On Dialogue And Engaging More Consciously In A Life Group

The governing principle for sharing in the rounds in a Logopraxis Life Group Meeting is to keep crosstalk to a minimum. The need for our “person” to be heard is something that our culture places a lot of value on, but in Logopraxis we encourage a mode of being together that is counter-cultural. We seek to work (to be conscious of our states) as we enter into the exchanges in a Life Group. What this means is that effort is being made not to be person-centred but Word-centred and to have this mode of being serve as the basis for cultivating a sense of spiritual community.

We come together to experience collectively the operation of the Word through what passes between people as they share their direct experience of the Text working in their individual lives. Every Life Group meeting offers it’s participants a gift, this being an opportunity through our exchanges to live through the Word and have it live through us, to be with others in a different way. An effort is required if we are to leave our habitual ways of being at the door and enter into what can become a sacred space.

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (John 15:5)

To live through the Word and have it live through us is to make the Lord visible in our midst, and this is the very core of what Logopraxis is. When we realise this, it makes a demand on every participant to be present and awake to the principles that govern being together in this way. The physicists David Bohm in his essay, On Dialogue points out that the word “dialogue” is Greek in its origin from, “dia” meaning “through” and “logos” meaning word, so dialogue literally means, “through the word“. The principles that Bohm identifies as crucial to meaningful dialogue have a universal quality to them that points to their spiritual origins.

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. (John 15:7)

The presencing of the Lord in our midst is a creative activity on the part of the Lord, who is constantly coming into being. His presence becomes accessible to our awareness as each practitioner’s experience of the Word is woven together with every other participant’s experience through what is exchanged in the dialogue. What arises in the collective experience of the Lord is an experience of a Church, not as a static representation, but as a dynamic living entity. What is received through one’s work is offered as a gift from the Lord to the Life Group, and this is the bread and wine that nurtures and sustains the living experience of the Lord being made visible in our midst.

He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. (John 6:56)

All we have to bring is what the Lord has given to us through our work with the Word. What we bring is not ours, we don’t own it. What this means is that when the gift is offered, it is let go to be picked up by those hearing in whatever way that supports their spiritual life. It could well be that the gift that is received is something very different from the gift that was offered from the giver’s point of view. And that’s okay. If a receiver comments on what they have received and their comments don’t align with what was originally said we may feel we need to correct them, to ensure that we have been heard “properly”. This is not necessary. Dialogue, in a Logopraxis context, has nothing to do with our “person” being heard. It’s a difficult thing to hold to the principle that others are not here to validate our “person’s” or the proprial need to be at the centre of everything. Dialogue is all about the Word being central and as the Lord is the Word, He is the one managing everyone’s states and apportioning what is offered in accordance with the spiritual needs of each participant.

We need to be awake to our process in our exchanges, its a work which we cannot perfect, what’s important is to be in the effort. If we can be in the effort to be more conscious in our exchanges we open a way for the Lord to be more fully present and experienced as such.

Here is an illustration from the work The Apocalypse Revealed 875(9) that illustrates the gift received is not always the same as the gift given…

After that I went down the steps from The Temple of Wisdom and went walking in the garden, and I saw some people sitting under a laurel tree, eating figs. I turned aside to them and asked them for some figs, which they gave me. And lo, the figs in my hand changed into grapes.
Seeing my astonishment at this, the angelic spirit said to me, “The figs in your hand changed into grapes because figs, owing to their correspondence, symbolise goods of charity and so of faith in the natural or external self, whereas grapes symbolise the goods of charity and faith in the spiritual or internal self. So, because you love spiritual matters, this therefore has happened in your case. For in our world everything happens and comes into being, including also transformations, in accordance with correspondences.”