Ω Background and Foreground info for Zoom participants

Welcome text for the Zoom participants:

Thanks for offering your reflections on the Zoom dialogues we have had.

In a couple of months we will freeze the site and open it up for viewing by a larger audience, as explained on the Logistics topic. It does not matter which group you are in, you can comment on both Group 1 and Group 2 dialogues. If you were not in a Zoom dialogue watch the recording before commenting (link provided in that Topic).

See the Topic about Logistics for info on:
Participant bios, process for releasing the dialogues to public, discussion forum guidelines and instructions, using Loom to make audio replies, and more.

Notice the Topic called “Questions for facilitators/moderators?–Reply here….” which is self-explanatory.

CONTEXT:

Integral Review journal is hosting a special issue focussing on the online dialogue site Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality, hosted by Bruce Alderman on this Facebook site (and earlier on Ning).

The Special Issue will have papers from prominent participants on the IPMS site, and we are also experimenting with alternative content, including art work and this dialogue project…

A video dialogue with experts in using social media technology to support “deep dialogue”, informed by contemplative practices, adult developmental theories, and/or transpersonal psychology/shadow work frameworks.

This forum is a reflection on those video conversations.

More information available on the BackGround and Foreground information Topic.

(And see the thread on Process, Logistics and Guidelines)

From the original Call for participation:

I am writing to you as someone who has experience with facilitating or hosting online interviews or discussions forums within the greater integral/meta-theory/meta-modern community. I would like to get a small group of you experts together to reflect on the emerging state of the art in this area.

As some of you know, I, along with Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal, are editing a special issue of Integral Review journal on the theme of Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality (IPMS). (Inspired the the IPMS FaceBook group, and Co-sponsored by the Foundation for Integral Religion and Spirituality.) We have already lined up about a dozen paper contributions. Our hope/plan is that this special issue will include some contributions that use forms outside the box of traditional scholarly journals, to include some visual art, poetry, and collaborative projects—like this one.

We propose to host one or two taped video-conference discussions among 4-6 people about lessons learned, best practices, and future visions for how to host/facilitate online dialogue about complex issues with body/mind/spirit themes. Would you be willing to participate in such a dialogue?

The general theme is: in these modern times of online video-conferences and hyper-text/social-media forums, how can such tools (existing or to-be-invented) be used in novel ways to support deep inquiry, collaborative meaning making, “knowledge building,” and “action inquiry” —with an integral/second tier/meta-modern sensibility? Also: how do we structure online interactions so that we support the "levels of consciousness" we like to talk about—how can we "walk the talk" as we talk? What structures might be psychoactive for the listener tuning in to a recording/podcast?

[From Tom’s emails about goals for the deep dialogue calls]

Member of this conversation have substantial experiences do draw from, and we will probably talk about your different interpretations of what Deep dialogue might mean. But I’ll start with a suggested launching place to create a shared context.

We are focusing on open dialogue, which can be contrasted with things like debate, decision making, and interviews, as a form of collective exploration and relationship building.

And we are of course focused a particular kind of dialog we could call deep dialog , that is informed by contemplative practice and possibly also by adult developmental theories and psychotherapeutic, transpersonal, and shadow-work models. We are here to ponder what is possible when people bracket out the normal functions of the ego and its social games and try to sense into something deeper, and do that as a collective, and see what emerges from that collective.
The dialogue can go anywhere, but the starting point will be these simple questions:

  1. What is “deep dialogue” to you? – i.e. What does it look and feel like to participate verbally in ways that source deeper or transpersonal layers of the self and the collective?
  2. What are the possible results or benefits of this type of participation?
  3. How might we support this type of dialogue in virtual spaces?

I will consider the dialogue a success if the majority of participants have even a single tiny new insight or realization (about anything). But many outcomes constitute success—perhaps you will start to fall in love with one person you did not know. I also like how Bonnie has framed a higher bar for some of her F2F groups: to generate insights emerging from the leading edge of human thought—that have never been spoken by anyone (regardless of how modest or trivial they may seem). Also, I won’t consider it a success unless there is some laughter among us. So I invite all to relax, sink in, lighten up, and do some serious play .

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