Spirit Conversation Audio Summary
“What goes on in a Spirit Conversation is a metamorphosis… by creating a whirlpool in your interior being in which everything has changed…” George West
Spirit conversations are a way to get in touch with our interior being and share the insights that come out of our deeper wisdom with others. They are a means to touch that which is profound, meaningful, enlivening and transcendent. They elucidate the transparent dimension of life which illuminates the self and that which we share on the most profound level with others and life itself. Symbols, poetry and imagery are also means to our inner being.
“Symbols are the keystone in the midst of your inner being which holds everything together. Whenever anything pulls apart in your interior being, it means your old symbols have in some way collapsed … These conversations get your images and inner montages loose and gets them spinning so that they can be rearranged in a more in-depth experience of self-consciousness … You are blown open to the transparency of life, the bottom is blown out of your being”. George West
Spirit Conversations may be of three basic types:
- Meditative: teachers, tragic figures, heroes and heroines, Jesus stories, or other prophets, sages or wise ones such as Buddha, Mohammad, Krishna, LaoTzu or the man on the corner
- Contemplative: water, fire, mountains, rivers, wind, modes of transport, vacant lots
- Prayerful: failure, endurance, helplessness, labor, compassion, agape, fear, loss
Ways to live out of the deeps of life
- Conversations: on Sexuality and on Water
- Spirit Conversations – example “Tears”
- Water Conversation
- Bridges (for printing), May 1984
- Spirit Conversations, talk by George West, 1971
In a Spirit Conversation, you are not talking about morals, philosophy, feelings or an abstract view of life. Instead you want to enter into the real of Being which in turn informs Thinking and Doing (link to NRM). In order to do this you have to come into the side door, or tangentially, not head on. You can’t say, “I’m going to spin this conversation to rearrange your inner most concepts, montages and self understandings”. You also can’t treat a spirit conversation as something you have all wrapped up. There is an element of the agony of the unknown that is yet to be discovered together or within oneself. You have to invite people into the water with you. You are also on some level passionate about what is to be revealed. The conversation needs to come out of people’s experience of life, and out of your own experiences – it is not abstract. There is the personal and the Universal at the same time. When experiences are shared they touch on or translate the experience of humankind. The conversation shares the participants spirit journey as it reflects the journey of humankind, the experience of every single human being across the globe.
The conversation moves smoothly from one part of the conversation to the next. For example, telling a story about an early teacher might be followed by “your most memorable teacher in high school” to “the teacher who most radically changed your life”. The leader gives a personal story then invites others to share at a more in-depth level. Conversations often occur at the level of decision making, where you are free to decide your stance and relationship to life, your most fundamental operating context. Being open to the transparent dimension of humanness is to experience awe, mystery and illumination. You penetrate the depth of your own being. At this level is where everything – you, your relationship to others or your situation – can be recreated or made new. Your very selfhood can be given back to you in a brand new way.
The conversation leader is in a sense a guru who calls on certain participants to be the mouth of the oracle, to continue to bring the conversation to the level of transparency of the human experience.The ‘pearl’ is like a depth disclosure of the mystery of life that illuminates the whole conversation. The conversation takes curves or spirals through a spectrum of reality and in the midst of all that you have a ‘pearl’ which you drop. Sometimes the participants never even know what happened, yet suddenly the context is expanded and a totally new picture emerges. The conversation builds to its highest intensity. then you slip in your pearl – and stop. This allows the conversation not to be wrapped up. Participants are left hanging to spin their own reflections and go deeper into their own Spirit reflections.