https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=4A2d5IaCkkg
So welcome. We’re live now? Yes. Okay, fantastic. So after some finesse with the technology, we’re here live. So this is my first experience on this doing this live. I think this is John’s too. So welcome to our first official live stream. I’ve live streamed when I did my course. I did that every day, but I relied on Amar and and they were the two that have put together all of this for us to make it possible. Yeah, fantastic. I’m going to turn things over to Guy, he’s going to introduce what we’re going to be doing here. And then we’ll talk a little bit about it. Please put your questions in the live chat. And then we will answer and address them about the course that we’re going to be doing together. So take it away, Guy. Yeah, so I just wanted to give everyone an opportunity who’s thinking about doing the course and who have questions to basically talk a little bit about the why, right? Talk about what we’ll be doing, talk about kind of the pace of the course, what the experience is going to be like, and then give you an opportunity just to ask questions on the chat. So I think we’re going to be dialoguing a bit and just talking about it. And then at a certain point, we’ll open up to some tips. Yeah. So the essentially, right, this is this is, I would say, first of all, I’m super excited to be doing this course with you, John. Like this is just this is in fact, this as we’ve been, as we’ve been organizing it, getting it together, and, you know, putting out the videos for it and, you know, like letting people know about it and everything that’s gone kind of into this part of it. It’s had me just get a real taste of the gestalt, right, the overall gestalt of this whole DLos, DLogos project, right? I call it that. Yeah. And what the feeling about it for me is it’s like all good. Like it’s just, it just feels like it emerged from a good place. It’s coming from a good place. The people who are responding to it are responding to it from a good place. It just, the whole thing just seems really, really, really good, which probably has something to do with, right, platonic dialogues, which are all about the good as such, right? So it makes sense. So I just, I’ve noticed like the internal experience of the mood of this whole project is, is, is this kind of feels to me, it definitely feels to me that we are a part of something, right? We are at the head of something, right? We’re more like we’ve, we’ve, we’ve stumbled upon something and been articulating it with a whole bunch of people. Yeah. Right. And so like not only the people that we’ve been talking with, right, and all the people who participated in viewing and their comments, but also the tradition, because the, in essence, DLogos is, is, you know, arguably is what the Western intelligibility is really grounded in, right? So it’s like the embeddedness of what we’re going to be participating in, in with DLogos is just, it’s astronomical, right? To what degree, right? This is, this is a collaboration to say the least. Yeah. I think that, I think there’s a kairos, I think many people are understanding and sensing that we’re at a turning point. And I think the COVID crisis sort of sharpened people’s sense of that important way. And people are looking for a bunch of things. They’re looking for how to connect to other people. They’re looking for how to discuss ideas with other people without falling into acrimonious debate. They’re looking for a way in which they can ground, you know, their judgments about how they should live their lives. Is there some sort of, is there something, a source of wisdom that they, of living wisdom, not just traditional wisdom, but living wisdom that they can consult, that they can participate in, that they can practice to help bring guidance to their lives. And then of course there’s issues around meaning and transformation that many people are confronting right now, because we’re in this, we’re in the, we’re in the rain shadow of religion for a lot of people. Not that this is meant only for those people that are outside of religion. Many people have talked about how these practices enrich their religious lives, but it’s also hopefully a bridging practice for people who also don’t belong to a particular religious tradition, but are seeking that kind of fellowship that used to exist within a religious framework, a way, in way in which language and communication was used for communing and for transforming and not just for convincing. And so I think the culture as a whole is seeking this. We, all of these practices, all these communities of practices are emerging. And you’ve been at the forefront of this. You were one of the originators of Circling. And you and I have engaged in a project the last couple of years, we’re reading and discussing and we, you know, in conjunction with Chris and Master Pietro and Jordan Hall and Peter Lindberg and other people about how can we get the love of wisdom, the cultivation of wisdom and meaning, philosophia, to use the Greek word. I don’t want to use the modern one, philosophy, because it’s not, that’s not the appropriate word. The ancient word, right? How do we get philosophia and Circling together? And so that we’re getting something like what was going on in the Platonic dialogue with Socrates. And so that’s, and I’m very excited about this because I think that combination can be a powerful way in which we can provide a living practice that people can engage in or meeting those constellations of needs that have come to the public. And so I think that we’re on the board right now. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s also in such a sense, in such a way, there’s something, I remember in the first conversation that we had, right, the thing that stood out to us, I mean, pretty much right away, if you go back, if you go back and read, I’m sure if we go, if we were to read, we’d have a kid going to reading our initial text exchanges. I wonder about if somebody found this, if they dug it up, right, in like a thousand years from now, like what they would think of our text exchanges. Yeah. But like right after that, like a lot of the, it’s almost like we both, on some level, we both caught sight of something. Yes. And I think what we overheard was something about that there’s something going on in dialogue itself, right, that seems to bring in all of these factors, right. And that there is also inherently a co-recognition of that all the factors that are being brought on, although they’ve been talked about in a lot of different places, there’s a, it feels like there’s more articulating, right, to go into realizing the potential of what’s possible in relationship, in conversation, in dialogue, right, on all these different levels. Yeah. And I would say that that’s kind of in some sense that this is for us personally, and those where we connected was kind of overhearing the potential of conversation, right. And for you, like you being pretty grounded in the philosophical tradition and being my own way as well, but you specifically with Plato, really brought to for me realizing, right, how deeply philosophy like philosophia has been involved in the emergence of circling. Right. Right. And I think one of the things that’s, from my vantage point, that’s really exciting is on some level has been the reason for me anyways, circling has always been something that I found myself kind of in it, in all intents and purposes, really kind of in so many ways devoting my life to it, right. Because I think what I’ve been hearing is something that just goes beyond just the personal intimacy that it affords, right. And for me, that’s really great. However, I don’t think that that’s the reason for me what’s been pulling me, right. Yeah. It’s part of it. It’s definitely part of it. But what’s actually been pulling for me, right, and in our relationship and in this whole project is really having me realize this in a much more of a concrete sense. This is what has me so excited about it, is that the North Star has been that there’s so much, you could say, self-transcendence available, right. In the way fellowship, the way that we commune, we can afford that with each other, right. And there’s that potential. And that’s, I think that’s the personal end of like why I think I’m doing it on some level is to really start to harness even more that aspect of conversation and the end of intimacy. I think that’s, I think that is also deeply, that’s something that deeply calls to me. You’re right. I mean, and in and of itself, it’s tremendously valuable. When they’re in a circling practice, right, there’s a tremendous sense of intimacy, people discovering a profound kind of intimacy that’s not friendship and it’s not romantic intimacy. That’s why I, you and I often use this term fellowship, which is an older term, but it’s that it’s, wow, there’s this important kind of intimacy and way of connecting to people. And the thing is, right, when you’re, like we are mirrors to each other, right, as you connect more intimately and you connect in this new way, intimately to other people, it affords you connecting to yourself in a kind of, right, in ways that you were not previously aware were available to you. And of course, the two are while circling, right, and with each other. But the thing is, and that in and of itself is like, wow, that’s kind of the Socratic self-knowledge in a certain way. But what can happen is there’s a graduation of intimacy. You can move to, people start to move to this, what takes shape, right? There’s like, it’s almost like, it’s almost like, like I don’t want to use technical terms, you know, it’s like a dynamical system. You get sort of this, you know, this, this, this, I don’t want to use technical terms, but you know, it’s like a dynamical system. You get sort of this shared flow state between people. And people start to sense the presence of that, that, that, that collective intelligence, not my intelligence, not your intelligence, but the intelligence that emerges when your mind and my mind are coupled together in that co-emerging fashion. And then when, and when you have a button, and then that starts to emerge and people become aware of it. And that it has, they, when they get a sense of the presence of the, that collective intelligence, not as some abstraction, but as a living presence, you know, within the communion. And then there’s a further, further graduation. Each one of these is a step from self-transcendence. People often can then move to a place where they find that, that, that, that, that shared living sort of emergence of understanding and intelligence, it gives them, it gives them a way of thinking about sort of the fundamental aspects of themselves, of other people. And then in terms of those sort of being reality, what does it mean to be a human being? What does it mean to be a human being in me? What does it mean to be a human being with you? What does it mean to be a human being with being itself? I mean, I’m a human being. What does that human being, what does that mean? And you sound like hallmark phrases, but the point is there’s a way of connecting to those things that aren’t abstract or, or truistic, that they’re, they are, they’re intimate. Each one of those is a graduation of intimacy and those questions become alive for you and profound. And each level of self-transcendence calls you deeper into wondering and pondering and opening up the real potential for change within yourself, your relationships, and the world, the way the world discloses itself to you. I mean, that’s the thing when you, when you, as you graduate through these levels, it percolates through your life. It’s not just something you do in the practice. It starts to reverberate and resonate through the whole of your life and through all of the levels of your psyche. And that’s when it starts to become philosophia. Right, right. And that particular thing about where just, I think, it’s like just for, if anything, just allowing to develop the eyes and the ears and the senses to see the ways in which you’re, you could say, you know, for example, it’s, I mean, a lot of people definitely have the experience of having deep relationships, maybe through therapy, right, through like mentorship, right. That have changed their lives, right. Somebody that’s been with them and also change your lives in positive and negative ways. I mean, it’s pretty, people are pretty, I think, aware of how deep relationships go in becoming and being yourself. Therefore, you know, we can have these conversations, which reveals a lot of personal insight about the particular person I am. However, and there’s also a way where what’s also available is that we can start to listen to the, what is it to be a self as such? Right. Like there’s a way where you can actually start to tune in and attune to and hear these deeper structures of intelligibility that ground the very personal self in which you’re having insights about. Right. And so I think about as we start to move into DIA Logos as a practice, which is really what this course is really an attempt, a first attempt at attempting to do is to bring some structure to it, right. Some procedural knowing to it, right. Such that we can start to make this an actual practice. And part of that is being able to just be able to see the way that something like collective intelligence or distributed cognition is always there. It’s always, we’re inside and we’re dwelled in. And this is where it’s not abstract. It’s actually, it’s closer. It’s closer than our concrete. It’s like, it’s like the things that make the concrete show up as concrete, right. If you will. Yeah. So I always think about the skills of like, what does it mean to be able to listen to being, to listen to these deeper structures and anything that you can hear and you can say, you can then relate to, right. Because it’s these things that is you can start to see them and hear them and, and become facile in that seeing and hearing, you can open them up through dialogue, right. And when you start to open up things like your understanding of what a self is, those are the things that sit underneath all, everything that you do, right. So it’s really powerful when you start to think about the implications of this. Yeah, it’s very powerful. And I mean, that, that field that opens up is precisely the field in which people can experience a kind of self-transcendence that is analogous to the self-transcendence that they, people experience in mindfulness practices and in movement practices. Yeah. And in fact, part of what we’ll teach in this, I mean, there’s an aspect of, you know, of the practice that is a, has a mindfulness component to it. Maybe what we want to do is talk about perhaps some of the components that will, will be in the course. Yeah, absolutely. So, so I think one of the first things to get is, is so as we talk about, like the experience that you’re, you’re going to be going through, right. And in some of the structures of it. So the first thing to get is that this is a work in progress, right? So this is, this is, this is an attempt to formalize and to bring some procedures, right, into a practice that’s, that’s actually, you know, it’s, it’s as old as conversation itself, right. In some degree, right. So we’re, we’re, we’re going to be setting up all the exercises that we do are going to be, it’s going to be ways of, you could say exercises, experiential exercises that isolate from our understanding the basic skills for the machinery, right. That afford something like the logos. Yeah. So I, I’ve been making a distinction between dialectic and the logos. A dialectic is a bunch of, a bunch of skills you can cultivate and a bunch of practices you can engage in. Dialog, dialectic is very much something that can be taught, right. Whereas via logos is something that you, you can only prepare yourself for. If you just make it and you’re not, if you, if you just make it and you’re not being caught up in it, then it’s not via logos. It’s kind of like friendship in this sense. Fellowship is like friendship in that sense. You can’t just make somebody your friend. There’s, but that doesn’t mean you just go into it. You can improve your skills of attention and listening and communication and empathy, but that doesn’t, those make possible friendship, but the friendship has to take on a life of its own and, and draw you in as much as you are making it. And it’s the same thing. We’re going to teach, if you’ll allow me, a bunch of practices in a, in a program that will get you into doing dialectic. But what we’re hoping is that what, Plato talks about it, like you, you, you get a bunch of things together and you’re, you’ve got all the kindling together. You have to get it all together and you have to put it together right. But that doesn’t mean that the spark will catch. The spark has to catch and the fire has to catch on its own. So we’re hoping to boot both exercises of dialectic, but also help to facilitate and coordinate and sustain when DioLogos takes flame. When it, right. And so you’ll have the, right, you’ll have the, the expertise of the skills from dialectic, but we also want you to encounter, right, the experience of DioLogos. And we’re trying to get those two together. And this is very much something like a good jazz performance that’s going to depend on what we all bring to it and how we all come to it. Yeah, absolutely. And so, so the three, the three basic, roughly the three basic things that we’re going to be working with, right. That, that already have a history and establishment of as a practice is one circling. The other one that we talked about is philosophical, philosophical friendship, right. And then fellowship, yeah. And then philosophical dialectic. Yes. Right. Yeah. So you could say, so circling is, is the thing, is the thing that I, I co-founded, right. And circling is essentially about a yoga for intimacy, a yoga in, in what, what, what you could call the intersubjective, right. The cultural sphere, the, the, the, the we space, it’s also been called the we space, right. Of how is it that you inhabit, right. A way of, a way of being that encourages a deeper sense of intimacy, safety, and, and the kinds of insights and risks that one takes, right. In communication and in listening that foster deep moments of connection, basically, and how to harness that. And so I’ve been doing that for, developing that for, with lots of other people for, I don’t know, 25 years at this point. And so, so we’re, although in the course, we’re not going to have the time to do actual circles. We are going to be doing a lot of the components of circling, right. And what that will look like is, you know, we’ll break up into like maybe like pairs or groups of three or groups of four, and then we’ll give you something like, like, like a specific, like sentence them, per se, to say over and over and over again to each other. And in the purpose of that, right, is, is just like with any kind of skill or capacity deepening activity, it always involves some kind of restraint, right. And like, I remember this in Rocky Balboa, like when he came back, you know, in Rocky 2, or, or, or, or, or, no, when he showed up, when he, actually it was Rocky 1, where he showed up and surprised him by being a southpaw, right. You see him trading, right, where, where, you know, they tied, they tied his, his right arm to his, you know, to his body. So it forced him to have to use his left arm, right, to become a southpaw. So, and that’s really an example of most skills, skill building activity, right, has to do with these kinds of constraints, so that your automatic normal weight muscles that you use, right, or capacities are restrained to what forces you to develop one particular trait, right. And so there’s all these different, you could say, tracks with communication and listening and intimacy and ways of being that, that open up like an inner, like an inner subjective intimacy. And so we’ll be doing exercises where you practice those, right, over and over and over and over again in different ways. And so we’ll go in and have that experience, then we’ll, when it’s done, we’ll come out and we’ll debrief the experience. We’ll talk about what you’ve experienced, right, we may adjust it and go deeper on it, just the exercise and have you go back in, right, and deepen it, feedback and going back in at different levels, right, on communication, on intimacy, right, on, on sharing yourself, right, in, you know, all the different things that you can think about with intimacy. That’s the circling end of it, right. So, and then we’re going to move into practices around philosophical fellowship. Yeah. And so this is a practice I’ve been, there’s a couple of videos that I’ve done that have been uploaded onto YouTube and guys also done. Yeah, this is inspired by the work of Randall Havivat and others also that’s been over a couple decades. And the idea of philosophical fellowship is to bridge from that circling intimacy, but to get intimate around a philosophical text, for example, and learn, learn how to sort of not read for information, but to commune for transformation, to read a text in a way in which we are presencing the voice of the author, the perspective that that person has, which is presumably a wise perspective, which is drawn from a philosophical tradition, and interacting with that voice and the perspective and with each other’s voices and perspective as a way of bringing to light the aspiration to wisdom through a particular philosophical text. So once again, when we’re using the word philosophy here, we don’t mean, you know, academics, scholastic study or logical argumentation. We’re meaning, and this is what I have talked about, we’re talking about a contemplative practice that is designed to get you into a frame of being, not just a frame of mind in which you are aspiring to, to a wiser way of life, a wiser way of seeing and being. So that’s the philosophical fellowship practice, and it starts to get you to see in practice, in experience, the skills that will bridge between circling and philosophia. Yeah, totally. And so what that looks like is, is basically you’ll, like, we’ll say, say we’re working with somebody like Spinoza, right? We may, may give some context for Spinoza, right? And then they’ll take like one phrase, right? One sentence that powerfully transmits, if you will, the essence of something that, something like Spinozian thought. And so you’ll put, in a certain sense, you’ll put that in the center and then everyone will go through different, I think there’s four, yeah, there’s four facets. Yeah, there’s a kind of something like a meditative chant. And then there’s where you try to say as, you try to convey as much as you can about this central phrase with as little words as possible. So you’re concentrating much more on the transformation than the information. And then you open up to a more extended version of that. And then you open up to basically a more free floating. And what you’ll find is you, you sort of, you get a sense of, like, if it’s Spinoza, you get a sense of the presence of the perspective and the personality they take. So you’re not looking at Spinoza, you’re learning how to see the world as Spinoza saw it. It’s more like an adverb than a, like, than an adjective. Or if it’s Plato, how to see platonically, or, right? And not because this is the ultimate truth. That’s not what we’re doing. It’s like, what is it like to see this way? Think about how you become an adult when you’re a child, you practice taking on the perspective of an adult. Well, as the child is to the adult, the adult is to the same. Practice seeing, like, Plato with each other, or seeing like Socrates, or seeing like Spinoza is a way of making this a living platform for genuine growth and transformation. Absolutely. And here’s where you can start to see the layering of how it, like, how, in some sense, you know, you can start to see, like, you can kind of get Spinoza’s world through, right? Through seeing as Spinoza saw in such a way that almost like you can share it back with Spinoza himself in a certain sense, right? Yeah. And this is where that you can see this trans, like this really, really beautiful way of being with people, right? Of how that translates, where you can start to see that everybody has a deep understanding of whether or not they know it explicitly, right? If they’ve ever been able to articulate it, but everybody standing on a ground of something like a personal philosophy, right? The way that they see, and that you can start to become sensitive to actually appreciating that and hearing that in other people, and then being able to, like, try them on, similar like when with Spinoza, in some sense, speak where they’re coming from in some degree, like more than they ever could themselves, right? And these are moments of, like, deep seeing, right, that afford the kind of intimacy that’s just pretty profound, right? And then what we’ll do is move into a practice, again, dialectic, again, don’t confuse dialectic with the logos, which is a practice where we basically, it’s involved with four people, and it builds on all of these. And what we are doing there is learning to take the skills from circling and philosophical fellowship and draw each other out, get into a shared flow where we’re drawing each other out and into insight as we reflect upon, not a particular, not on just each other or even a particular philosophical text, but when we reflect on the very groundwork of a good life. What is it to be an honest person, for example? And the point of dialectic is to not get into combative argumentation with each other, but to learn to gently and in fellowship draw each other beyond as we reflect on these questions, not because we’re going to come to an answer. One of the things that defines human beings is we have been wrestling with these questions and we will continue to wrestle with them for as long as we’re human beings, but that doesn’t mean we should do nothing. Instead, what we can do is, well, if I ask the question, if I really want to ask the question, what is it to be honest, part of what you come to realize is I can’t answer that question without determining that I’m going to become more honest. There has to be something in me that loves honesty that is aspiring towards it. What is that? How is it in me? How do I see it in other people? How do we coordinate those together? How do we deeply understand together drawing each other beyond what we can get to on our own? That’s the defining thing. If all of the people participating can get to a place in wondering about honesty or truth or wisdom that they couldn’t get to on their own, then dialogue has taken place and people start to sense how much more there is, but that’s also how much more is available to them and within them. Yeah, and this is where this kind of looks like is that you start to, and this is where it starts to really draw on John’s specific expertise, right? Where you start to actually start to make proposals, right? Yes, yes. And I thought about this. It’s like this is something I think that there is something, we all have intuitive hunches about things, right? And intuitions about things that are difficult to put into words, but it’s the unique, like in some sense, the unique original sense that you have about something. And so like making these proposals has a lot to do with, I think, taking your intuitions and actually translating them into proposals, right? Yeah. Into communion, right? Just that act itself, to translate your intuitive sense into proposals for other people to listen to, right? And to relate with. So taking proposition back to what originally was a proposal, which is exactly right, and then trying to, like what Guy said is exactly right, which you were trying to get between these two things. You want to, like you have, like if you didn’t have some honesty, I couldn’t interest you in honesty, right? So what is that in you? And bringing it up. Now there’s two things you want. You want to bring out that intuition, but you don’t want to treat that intuition as if it’s the voice of God, right? Well, you know, my intuition is telling me, and therefore that’s what it is. It’s important to propose it, but it’s important also, right, to open it up, to reflect on it, and to do that in fellowship with other people. The other alternative is when you make a proposal that really isn’t yours, some technical definition you’ve heard, some idea you really like, but it’s not speaking from that attempt to get the intuition into discussion. So this is how you help each other. You challenge each other and you ask questions again in a cooperative manner to try and get people to speak from their intuition, but to speak beyond their intuition. And that is where the magic happens. Right, right. And so, and then there’s the other side of that, which is, is in some sense, this is where we get into that Socratic midwifery. Yes, the listening, the listening, the active listening that is a part of it, learning how to properly listen to somebody and to make them, make what they’re trying to do the focus, help them to give birth to their thought, resisting, appropriating, talking about your own experience, but being in service to the other person, letting, right, helping them draw them out, getting them to notice things that they’re not, you know, like a mindfulness mirror so that they can see themselves better and you’re drawing them up and you’re learning to listen in that question. And then you will, and then it’ll turn around and then you will get to propose and you will be listened to in that way. And it goes in a circle between people. Yeah. And so these are kind of things that these are at the, some of the things that are at the basis of kind of conversations that can start to afford something like transcendence, right? Because at some point, and this is, I think that what John was talking about, this is in some sense, this is the gardening, right? Like the gardener always talks about like you can plant the seed, but you can’t make the seed grow. But what that says is that the gardener is more of a tuning to something, right? That makes the seed grow. Like I’m in, there’s a deep attunement to that in our, in attunement through our listening, through our speech, through the way we can port a body, right? The way we pause and step back. And so, yeah, this is a, you could say are some really like concrete specific ways of fostering that attunement. And so you say that when it sprouts, right? That moment where all of a sudden that intuition that you struggled to get everyone else’s birth to, and then into that process, something like something else gets birth that’s beyond your intuition and everyone else’s, right? That opens up to something that was beyond the sum of all of us, right? Yes, exactly. And that’s dialogos, right? When you get that, when you get those shared insights, right? That reach deeply into you and all, the ahada goes deeply into you and deeply into the other and both of you into the topic that you’re trying to get clear on. That’s when dialogos is now present. And then what starts to happen is it’s almost like when you’re, everybody’s making music and you attune to each other and then the music picks on a shape and then you start to follow the music. That’s, and then eventually what will hopefully happen is you’ll be able to move from sort of dialectic into a free flowing dialogos. Yes, yes. And so, and so what we’ll be doing is these exercises, right, as the basis of that, right? And then at some point we’ll, we may or may not have that experience of things starting to catch, right? And then we’ll start noticing the differences that made that difference, right? Exactly, exactly. So there’s a final part of this that is properly described as kind of an apprenticeship. What we can do is give you a lot of practices and then when the logos take shape of its own accord, trying to get to notice and to help you notice and to reflect on it in different perspectives so that you can more and more attune yourself to its emergence. Yeah, so basically that’s going to be the flow of it. We’ll set some context in the beginning, we’ll give some instructions, you’ll break into going into groups and doing that particular exercise, right? When you come out and we’ll like talk about it, we’ll regroup, right? We may go back and do another exercise, right? Come back, regroup, talk about it, come back, regroup, adjust, right? And we’re just going to be progressively layering these things, right, into Sunday where I would imagine, I mean it’s hard to foresee exactly what it’s going to look like, right? So maybe what we should start to do is take some questions now, John. Yeah, totally, absolutely. And just one other thing I wanted to cover just in terms of logistics, so so the, my company, the Circling Institute is hosting this, so we’ll have, I’ll have people who have, who are trained in the, in Circling and certified in Circling or teachers of the Circling Institute, so we’ll have staff there, right? We’ll be leading it, we have people working with Zoom, right? And so you’ll have a lot of support, right? And there’ll be time for question and answers and… Great. So, all right, six questions. I’ll read the questions out, Guy, and we can take turns answering them or we can each answer each one. We can both answer each one. Okay, so the first question is, if we’re a little light on the propositional knowledge, will it present a roadblock or is grasping this stuff intuitively fine? I am not presuming that you will have read any of the philosophical background or know any of the cog-side theory. This is not, in fact, the, there’s a sense in which it’s perhaps better that you don’t, because it will make it more accessible to you in the right way. You’ll be able to get into right relationship better. So I think that you’re concerned that a lack of propositional knowledge or theory might hold you back. No. For example, where this might come up. Well, I don’t know anything about Spinoza. You don’t have to. When I did this, two examples, I do a bit. The person who’s going to lead it, well, might, the path will give a bit of background and context, but not in order to give you a philosophical education, but to get you to understand, beginning to do this imaginal practice of, well, where is Spinoza coming from? What is he talking about? How can I, how can I make him more real to me? How can I realize him or her here? So needing to know that is not a requirement. Yeah. Did you want to say anything about that question, Guy? Nope. No, I think you covered it. Okay. The second question, and I’m going to let Guy answer this because I think this is directed specifically towards him. Do you get into the, how do you get into the course and is there a cost? Yeah. So the cost is, is 195 until two weeks before. Then it goes up to 250. And there’s a, we’ll be, there’s links down below the, we have a Facebook invite, which gives you the link to where you pay over on PayPal. So it’s, it’s what I think it’s still 195 right now. I’m not sure what the date is. Let’s see. Because the two weeks start tomorrow. Yeah, totally. So it’s 195 up and through tomorrow. So if you, if you know you’re going to do it, I would pay for it now. 195 US by the way. Yeah. Yes. US. We got it. And so we’ll make sure there’s, we’ll put in the links. There’s also videos online. You can go on and we’ll put links to those that have the information, et cetera. Is there anything else we should say about how people can find out the, the logistical questions? Nope. Nope. I think everything’s, everything should be, logistically should be on the page. After you pay, right. At some point, you’ll be getting an email with all the details of like, you know, the links and how to, you know, how to, you know, just logistical stuff to show up with. Okay, great. So this next question is, is, is a little bit more no, no, it’s a little bit more philosophical. I, I, it’s what I, I guess want to say. Why is this style of dialogue so far with subjective issues, but so easy with something with immediate objective results, like building something together? So I’m not quite sure if I understand the question, what you mean by subjective issues. Do you mean perhaps what you mean are issues around people’s values or their particular beliefs? Is that what it’s meant? But it’s easy when we’re dialoguing about, when we’re making something objective together, like, I don’t know, building a house together or something like that. I think the point about this whole, this whole program is to actually reduce that, that dichotomy. I don’t think it’s natural that difference that you’re pointing to. I think that’s very much a cultural historical product of how we have gotten into a certain way of dividing up our being, dividing up the world into subjective and objective, and how this, how the objective works and how this objective works and separating fact from value. So instead of answering the question directly, I want to sort of drop below it and say, well, what this practice shows you how to do is to really reduce that difference so that there is a way in which people can get into deep conversation, even about things that they subjectively disagree with in a way that they mutually find beneficial and rewarding and affording of further conversations. So that’s how I’ll answer that. I’ll let Guy answer now. Guy, do you want me to read the question or are you okay? If you could reread the question again, just so I make sure I’m listening. Why is this dialogue so hard with subjective issues, but so easy with something with immediate objective results, like building something together? Yeah, totally. I mean, one of the first things that I could imagine that a part of this has to do with, like when you build something, it seems implicit that you know the outcome. So it’s like, you know when the house is built, right? If you’re having conflict, right? You don’t, conflicting in values or something like that, you’re trying to work that out. You don’t quite know when the house is built in that part. So I think there’s something probably in there with it. I would say that I think this actually kind of points to something. And maybe this is kind of points to actually this philosophia as the practice, right? And maybe the word philosophy, right? Like maybe the word starts to point to the difference. Where what we’re really doing is a fellowship, a way of conversing, such that as the dialogue moves up, you could say, right? And succeeds or lifts or transcends, right? And accomplishes itself. How you know that is everyone has moved up with it, right? And that’s the way that it works. We want really this sense of a deep fellowship such that the conversation that’s happening becomes realized through all of us, right? And that’s the fellowship part. So it’s less, it’s, and especially I was thinking about this earlier as you were talking about it, like with the gardener that’s attuned, attuned, that can’t make the garden grow, that can’t make the plant grow, but is attuned to the plant, right? You, I think part of the practice is attuning to, is attuning to the way the conversation and when the logos unfolds is being able to hear it, right? And such that, such that the conversation realizes, you could say it’s success, right? So it’s more like, it’s less about like the particular outcome of like, oh, we’ve solved this problem, right? Like it’s more like, oh, no, it’s more like, it’s more like, oh yeah, the logo spoke or not. And in some sense, it’s as much of the practice, I would say is the reason why we’re doing is to attune to sensing the logos itself, right? And that’s part of it is being able to realize, right? What really wants to happen in that dialogue. It’s beyond all of us. Mm-hmm. That’s excellent. Yeah. I think that’s, that’s very well said. Kyle, I’ll let you answer the next question first, although I have some things to say about it. Where does trust come into the, into play? Yeah. Well, I would say, first of all, it depends on what you mean by trust, right? But where I would say I, where I fall with this is that trust is, is, is not a historical event. It is involved in the constant unfolding of any relationship, right? So I would say that trust is inherent to the process of this going back and forth, right? Of getting to know each other, right? And it’s also, I would say is, is within, if we say, if we say trust in a deep sense is a living, it’s a living, it’s something that it’s living, right? That it, it affords for mistakes, right? It affords for breakdowns and trust, right? In such a way that we want to realize, right? And learn from it, right? And I think that basic learning attitude of where we’re coming from, right, allows for mistakes to happen, right? And for trust to deepen through those mistakes. That’s, that’s very good. I mean, I want to, I want to supplement that with something that, that Guy actually brought up in a previous Theologos, which, that there’s a movement in these practices from exposure. Think about propositions, and this is something Greg Enriquez points out. The propositions give us access to each other, each other’s minds in a way nothing else does. That’s why we don’t really know what’s going on in the mind of a chimpanzee or a dog in a way I can know what’s going on in your mind. And so that means that propositions always carry with them a tremendous sense of exposure, that my inner world is exposed to you in a way that nothing else can. And therefore, we, we, we, we can come into this with a fear of exposure. But what Guy has pointed out is we can, we can move that, we can change that sense of exposure to a sense of sensitivity and vulnerability, that, that sense of exposure becomes, well, I, I, I can actually become more aware of you, the depths to the degree to which I allow you into my depths. And we can get into this process of what I, what I call the reciprocal opening, where you see more deeply into me so that I can more see deeply into you. And that’s, that’s very much what happens in love. And so if you think about, and I’m not saying you’re going to fall in love with people, although there’s, there is a kind of love, that’s the philia, the kind of intimacy, the fellowship love, not friendship love, not romantic love, but fellowship love. And if you think about what happens in, in many, even in other cases of love, all, I would probably argue all cases of love, right, the exposure is transformed into vulnerability, sensitivity. Think about even your, your love of food, there’s the part of it’s an exposure, there’s a lack, I’m hungry, I’m vulnerable, right? In that sense. But then it goes to, ah, but, you know, hunger’s the best sauce to quote Cervantes, right? I can, that can turn into get letting me taste, mindfully become aware now I could just gobble like a glutton or the hunger can make my, my, my, I can deeply appreciate food. That’s why fasting is a spiritual practice. Fasting turns the, the gap, the exposure of hunger into the vulnerability, the sensitivity, the enhanced awareness. And so there is a way in which circling helps bring about that transformation from exposure to vulnerability. Yeah, that’s great. That’s a great example, John. Like that was, that’s a, that’s really well, well put. Yeah. Thank you. Well put. Cause this is a sense, this is a sense and, you know, in some sense, the medium, right, of these conversations, right? In some senses is the open voluntary vulnerability of the participants, right? And it’s, it’s what allows for that, you know, vulnerability is what allows us to, you know, when we’re really vulnerable, right? There’s a way where it’s, it registers that the possibility of novelty, right? And what makes it scary is that, you know, I don’t know what’s coming, but also what makes it worth it, right? Is I don’t know what’s coming. And when we’re vulnerable, I’ve noticed this about, about it. And there’s different levels of vulnerability, but like there’s, to the degree is what we talk about in the circling institute a lot, right? It’s one of our core agreements. It’s like to the degree that I’m really, really, really, really sharing, right? And being honest, right? And I think that’s the, that’s the right. And being honest and vulnerable is to the degree that I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen when I get done talking, right? Versus where a lot of times where I think people habitually come from in when they share, they talk, right? Is, is, is more, it’s more like they’re using speech as a, as a, as a kind of like, as a limb to control an outcome, right? So I’m saying what I’m saying. I’m not saying what I’m not saying, right? Saying it in the way that I’m not saying it, right? In just the right way, such that I, I, I can control the outcome. I can assure, you know, I think where a lot of we do this is trying to control what you think about me, right? Like a lot of times we’ll, we’ll try to control like my own personal image, right? And all of this is in the world of what I think Heidegger would call the perpetuation of idle talk. Right. Right. And this is, this is what, what I think dialogue goes, what opens dialogue goes, right? For to happen is precisely the opposite of that, right? It’s not just idling along, right? In maintaining, but it’s opening up to a deeper sense of intelligibility to things. So it does require an explicit and implicit sense of vulnerability. Yeah. Which, which inherently I’ve just seen it over and over and over again, when people are voluntarily vulnerable, right? There is, I think there’s something in our nervous systems that all of us kind of feel admiration for somebody voluntarily doing that. Right. So it seems to evoke and become a, a, a, a, a, something that’s deeply admirable. So this is a really good, this is a, this is a really good question. I mean, this one, this one is deep. This one was deep. Yeah. I mean, Socrates favorably said that wisdom began, begins in wonder and wonders, unlike curiosity, curiosity is you’re just trying to fill in your knowledge gaps. And that’s important. Curiosity is important, but wonder is this kind of thing where you’re opening yourself up. Right. Wonder is, is to, is to call into question. Because if you don’t call it into question, if you don’t make a space, then there is not, nothing new is going to come to you. But think about how much you appreciate those moments of wonder or even awe in your life, precisely because of how they drew you beyond your expectations and showed you a growth that you’re capable of, that you would not otherwise know. And so we’re trying to give you a series of practices that will engender wonder so that you become connoisseurs of your own experience and your own, and your own existence. And that is, that is, well, I’m going to say this, but it’s kind of punny, but that’s genuinely wonderful. It’s a genuinely wonderful thing to experience and participate in. Yeah. Okay. We’re going to move on to another question, Guy. Is there any preparation necessary, recommended mentally or physically? I would expect the circling session could be very different with four people who have just sprinted 200 meters, for example. So what, what, what, how would you answer that guy? Yeah, basically like show up, show up like as well rested as possible, right? We’ll, we’ll, have breaks throughout, right? To be able to catch your breath. But you just want to basically show up fully fed, right? Fully slept and, and ready to participate in something really enlightening. That’s basically it. Yeah. I mean, there are things, yeah, you don’t need any special preparation. I mean, some stuff may help. If you’ve had a, if you have a mindfulness practice, that’s, that’s helpful, but it’s not necessary or mandatory. So yeah, I don’t have anything to add to that. Yeah. Here’s the next question. If you have trust and or mental health issues, would you suggest doing other basic work to prepare you to be able to enter the logos or should you stay away completely? So there’s, there’s a bit of an ambiguity in that because mental health issues range from things that this practice can definitely accommodate and these practices can definitely accommodate and, and, and help to issues that know you, that’s this practice can’t address them. So that I’m not quite sure if it’s sort of anxiety or depressive types of mental health issues come to this practice. That’s what I would say. If there’s other stuff going on, you know, you know, no, I, but those issues, which are what people often need definitely come to this practice on one condition. Don’t come with a mindset that you’re going to receive therapy. That’s not what this is. Okay. This is, this is neither therapy nor conversation. It’s something beyond both of those. If you need therapy, please go to therapy. If you’re in therapy, this will compliment it, but do not come here looking for therapy. That’s not what’s going on here about the trust issues. Again, I think we’ve answered that in the previous question. This is very much a way of learning to entrust learning to entrust to a, to other people, to a practice, to a process and a kind of trust that’s not based on, it’s giving you certainties, but of you, like the way, when you become a trustworthy person, because you’re faithful, which doesn’t mean having faith. It means staying in continuity of contact with the person, responding to them, staying alive to them as they go through their life. That’s what makes you a trustworthy person. And so that is something that you can definitely practice in the set of practices. Guy, how would you like to respond to those questions? Totally. And it was, I think your response is just great. The, and you’ll always have the option, right? If you find that an exercise particularly is like unexpectedly too hot, right? And you end up getting really triggered and blown out from it. Like you can, you can take a break, right? You can always, this is a volunteer thing, right? So you can always sit out and exercise if it’s, if it seems too intense. I don’t, I don’t foresee much, I don’t see any, at least from what I’m seeing, right? Like anything that’s going to be too, so to keep your eye on, there will be what you will be in some of the experiences, you will be asked to kind of push your edge, right? Around disclosing, yourself, sharing yourself honestly, right? And opening up, opening up to people in, in, in, in maybe some new ways. And that can be really enlightening, right? It could also be scary. But the thing to remember is that, is that you can, you can lean into those exercises as deep or as light as you want, right? You can kind of want to just, this is really take care of yourself, right? And if something, something happens and, and, and you need to talk to somebody, we’ll have staff, right? They’ll, we’ll be able to talk with you in the other room and, and help, help, help support. Great. So this question was a little bit more logistical again, Guy. How soon will you do another? The timing of this one isn’t great for me, but I’d still love to participate. Right. Yeah. I mean, I’m happy to do another. Yeah. Guy and I will have to coordinate. It’s going to also see how this goes. You know, this is, as Guy said, this is very much a work in progress with us. We’re going to learn from this and hopefully improve. And, you know, that means there’s going to need to be some space. I’m not sure. But, you know, yeah. So we’re going to be, we’re going to be finding, we’re going to be learning as much about this as we are. Right. So we’re going to be, we’re going to be kind of going through the course and, and I think we’re going to be surprised by things, right? Sometimes it’ll like turn out better or stranger than we thought. Right. So then we’ll, we’ll come back and regroup and like, look at the possibilities. And I’d be surprised if we don’t do another one. Well, yeah, I’m going to commit to doing another one at some point. What I don’t want to do right now is commit to a specific prediction. But I would say like within this year, we’ll do another one probably sooner, but I’m not sure about that. But definitely a commitment to do another, another version of the course. Yeah. Totally. And if you go to the Circling Institute website, like we have open events every Thursday night for three hours. So you can, you can dive deep into circling. We have like weekends, we have a weekend coming up, I think after this course. So there’s ways to dive in, there’s ways to dive into circling, you know, at any point. So you can just look through the website and just see all the events going on. There’s a question, can you do them every weekend? I’m not quite sure. Can we do them every weekend? No, we don’t have the machine. Perhaps at some point you’ll be able to do these practices for yourself with other people on a regular basis. That would be the goal. Yes. Yes. Yes. That being said, when you dialogue with people for a while, they do end up being figures in your head that you kind of don’t learn from without, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s very much, very much the case. Do we have any other questions coming up? So right now there’s a lot of chat happening, which is good. But we’re waiting if anybody has any more questions that they would like us to address. If not, if not, we can start to wrap it up then. I think so. So we’ll move to wrapping it up. One more call out. Any questions, anyone that need to be addressed? All right. Ah, one more question. Great. So I’ll read it out. How do you express your intuition knowing that it’s vulnerable and have mental hurdles speculating the possibility of ill intent from the person using said vulnerability against you? So yeah, well, that’s why this is a slowly graduating process. We don’t dump you into the deep end of dialectic. We get you used to the more shallow waters, if you’ll allow me to use the swimming metaphor, and then you will progressively make your way into the deep end. And as Guy said, you do not at any point abandon your sovereignty. Now, your question is a good question, but it’s a question that in which you have to learn skills through practice that help to move you through to a place where you feel that you have the power to accommodate those deeper challenges. But what you can count on is we don’t dump you into the deep end of dialectic. We start you here and move you progressively through so that you learn how to express your intuition while also being able to trust that other people are going to enter in good faith into communication and communion with you. How do you do that? And how do you help make that happen? And how do you help notice it when it’s happening and drawing it out from other people when it’s happening for them? This is in fact what you’ll learn. Guy, did you want to respond to that question? Yeah, I think that’s the, you know, if you notice like the most of what we’re going to be doing, we’ll be doing some exercises in that are more personal in the beginning and sprinkled throughout. But a lot of the group exercises are going to be about a particular philosophical idea, right? They’re not going to be where the topic being addressed is going to be, you know, about something personal to you. You’ll be expected to show, you want to show up personally and bring your whole self to it. So it’s not going to be like, it’s not going to be like anything like a therapy group or something like that. No, no, no. Yeah, just to keep that in mind. Yep, very much. Next question. Do you apply these techniques in your inner dialogues and monologues? Yes, I do. And there’s deep connection between the inner and outer dialogues. And Guy and I and Chris and a bunch of others are working on an anthology about just that bridging called inner and outer dialogues. In fact, one of the things you can learn to do is realize that your monologues are actually dialogues and you need to properly bring out those dialogues and listen to the other side in the dialogue. That doesn’t sound as crazy. I hope it doesn’t sound crazy, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds. That becomes and people are already there’s a lot of convergence. A lot of the psychotherapies are converging on this idea of inner dialogue, IFS and forms of EFT, even certain versions of CVT. So very much. And for me, which and this is very much the Socratic practice, the inner and outer dialogues, inner and outer dialogs, they are also in dialogue with each other. They are constantly drawing forth and affording each other in an ongoing manner. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. I just think it’s that will that likely will happen. See, there’s nothing like a really, really, really good friendship that will have you realize ways that you negatively converse with yourself. That’s the thing I’ve just really appreciated about circling is just I had no idea to what degree we are relational all the way down. All the way down. You’re alone, right? And the loneliness is predicated on being a being who’s already with others. Right. So I’ve just come, all I can say is I’ve come to like that. Just so appreciate how just how deeply we are all in relationship. All the way through. Yeah, there was a context for that question. What the person said, I mean, when you process stuff that’s unclear to you or you feel conflicted with your thoughts, which you’ve just addressed, Guy, and Tisthenes, who was one of Socrates’ disciples said when it when asked what did he learn? What did he learn from Socrates? He said, I learned how to dialogue with myself. And people, well, but you’re talking to yourself all day long. And he said, no, no, not the way that you talk to yourself as if you were talking to Socrates. And so that goes to the next question, by the way, can this help us internalize the stage? Yes. Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what was going on here. You start to learn how to internalize the stage and you practice on various sages. You practice on, you know, like Spinoza or Socrates. And then you practice being like a sage to each other, sort of apprenticeship sages when you’re doing the dialectical practice. So yes, that’s exactly what it is. And when you internalize the sage to a degree, then your inner dialogue goes from that ruminative, self-conflicting thing to like conversing with Socrates where there’s clarity and there’s ways of resolving inner conflict. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I would say one of the thoughts I just had is as you’re bringing this up and talking about it is in some ways, right, this is so central, like, because I think what you’re talking about is like we all have a superego, right? That internalized voice of authority, right? That if it’s pernicious, right, it can become extremely punishing and restrictive. But if you notice, right, it has a particular function. It’s the same function that like when you’re, it works with shame and humiliation, basically. So it’s like when if you imagine going to Starbucks and go, all right, and if I told you to lay on the floor on your back at Starbucks, immediately just thinking of it, like you tighten up and you blush and you feel embarrassed and imagine having to go through the experience of just laying on the floor. Now, objectively, there’s nothing, no one’s hurting anybody, but everyone’s going to be like, horrified, right? And that’s a, I think that’s a social, that’s a social condition. And it shows that horror, right, is something like the superego, right? And we have one of those in our own, in our own psyches, if you will. And this is where, this is where I think if the sage starts to, in some sense, you know, where the superego get really pernicious is when it becomes the voice that tells you what reality is, right? And I think ultimately, when we, when we’re talking about diologos, what we’re talking about ultimately is having as a profound relationship with reality as possible, right? So in some sense, you could say that, like, you could say that really, what we’re training ourselves to do is to kind of see if we can find the place, like find out where reality is, right, and bring our attention there and practice, bring our attention there, right? And in some sense, replace the, I mean, ideally replace the sage, right? Replace the superego with the sage. Yeah, replace the voice of shame with the voice of reason, where reason is understood not as the logical argumentation, but as our transformative responsiveness to reality. Yeah. Here’s our next question. What reading list would you have for someone in the 1824 age bracket? I’m not sure what that question means. You mean in general, or do you mean for this, for this course? I don’t think you need a reading list for this course. If you’re talking to each one of us, at some point, I’ve done this in various places, but I’m going to do another one at some point where I will put out a reading list for people if they are interested in the kind of work that I do. But I’m not prepared to do that right here right now. Yeah. So maybe we can, oh, maybe we can start moving towards wrapping things up. Okay, great. Guys, is there anything you want to say in conclusion or in summation? No, I’m just super excited about this, John. I’m so glad to be doing this with you. This is really great. Me too. This is what I mean, just talking about it. Like I’m just kind of having insights, cascades, just talking about all of this. I’m really looking forward to this. I think this is going to be wonderful. I think this, like I said, this is timely and it’s needed. So I’m looking forward to it with great expectations. Me too. Thank you, John. Thank you, God. Thank you, everybody, for your questions. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Hey, I will, I actually go and I will see you on Monday.