like to be able to remember. The challenge is to find out what and how you did what you wanted to do, so you can go through a similar proces and maybe discover another amazing secret about yourself.

• What happened that made an experience that was so different?
• Can you wake up to witness yourself changing as it is happening?

It sounds esoteric, but it's not so hard, it's an unfamiliar sort of easy. Your habits make it hard. This challenge is helped by the fact that your habit that you're moving away from or prevent is so habitual and easy to repeat any time you want to. Really, you don't have to trace what is happening as it is happening any further back than just one tiny moment of awareness before what you have found out before. String those discoveries together, watch without caring so much - and poof! you'll notice the next surprise in what may turn out to be an important chain of events.

How to remember back the moment before? What did you do, just before? As far back in time as you can - Was it the sequence, was it your attention, which direction did you go, what was the quality of the motion, what did you hear, breathe, where did your attention go, when?

Sometimes it takes a long time to learn to do this. You'll wake up sooner and sooner. You'll remember more and more. One time, there you'll be at the source of the old choice you made when you put the habit in place. You might "remember" the reason why this particular habit; or suddenly be inside of an era when you trained the habit...or hear something your parent told you when you were so young. The memory may be the other direction, a memory of once being free of the habit before you thought you needed it. Then - think about what happened. Don't make a decision about it, or a conclusion. Record it. Be careful who you tell it to, because saying it sometimes leaves out important parts. Go back and get those parts you left out the first time you tried to describe what happened.

Asking Great Questions

As a topic in general, good questioning has many examples in every field. It pays to study the process of questioning as a separate subject, as if you were going to design an FAQ for your skill. Not only can it make you a better learner, but a better teacher.

If you are a teacher, you know there are multiple advantages about encouraging questioning from the start. Questions from a student show a teacher their student's range and style of thinking. Questions point in the direction of the answers. In fact, questions can imply a limitation of what kind of answers that are possible to find. Better questions open up a rich field of personal discovery.

How do you ask a really good question?

As a student, you can ask any question to get started. Sometimes the first questions that come off the top of your head aren't the most appropriate, but everyone has to start somewhere. Most teachers understand this.

As a learner, to ask a really juicy question, you first have to listen carefully to learn any "lingo" about the topic. So the best questions to start with are often about the specialized use of terms being used.

The other skill that's good to develop as a questioner is being able to tell the teacher the best way that you learn by indicating acknowledgment you are following them. It's useful for the teacher to know when the student is on "over-load, please change tactics now" or "I've got it, go on" to the teacher.

Some learners believe some kinds of questions might be insulting or too challenging for the teacher.

At first, even in a private lesson, most students seem to want a teacher to "lecture" them. They want to let the master talk. The teacher saying something to preface or frame a lesson might be appropriate in some cases. But what if the teacher doesn't really want to go on about the topic; what if they want their student's involvement from the very beginning?

Some teachers address this desire by doing the asking themselves, and then answering their own questions. They hope that the students will get the idea of what kind of questions to ask and starting to ask questions themselves. However, students can misunderstand that questions posed by the teacher and then answered are merely rhetorical ones; that the teacher is asking these questions to show off their knowledge. The students may imagine that the teacher would never ask a question that they don't already know the answer to. What to do when the teacher finds that students resort to parroting or restating the teacher's questions with other motivations such as to gain approval?

How can a teacher encourage learners to get past their misconceptions that particular issues, communications or questions are somehow "forbidden" without losing ability of being able to direct the class? Part of being a teacher is the skill of pulling together the attention of the group. There are some assumptions that create problems with encouraging this activity in learners related to respecting the teacher; especially in a large class situation. What to do when students seem to believe that they are being encouraged to deliver certain questions that cross the line of impolitely questioning the ability of the teacher to teach?

It's very tricky to ask a question that will point in an entirely new direction. Questions can imply that there is one answer, rather than a multiplicity of answers. It's also easy to think that just because you have come up with an answer to a question - that this one answer is enough of an answer.

Fantastic and personally meaningful questions sometimes need quite a bit of personal experimentation to adequately explore their potential. Sometimes this kind of question can become a sort of "virtual question" that many actions of exploration are continually answering during the course of life.

• How can you encourage your students to ask really good question of the teacher?
  
• How can a teacher get around student's misconceptions about the nature of authority, for instance, without inviting disrespect? (We're talking about adult learners here.)
  

Instead of my lecturing, here's an account from many years ago about a teacher of mine who I considered to be a master. In this case, she was teaching Alexander Technique, but this relates to asking questions concerning any skill.

My teacher was in her late eighties here. She's almost five feet tall. Classes could be huge; sixty to eighty people in one room. The advantage was that the workshop lasted for weeks. The disadvantage was that people figured it was too early in the workshop to dare to risk anything in front of everyone else.

My teacher was too polite to be overt about what must have been some frustration beyond kidding the group, "What do I have to do to get some questions and thinking out of more of you people, do a jig?" Most often, laughter, but no daring questions. The humor did have some effect to loosen people up.

The experience of feeling a new perceptual assumption that Alexander Technique delivers is unsettling to many people. A master of an art can sometimes come across as frightening or magical. In this case, people were both attracted and intimidated. This little old lady could shake people's foundations; pull the carpet out from underneath their very sense of self. So the group treated her with "respect." For some people, this turned out to be a kid glove sort of unquestioning loyalty and agreement.

This little old lady named Marj Barstow hated that. She had a number of ways of dealing with it. One was to invite different people to get up in front of the class for a "private" lesson with her... with everyone else watching. While working with someone she would ask, "So you see that little difference? Can someone describe what they see?" She wouldn't go on until someone described it.

That's how she taught us to see very subtle indications of motion or a lack of movement. That also taught us to ask ourselves what these indications meant in each specific situation with each different person. It was also how she embarassed people, and then showed them the way out of the crippling emotions of stage fright, embarassment and being completely tongue-tied.

She might ask the group to move in slow motion to illustrate a crucially pivotal point that influenced that entire outcome of what someone was trying to do. Then we learned how to integrate the special points with the whole, normally speeded action again.

These examples of techniques to encourage questions are, (or should be) commonplace to any teacher. The one I'll tell you about next surprised me, because I regarded it as being positively sneaky.

My teacher took me aside and told me that she appreciated having me and a few other people in the class. She said that it was because we'd pipe up with questions that nobody else would dare ask. She then told me a story about how she didn't understand when another student accused her of putting them on the spot by singling them out, inviting their participation. This is what made me realize that she was asking my permission to deliberately put her "on the spot" by bringing up what may be forbidden as defined by the group of students. This little old lady had some unusual ideas in her field about how her skill should be taught. People seemed to be avoiding asking her specifically about what made her ways different. I decided that she wanted me to break the ice, so to speak, for the rest of the class.

Essentially, she gave me license to be planted as a sort of "sacrificial fool" in the forbidden questions department. People would stare at me with open mouths and shocked looks on their faces when I'd fire off these questions that nobody else would dare say.

It pleased the teacher and myself immensely - I felt as if we were conspiring together. After those kind of questions were in the air, class would get much more interesting. Other students would then started to ask the questions that were very important to them personally.

So if you are a teacher, don't be above encouraging one of your students to act as a 'secret plant' in the classroom! Certainly - if you've got any comments or questions to ask me - please speak up now!