Dialogue Unveiled
(this was received in December, 2002)

There is no structure and can be no template for dialogue. Imagine going into conversations with two different people at two different times with a design on the type of dialogue you might have. Precision and perfection are only possible for structures, not for beings, for systems and not for liberty. The system of liberty is thus an imperfect system, but it is also near to perfect for this very reason. Liberty can be systemized but exists as an idea that all voices must be heard, that ideas themselves have an existence that cannot be denied through disagreement.

In dialogue you can experience freedom from structure and freedom from ideals of perfection and precision. Dialogue is an imprecise art and an unpremeditated act. It is an experience of what is happening in the moment which is all experience is in truth. What is experienced in dialogue is the self and the other in one action, action in unison or in union. What is experienced in true dialogue is movement, being, and expression.

The unimpeded flow of dialogue is like an unimpeded current of water. Action without impediment, unimpeded action, is unrestricted movement at one with being and expression. Unimpeded movement is at one with being and expression at all times and in all ways because restriction is the work of the ego, and is restriction of the true self.

Acceptance busts the dams of restriction and releases the flow. The mountain nor the valleys of level ground cause or restrict the flow. The mountain and the valleys too are within you, existing as two levels of experience of what is happening in the moment. The one voice and the many are also within you existing as two levels of experience of what is happening in the same moment. Because the two levels of experience exist in the same moment, they co-exist, or in other words, they exist as one…and yet they are distinct. As long as neither are restricted, this is union with or communion. Two distinct levels of experience in union. When the distinct levels fall away there is no experience of union, only union, but the action is the same. One is not better or more desirable than the other they are only different.

Union never negates the self but full union negates the experience of self. When the experience of the self no longer exists in a particular action the laws of what you call reality bend and the impossible becomes possible: Jesus speaks, miracles happen, healing occurs, a new reality exists, a reality in which there is no object of experience, no observer and no observed, no one in action and no one acted upon, no giver and receiver, no intermediary, just union.

What is desired now, however, is the experience of union. The experience of union is the experience of two distinct levels of experience. These two distinct levels of experience can be integrated into one level of experience, a level of experience that can bend the laws of what you call reality in the same action as full union so that the only difference is the ability to experience the experience as a distinct self in union. This integration of the two levels of experience is what has been called the elevation of the Self of form and the sustainability of Christ-consciousness in form.

There is no form without the experience of form. Without the experience of form there is only union.

The mountain-top dialogue allowed you to participate in two levels of experience at once. Not only the simultaneous experience of the mountain-top and the valleys of level ground, but the simultaneous reality of on-going dialogue and the experience of living. Now what you are called to practice is the integration of these two levels.

There may be multiple levels but they are always levels of two, levels representing duality, the duality that exists naturally for the self of form because form is the experience of form, the duality of an experience and an experiencer. The experience of experience is life. It is not meant to be escaped nor can it be. This is why union has been described as time outside of time. It is not an escape but a portal of access. Full access is necessary for momentary release of the experiencer. Without at least some momentary release the true nature of the self who is experiencing life remains unknown.

This release from the self of form has been the goal of enlightenment. It is, however, only the beginning. It is the beginning because it is love. It is not a self experiencing love but the self being love and knowing that love is its self. The desire to stop here and retreat from life has been the response of many and they have anchored the reality of love in themselves and the world. As you know, this has not made the world a place of peace nor a celebration of life but it has kept the world a world in which love exists as reality in form. This has been crucial.

However, the longing to experience life in all its fullness has never been stronger. This is a longing not to remain or be constantly striving to retain release from the experiencer, but to fully embody the experience through unity. This is a longing to be the experience. This is a longing to be the experience rather than to cease to experience. This is a longing to experience the true self in or through the experience rather than as the experiencer of the experience. This is a longing to be. A longing to be fully alive and fully in life. A longing to experience no loss but only gain.

To experience full union and the loss of the experience of the self as self is, when prolonged, an experience of the loss of the self as form. Some still desire this loss and see it not as a loss but as a gain and are fulfilled by it. Many more have remained quite convinced that this loss of the sense of self is the ultimate achievement and denied the sense of loss of the personal self that existed in truth. Others have chosen the peace of monastic life as a substitute for full involvement in life, seeing abstinence from experience as one way of retaining the peace and love of union. True desire for such choices can, once again, result in fulfillment as the chosen diminution of experiences are not restrictive but true to the nature of the personal self. Thus the personal self is not being denied but being allowed to experience its own true nature.

Experiencing one’s own true nature is bringing the miracle of creation to form. Restricting one’s own true nature blocks the miracle of creation. A tree is here to be a tree. If there were a mechanism whereby it could restrict its nature and not be a tree then it would be something else. But there is no such mechanism as there is no such mechanism in you. You cannot be something else by restricting your nature. You can act like you are something else. This acting like you are something else is the ego. If the tree could act like it was something else it would still be a tree, and still be, even, a particular kind of tree, a tree unlike any other, a tree vulnerable to the conditions of its environment and given nature, because it is meant to be, because this is what it is, what it was created as, the ground where it stands its given growing ground. This is just what is and cannot be different.

To know the love that is what you are as what you are without the interference of the self of form is to know the perfection of your particular form, of your particular vulnerabilities, of the conditions and environment of the life you were given, of the ground of your being, and to cease to wish that any of it was different. When you cease to wish that any of it was different, you quit restricting the miracle of creation that is who you are.

This is quite a different lack of restriction than is the lack of restriction of the animal who acts on the instinct of nature alone. The lack of restriction of many human beings that results in heinous acts upon fellow human beings is a matter of unrestrained instinct not unlike that of the animal. The animal follows natural instincts for survival of its natural form. The human who does not know love follows unnatural instincts for survival of its ego. The human ego is thus in need of restrictions, the very restrictions that perpetuate the ego.

The human spirit that knows love is not in need of restriction. The human spirit that knows love is rather in need of being unrestrained.

It has been the very act of restriction, imposed from both within and without, that caused the birth of the ego, the fake or imitation self. The imposition of restriction led to the equally false imposition of acquisition. Restriction was experienced as a lack. Acquisition as a gain. From the most innocent of children to the kindest of adults, the restriction of action or behavior, the restriction of feelings, the restriction of the truth of what is experienced…is the most common of actions. Restriction leads to denial so that soon there is no awareness even of the restriction. Denial deadens awareness through the erection of boundaries. The self of form becomes a boundary that keeps all experience, all feelings, and all action that is judged as needing to be restricted at bay. Judgment becomes the guiding principle for all that the self of form is allowed to experience, feel or act upon. Movement, being and expression cease.

These actions of restriction, denial, boundary erection, and judgment are so manifested without because they are so held within, following the principle of as within, so without. They permeate the experience of life so that it is experienced as a life of restriction, denial, boundaries and judgment.

True dialogue begins to dilute this permeation just as if a full sponge were wrung out. True dialogue is interaction without restriction, denial, boundary erection or judgment. Thus the imposition of any restrictions, any attitude of non-acceptance, any boundaries left intact or any judgments raised, create impediments to the free flow of movement, being, and expression.

How little have we seen roles as boundaries, agendas as restrictions, goals as non-acceptance of what is, disagreement as judgment. How does one function without time-limitations, scheduling, facilitators and participants? How does one assure that each voice is heard? That equal value is given to each comment? How do people gather together with no structure? What would keep such a gathering from disintegrating into a free-for-all? A celebration? A laugh fest. A crying jag?

How hard are you still willing to work to remain restricted and to restrict others? How hard are you still willing to work to keep boundaries up and accomplish something rather than getting to know yourself and each other? How determined are you to discuss certain topics rather than to let ideas flow? How unwilling are you to allow the irrelevant? How afraid are you of your inability to listen to the personal without judgment? How afraid are you of being asked for advice or an opinion? How strongly do you fear the discomfort that might ensue from being real? Just how unspiritual do you think it would be to admit to fears or discomfort? Just how awful do you think it would be to grow frustrated or angry or to disagree?

How willing are you to leave The Dialogues as a topic in order to enter the dialogue? How willing are you to leave behind the wisdom of the Course to discover and offer your own wisdom? How willing are you to accept the wisdom of the one voice in the many and the many in the one?

How willing are you to listen? How willing are you to receive? How willing are you to offer your gifts? How willing are you to accept the gifts of others? How willing are you to accept differences?

How willing are you to allow yourself to be fully who you are in the present moment in the company of those with whom you gather?

These are serious questions and negative responses to them are not meant to be denied. The mountain-top dialogue may begin but may not be completed without discovering within yourself and another the ability to be clear pools or spacious selves without boundaries. This is a monumental task that cannot be approached through hard work or effort and as such will begin breaking your attachment to hard work and effort. You must practice this way of ease in order to discover the ease that will flow from the breaking of your attachment to hard work and effort. Your attachment to purpose and goals is the same attachment, an attachment to striving, a denial of your accomplishment.

The time of learning has ended! The learning of the Course returned you to your Christ-self, but this return will not be realized while the old patterns remain. A radical rejection of the old patterns is now necessary. Confidence in the self of form will not arise from the old patterns but the new. Certainty will not arise from the ways of old but from the new ways, ways exemplified by true dialogue, by true and equal exchange of what is in the present moment.

Your internal dialogue will change as you discover the place of safety and acceptance within yourself, the place of joining or union with. No longer will you treat yourself to an internal dialogue you would not unleash on another living being. When you quit restricting yourself, you will be naturally kind and loving to yourself, you will feel free and expansive. When you quit denying how you feel, relief and gratitude will fill you. When you quit erecting boundaries you will quit feeling separate. When you quit judging, you will be as at peace with your feelings of sadness and anger as you are with your feelings of joy and harmony.

No one is asked to be boundary-less in a fearful environment but fearfulness will diminish as your internal dialogue adjusts to the new experience. Yet you are asked to discover a fearless environment—an environment in which you feel able to lay aside your fear of being yourself. This may be easy for some, difficult for others. It may be able to take place within a group, it may not. Now is not the time to deny feelings of discomfort raised by the questions listed above, to feel rejected or to fear rejecting others because you feel them. The first step in the process is honesty. The honesty of accepting how you feel is often a greater revelation to yourself than to others.

This is not a time to enter into hard work to overcome fears or discomfort but to discover a place of safety where they do not exist. The discovery will be joyous.

Once an initial place (where two or more willing to be clear pools are gathered together) of safety is found practice begins, and this too will be joyous. But it is practice. Fear will still arise, but you will be able to reveal your fear. Discomfort will still arise but you will be able to reveal your discomfort. You will willingly be vulnerable and in your vulnerability will the restrictions, denial, boundaries and judgments of the past be washed away. You will realize how you are used to holding back and you will begin, slowly at first, not to hold yourself back. You may begin as fearful of revealing your own truth and wisdom as you are of revealing your fears and hurts. But soon you will be unable to hold back. When this occurs, the universal and the personal meld into a creative bursting forth.

This is the work of dialogue. It is the movement and expression of being. It is to be moved and affected, to allow your heart to feel, to open, to cry out, to sing. It is to be inspired and allow your own wisdom and ideas to flow freely, be given voice, be shared. It is to listen as a receptacle, receiving what is poured forth from others without judgment. It is to receive the actual energy of another, to feel the connection, to allow the pouring forth into one pool, and to allow the pool to move you in unforeseen directions.

None of which can happen with a plan. None of which can happen if approached with predetermined ideas.

The entering into is entering into the mystery, entering the unknown rather than known, where through the entering into knowing occurs.

It is a giving up of the idea of a knowing you acquire and exploit. You are no longer learning in order to get somewhere or become something you are not. You have entered a process of revelation of what is that will eventually spoil you forever from approaching life in the way you once did. You will see that the approach of hard work and being good leading to the acquisition of status and rewards was always false and that it was the approach rather than the desired results that was false.

You will see that what is perfect is perfect only in its imperfection. You will realize how often you are upset, anxious, frustrated, angry, or saddened by the nature of the imperfection of perfection. In other words, you will realize that your predetermination of how things “should” be has been the greatest restriction on your apprehension of what is, and your greatest source of disappointment. You will also realize how often you are naturally joyous, compassionate, kind and wise when you are present with what is rather than wishing things were other than as they are. You will realize your deep affection and even longing for the imperfection of perfection…that it is exactly another’s imperfection that you love, precisely their imperfections that make them perfect! And you will discover that the same is true of you.

When you are love being, you will no longer feel a need to be constantly acting loving. Love has no need to “act.” Doing and being will become one. Thus all of your actions will be love being love, and those actions will be appropriate to the situation. You will be free to respond with sternness when sternness is needed, free to be funny or serious, to respond with your intellect in one situation, your heart in another, and be confident in your responses because they will flow from love being. You will gain simple confidence in being yourself.

ONE VOICE ON DIALOGUE
Mari Perron

As The Dialogues is released to readers, it has become clear to me that I know some things that are not spelled out within the text of The Dialogues.

Let me talk about this knowing a little bit.

In our human condition, we are unused to knowing. We think we know how to proceed, how to act, certain facts and truths, but as we live our lives we are not often certain. We “think” we know, hope we know, use our intellect, our feelings, our instincts, our senses, to guide us. We rely on many, many factors just to “do our best” in any given circumstance. We wish we could be certain, that we could know that we are always doing the “right” thing, that we will not make mistakes, but we do not know of any way other than to “do our best” with the incomplete information or knowledge that we have.

As I received the text of the books that make up the body of work associated with The Dialogues, I knew that what distinguished the thoughts that became words on the page from my own thoughts was certainty. It was this certainty that allowed me to write a thousand pages of text in a manner of near perfection with no outline, with no idea of what was coming next. As I wrote, I did not second-guess when a new direction became evident or when the content of a chapter didn’t proceed as I might have thought it would based on its beginning. I knew endings were endings and I knew when to begin again.

It was this certainty more than anything else that caused me to consider the source of the text as coming from “outside” of myself. I felt that “I” was incapable of this kind of certainty.

I have been hesitant to bring my voice to the dialogue because of my imperfections as a human being…and yet I realize that the perfection of the expression of the work of ACOL was partially contingent upon me as the human being who received it. What I mean by this is that the writing of this material was not a matter of precise dictation. There was a collaboration of sorts taking place.

This collaboration, or working “together” as one voice, can serve as a means to describe, in fairly ordinary terms, a way in which our own certainty can be realized and available to serve us and others.

When I received messages of instruction along the way to completing the work of this series I was once asked if I was “obeying” these instructions. I had never considered it in that light because the messages of instruction made me feel not only as if I knew something with certainty, but often (if not always) that I knew what to do. These feelings never caused me to feel as if I was being “told” what to do. This seems like a minor distinction but it is not minor but major.

To approach the text of The Dialogues as if it is “telling” us what to do would be a similarly major difference from an approach that would allow us to know…to trust in what we feel. To simply be “told” would imply a situation in which obedience to instruction could become a factor. It would not imply collaboration or working together. The Dialogues can be for each person as it was for me…a collaboration in which knowing occurs and the expression of that knowing is our part in that collaboration.

Channeling is not much more than being present for and having a deep trust in what is being felt and experienced as it is happening. Dialogue could be described similarly.

The movement of this series from a course, to treatises, to dialogue, is an example of the movement that is available to us in this collaboration. It is a movement that allows our trust, our knowing, and our certainty, to grow into its full expression. Dialogue then becomes our means of practice of bringing forth the knowing—the certainty—that we have realized. This bringing forth is the completion of the work of ACOL and it is on-going.

What is the difference between what we know and what we have been told? What is the difference between what we know and what we have read or learned?

I have found that difference to be experience and trust in that experience…trust in what we feel and sense, see and hear…from our own hearts. With trust, we allow what we feel to become our own knowing by finding our own truth and living out that experience. Our own knowing is not about “taking someone’s word” for something, not about belief or faith. By the time I had completed The Dialogues, I had a deeply centered place from which to draw, a place where I knew what I knew, and a place where, through paying attention to my feelings, my uncertainty could transform, moment by moment, day by day, and show up in my life and the world.

Uncertainty is human. It is what allows us to move into the unknown, what allows us to change or transform, what allows us to be open and compassionate to one another, what allows us to create. It is being vulnerable. It requires us to be brave. It requires us to take risks. It requires us to be who we are and to treat being who we are as a constant discovery. It requires us to be in dialogue.

When I “gave away” my certainty to “the voice”, I really did give it away. I put that certainty outside of myself and saw myself as a true “channel” through which certainty and wisdom funneled without attaching itself to me at all. Yet this is the way of wisdom, the fluidity of knowing. It passes through us without attachment if we let it. Rather than an attachment that keeps us clinging to “known truths” pass through provides for relationship with the truth and for constant newness and freshness.

If we can place the source of that truth within us rather than outside of us, that relationship provides the bridge between the experience of two selves—our different voices—and brings our one united voice to the dialogue.

Dialogue is a means of realizing the difference between our own knowing and the knowledge we have acquired through external sources. Dialogue facilitates this through expression. While we have each “read” or “been told” the same truths as we received the work of this series or others, none of us can express, or live, or know these truths in the same way. This is why the invitation to be in dialogue is so powerful. It is a recognition and an affirmation that the work is not complete without our participation, our knowing, and our expression. It is a recognition that we can return to our own authentic knowing, our own authentic selves.

What we know, even with certainty, retains a fluidity that is common to knowing. Knowing is not about facts. It is unique to each of us. It exists in relationship. I may know my husband, but I know him in a different way than his family and friends know him. It would sound extremely silly to say that because each way of knowing this one man who is my husband is different that all but one is false. It would be silly to think that if I know my husband more or better ten years from now, that what I know of him now is false. The fallacy of a “one, true God” is spoken of in much this same way within The Dialogues. Of course we each know God in a way unique to us, just as we know each other in unique ways. This is the charm and beauty of being human—not its curse.

This is the sense in which we can know with certainty, with intimacy, personally and privately and with absolute love. This is a collaborative knowing based on what is felt, revealed, and expressed. It is the kind of knowing that is often beyond words and can only be expressed in action, in exchange, in relationship. In short, it is a very human way of knowing, a living way of knowing, a way of knowing that changes and grows, surprises and pleases us, and at times even disappoints and disenchants us. It is a knowing that is with us in our joy and our sorrow, our anger and our fear, our good times and our bad. It does not dispel the human experience or our imperfections, but it does celebrate them.

It is a knowing that has nothing to do with learning and that is enhanced by the setting aside of learning. It is about what is revealed, made known to us, what we come to know, our “own” knowing, a knowing that we actually feel rather than an intellectual knowing.

Dialogue allows for fluidity and intimacy and an exchange of “who we are.” True dialogue is about “who we are” rather than about a topic. This type of exchange is in perfect harmony with this entire body of work as this work is all about “who we are” rather than about what “it” is. As we focus on The Dialogues, The Dialogues return our focus to ourselves. We are in partnership, experiencing collaboration. We are in dialogue.

I have wanted to rely on “the voice” to express all of the wisdom that is to be expressed in regard to this body of work, feeling that my “own” wisdom or knowing is second-best, and yet that would be contrary to what this work asks each of us to do. We can each choose to “obey” as if we have been told rather than asked or invited into this collaboration…we can choose to do as we have been instructed to do (as we have done in the past as students)…or we can rely on our own knowing to tell us just how and when and in what way we are called, moved, or drawn to collaborate…to work together with the inner source of our own knowing to share its expression. We can realize the distinct way that we experience our own knowing and express it just as distinctly.

As the Dialogues begin, we are in dialogue with Jesus. Before The Dialogues conclude, the voice of the man Jesus has given way to a voice that is called the voice of Christ-consciousness and defined as the voice we all share. Some readers may have found comfort in the names given to “the voice” of this dialogue, others may have found these names to be reason for discomfort. Some may believe that this work is “the truth” because of its named source. Others may have disregarded the idea of source and read the words of this series as they would any other book.

Our idea that “the truth” is not the purview of human beings is, I believe, the reason the voice of Jesus was needed to begin this series. It is also the reason that the voice of Jesus did not conclude it. Whether we have wanted to hear it or not wanted to hear it, we are led to understand and to know that our own voices are to be the voices of the continuing dialogue. It is our dialogue. The truth belongs to everyone and is heard in every voice…the one voice and the many. We are no longer being “told” what to do in any way. We have been invited to trust in our internal authority rather than any external authority and given cause to realize that all voices of truth, whether they are heard as the voice of Jesus or Buddha, or as our own, are internal voices, voices of a shared consciousness.

My hesitancy to share my voice has been based on an inability to accept this idea. How, I have asked myself, can our human voices, our imperfect human voices, our vastly different human voices, our confused and vulnerable human voices, rise to the level of the divine? Always I have kept coming back to the idea of the human capacity for error. And yet, every utterance attributed to God throughout time has been received by human ears and expressed through human voices. It has always been a matter of collaboration! Of dialogue and exchange. What prophet who heard the voice of God did not say, Choose another, I am not worthy.

The Dialogues say “All are chosen.”

It does not say, however, that all who are chosen should be listening hard for the voice of God or Jesus. It says we are to be listening to our own hearts and listening, and talking, to each other.

If I am to take to heart these words and those that said that the time of the intermediary has passed, then I can no longer function as an intermediary. I have to accept that I have the capacity to share, in my own voice, whatever truth and wisdom I hold inside myself. My job here—our job here—is to bring out what we carry within and to trust that our humanity will not cause us to “get it wrong.”

I realize now that I have always wanted to have “the truth” handed to me, spelled out for me, given to me from an external source. Maybe this is why I was an appropriate and maybe even a “perfect” vehicle for the pass through of these words of dialogue. Receiving these words of dialogue was a far easier task than trying to express what is in my heart. Why, I still ask myself, will anyone care what I have to say?

Are you afraid of this too? That there is no one who cares what is in your heart? That what you have to say couldn’t possibly matter to anyone else?

Have you, like me, looked for wisdom only from those conveniently labeled “the wise?” The experts? The gurus? The keepers of the truth?

Many of us have chosen only a select few to listen to. We happily quote the experts as if their wisdom is our own. We get surprised maybe, once in a while, when we hear words of wisdom from an unexpected source: a child, an elderly person, an interview on television, a person on a bus.

Quoting from this body of work and knowing its content inside and out won’t get us any further than being able to quote any other book or being familiar with the content of any other text. There are a great many biblical scholars in the world and few of them would get any prizes for their saintliness. While we think this kind of knowing is what we’re after we won’t even really have much of a chance of being in dialogue with one another.

This is why I have felt compelled to share a few of the things that I know about dialogue.

The difficulties that I have had in trying to express what I know about dialogue have revealed even more about the original intent of The Dialogues. I knew there was no “instruction” I could offer, no template for how it should be done, no definition even for dialogue was forthcoming. I felt an instinctive shying away from making any suggestions regarding format, from any “how to” ideas at all. I didn’t, in short, know what there was to “do” other than to make the offering. However, mainly because The Dialogues are the last in a series of books that have been being taught and discussed in group format, I wanted to lend my voice to the idea of dialogue being dialogue.

During a delay in the publication of The Dialogues, brought on largely by my feeling of knowing there was something I needed to say that I couldn’t quite express, I was drawn to being in dialogue. I was drawn to conversation. And I was very drawn and paying great attention to where I felt comfortable and at ease in my life. What caused me to feel happy? Where did I feel natural—as if I could simply be myself? What caused me unease? What did I feel like doing and what didn’t I feel like doing?

At first these questions seemed to have little to do with The Dialogues, but as I found my greatest happiness, comfort, and ease in dialogue, in intimate and creative exchanges, as I felt the relief of being able to be wholly my very human self, without pretense, I realized that what I was experiencing was very much about The Dialogues.

By experiencing dialogue in life, I came to realize quite belatedly and with true difficulty at times, that even in situations where I felt comfortable, natural, and at ease, I still had a hard time just being myself and being able to express myself. I was stuck in old patterns. I realized that all my human errors, all the floundering around I did, all the times that I most despaired, and mainly all the times I “thought” I was being wise, revealed exactly why dialogue is the perfect practice for being our true selves, or as The Dialogues would say, our spacious selves or even our elevated selves of form.

Dialogue is practice for finding ourselves where we are.

When we find ourselves where we are we are present for our companion in dialogue in a way that we couldn’t be when we were missing. When we are this present, we are revealed in every word and when we’re not saying anything at all. We can talk about important matters or inconsequential matters and there is no difference. It is all the same. It is all life. It is all revealing. It is all truth. All truth is is what is not false. When all pretence is gone the truth is simply what is there.

The either/or dichotomy that we have seen between ourselves and the divine, ourselves and each other, ourselves and the truth ceases to exist when we enter dialogue without pretense. Without pretence, dialogue is everywhere, a constant collaboration between the inner and outer worlds that we, as divine humans, experience. When we enter dialogue, we are in intimate, powerful, and profound collaboration. We become the bridge that is Christ-consciousness.

Welcome to the dialogue.