The Secrets of Dialogue

A ramble through the thoughts of a Dialogue practitioner group connecting on Zoom

Every month, I connect on zoom with twenty dialogues guides from all over the world. As guides, we are all well trained and practiced in the work of Bohmian dialogue, usually where we are the paid for guide, or where we are the volunteer facilitator on behalf of others. In this circle, we have the added complexity of being ourselves…

This month’s topic was secrets. How does Dialogue handle what is being withheld, how does it deal with what is not being said and how does this affect the information field that surrounds the circle. What do secrets do to culture where we keep assumptions hidden and we wear our secrets as masks?  

Some secrets preserve culture

Transparency may not always help a culture. Some secrets preserve it. Especially when there are followers in the system who want to be told what to do, or who want to be led by others. If the general level of ego maturity is low in a system, its members may not be able to handle the complexity that comes with leadership, and withholding information may be for a short time, the most compassionate thing to do.

Translucency instead of transparency

However, when sensitive information is shared with translucency rather than transparency, the nature of the information changes, because the one who knows invites the one who does not know to look together at the same object with them.

In the safety and security of knowing that the data is separate to them both, they discover at the same time, that it is collective to them both. When both beings look at the data from a sense of it coming from a place of light, there is a different energy than when they are simply sharing undisclosed data.

Secrets can secrete

What if secrets could ‘secrete’ something other than the information they are holding? What if they could secrete a deeper connection, a less fragmented argument or a more deeply shared opinion or idea?

It seemed to us that dependency is an important factor in how secrets are held or even how they are let go. If someone is in a dependent system, there may be unspoken rules about what is to be shared and what it to be kept secret.

We all know of the open secrets that everybody seems to know about and understand, but which nobody talks about or discusses. Sometimes, the veil of secrecy is actually quite thin and it can be peered into with ease, but also with the potential for deep misunderstanding.

Beautiful secrets

What about beautiful secrets, divine secrets, realities and truths that are so subtle that to name them would release their energy? In certain religious practices, even the name of God is not spoken, as if it were a secret to be shared only in silence.

Organisations of course have secrets that go far beyond the individual. Churches have secrets, armies have secrets, governments have secrets, all organisations have secrets, communities have secrets, societies have secrets, and of course families have secrets.

Is consciousness one big secret? Do humans create consciousness or does a divine father or mother create it? What is real? Are these secrets? We touched upon how much time each of us spends in co-creating elaborate non-reality. Is that an open secret too?

Secrets create anxiety

We noticed that secrets have the capacity to create anxiety in the holder, in the non-hearer and also in the hearer. Not everybody can handle secrets, never mind general information, so why would anyone want to share some private information unless it was psychologically safe to do so?

Each group has its cliques. The same piece of information would be safe in one clique, but not safe in another. We are all too human and the ego plays devious tricks on us without our consent.

Thinking about thought

As Dialogue guides, we each of us spend a lot of time thinking about thought, and how that shapes our felt experience. Sometimes, the felt experience is the only way that we can relate to others in the group, because the conversation may be too cognitive or too remote for people to connect with. The topic may be too technical, or too complicated for people to feel that they are really sharing in the dialogue.

This led us to remember that our experiences are real, and that perhaps our thoughts are not so real. In that case, secrets create choices; the choosing to share, the deciding to hear, the critical choice to accept or to reject.

We asked ourselves, do we really want to know other people’s secrets? Don’t I have enough of my own to deal with? Isn’t there too much information available to me already? This led us to a very deep question: ‘what do I want not to know?’

Secrets as honesty or as poison

As our practice reminded us in that moment, this question was met with prolonged silence. Once the group had digested the query, we asked if secrecy was possibly a form of honesty for conscious minds?

Of course, this means that some secrets are automatically poisonous. Some members spoke about how their stomachs turn when they hear secrets, and some shared that they have somatic reactions when they share secrets.

This landed deeply within us as we realised as long as the generations do not meet to dialogue about their secrets, some will bind some them together and some will shear them apart.

Secrets appear to live as a reality between generations. We are all aware of some family secret which tears it apart literally and figuratively, once the information is let loose in an unconscious manner.

Secrets can create connection

What if the sharing of a secret creates a connection? As part of the whole, secrets are as important as that which is shared, and when they are undifferentiated, secrets can create no more harm than open information.

But what if we need a mask to share sensitive information? What if we need to drop the veil through alcohol or casual drugs in order to have the courage to share? What if the original meaning of the word personality (per-sona) as the sound that comes through the mask of an actor, actually means that secrets are shared by a character, or as Jung would suggest by a visiting ‘complex’.

Psychological Safety

It appeared to us that in places of high psychological safety, secrets have no more emotional charge than the weather and can be revealed, even if there is a cultural taboo in doing so. The beauty of a dialogue circle is that there is enough diversity of culture so that each lens has a space to be felt and seen by all the members of the group.

People who come from cultures that shout or who come from cultures that whisper can both speak loudly or speak softly in the circle and it can be witnessed and beheld for what it is.

Etymology

The etymology of secret is to separate, to set apart, and as Bohmian students we remembered that too much separation leads to fragmentation. We wondered if coherence itself needed secrets in order to be held together as a tension of opposites.

One of the group members responded to Donald Trump’s style of leadership by actually making more of their Jewish faith, and by not being blown over by his rhetoric. Their faith was once guarded more secretly, but in the face of presidential incoherence, their mind told them to be less secret about their true faith and religious practices.

Content and Process

We spoke about process secrets as being different from content secrets and we soon noticed how each of them had different impacts and side effects. We landed upon the concept of ‘discernment’ as an important practice that can help us all hold on to what must be held on to, and to release what must be released.

We recalled that indigenous people have many ancient secrets, rituals and rites that are held sacredly rather than secretly. These are valued because they are esoteric and they require great discipline to learn, understand and practice.

The mundane and the profane have their equal place amongst the divine and the heavenly. Bohm himself borrowed from Thoth in saying ‘As Above, So Below’.

Judgment and Assumption gives a secret its charge

We noticed that a secret is nothing more than a piece of information. It is only when the information is given or received with judgment or assumption that it creates an emotional charge. No sooner than we hear such data than our guilt and shame arises and so a simple piece of information becomes active.

In this way, secrets that were held by elders who die with their secrets intact create generations of silence. Perhaps, as one member pondered ‘there are no secrets, just people who keep them’.

Respect

This required us to re-look at or respect the information. As in all Dialogue, we have to look with new eyes. In this way, looking at old information with new gratitude can invoke a long lost joy that was somehow missing when the information was held or hidden.

Separate beliefs?

We wondered if secrets weren’t just separate beliefs and we asked what were they protecting? Someone reminded us of the Jack Nicholson character Colonel Jessop who was quite clear that certain people ‘could not handle the truth’.

As we allowed this thought to settle, we realise that while someone may not be able to handle a truth now, in time, they might be able to. In this way, perhaps truth dissolves its own dogma over time?

In this way, silence becomes more important as we genuinely have to think about how to share secrets with others. We may have to think about holding on to the secret until some else is able to hear it. We may have to think about revealing it too early for ourselves, because someone else needs to hear it now, even if we are not ready to share it.

Usually, through trial and error, we find a way to tell our loved ones what must be shared. We find a way to tell our boss what they do not want to hear. We find a way to tell ourselves something in the mirror that we have been avoiding.

Authority and license

But who gives the authority for the secret in the first place? Who decides what is to be shared and what is to be secret? What are the consequences for sharing? What are the consequences for withholding?

One member told of a relative who would not tell their spouse what their real political views are, for to do so would end the marriage. We realised that there was more than one secret in that relationship.

So who licenses the secret? Who pays the license? Can we self-license? How do different people discern the differences between fact and belief? Taking climate change as an example, we were reminded of many facts and many beliefs that create fragmentation amongst different groups.

A wave of opinions can lead to a mob attack. A wife’s or husband’s secret can lead to relationship disintegration. But aren’t we all trapped? The holder and the non-knower are both held to ransom by the thoughts which one person has and the thoughts that the other person does not even know about. Who determines the silent authority?

If authority is inked to author, is it then also linked to authenticity?

Consequences

What are the consequences of revealing secrets? President’s can be impeached, lives can be lost, but surely lives can also be saved and leader’s credibility strengthened too?

If speaking out is encountered as a real experience, with real emotions and real feelings, surely being trapped by a violent silence is the choice of the person who holds on? What if there was nothing to lose? Would there even be any secrets if the ego did not desire them?

Risk

We rambled into the thought that we needed to think more about the risk of speaking truth to power; not only the risk to the speaker, but to risk to the listener too.

We asked what would actually happen to your frustration if you revealed your secret? Would your mind settle down? Would your body ease its tension? Would you feel more coherent?

As we meandered the thought, we touched on the power of the topic, the manner in which we actually speak our voices and the emotional or impassive way in which people actually hear us.

If we allow emotions in to the circle, what is not being said is clear to see in body language, in breath, in a felt sense of tension and in many other ways that leaders are usually not taught about in their MBA.

Even if we limit the conversations to conceptual topics, people’s bodies are volcanoes of emotion. Yet while concepts help to shape thought, unless we think about the thought together, we may do more harm than good.

Checkout

As we reflected on our rich and diverse dialogue, we realised that all opinions are valid and real. It remains a privilege to be part of such a circle that connects us from South Africa to Norway and from Ireland to the USA to hear them all with less judgment and assumption than usual.

We felt that revealing secrets requires courage. We supposed too, that holding on to them requires courage as well. If you can put your heart out there and know that even if it is broken, that it needs to be broken at that time in order to heal, then two or more gathered in the name of Dialogue can have a therapeutic effect, even if it was meant to be a cognitive process.

If a group of people can come together to examine its collective mind together, without falling into a trap of limiting ‘group thunk’, trust slowly emerges and it is only then that something new can emerge. Bohm called this ‘creativity’.

There is no need to fix someone else’s frustration. That is for them to do. Whatever they think about you is about them.

Even if you experience uncertainty, then you can be certain that you are experiencing it. Self-critical practice evolves from being a mind-game to being art. You dance into your own incoherence with your own mind, and if you are fortunate enough, the dance is also with the safe minds of others.

By individually and collectively discovering your own incoherence in the safety of a dialogue group, you can stop what Bohm called your ‘false playing’. You can observe your own illusion, delusion and collusion. As Einstein said, ‘we can delight in being wrong’.

If you can find ways to surface your frustration peacefully, Dialogue becomes more than a practice, it becomes pure potential. In speaking what is true enough to ourselves and to each other, we feel safe enough to be a part of the whole, and to be whole in being only a part. Being able to identify the inner work that you need to do is no small feat in a modern technology driven society.

If we can apply our energy in motion to discerning the risk and authority we need to be authentic, we can make more inquiries instead of sharing our opinions like a tennis player serving an ace.

Perhaps the only authority in the room is thought itself?

Nobody can speak the truth, because nobody has access to it, we only speak what is true for us. Unless we look, we do not see what thought is doing.

Perhaps truth is the root of conflict?

Being in communion helps us to get beyond the story of truth. We live so much in our heads that the ‘other’ appears real to our perceptions. This causes us to give wrong signals to others about what is safe and what is not. This impacts on the significance of the thought.

Yes, opinions can get in the way of the hearing, but when I can see twenty faces looking back at me, all willing to Dialogue, all willing to listen and to speak what is true enough for each of them and to point it squarely towards the power of my limited perception, I know once again that I am in the right place, and I am in the right Dialogue.

ENDS