Practicing Insight Dialogue

In the Buddhist tradition, the foundations of the path are understood to involve morality, tranquility, and wisdom. The same elements can be traced in other spiritual traditions. If we emphasize these elements we will be building on a time-tested foundation.

Because Insight Dialogue works with our relational lives, it also emphasizes mutuality. Morality, tranquility, and wisdom become especially important in their interpersonal aspects.

An interpersonal practice will have different emphases than a primarily solitary practice. Some of the refined states of stillness encountered in traditional silent meditation will be less prominent. Interpersonal practices involve speaking or interacting with others, leaving behind the silence that is the most obvious feature of traditional meditation.

Morality is the foundation of all spiritual progress. An interpersonal path must be founded on morality. Without the human kindness and respect that underlie morality—and without the ease of a clear conscience—all deeper wisdom remains an idea, another delusional attachment.

The three moral components of Buddhism’s eightfold path—right speech, action, and living—address our relational lives. Speaking implies listening; the two together describe relationship. Right action refers to actions in relation to others: refraining from killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct. Right living refers to making a living in an honest and decent way.

The basics of moral communication are straight forward: abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, and from idle chatter. Speech should also be true, useful, spoken at the proper time, and spoken with lovingkindness. Along with treating others the way you yourself would like to be treated, these moral principles are essential to the smooth functioning of any human system. These are also foundational to Insight Dialogue.

Tranquility is another key element of the eightfold path. A mind at ease and a calm heart are essential to seeing things as they actually are. Tension distorts the lens through which we see the world. We view everything from the perspective of our tension: if we are hungry, for example, we have eyes only for food.

Without tranquility, the mind cannot dwell with any experience long enough to know its nature. Without knowing the nature of experience we are unlikely to abandon self-centered fabrications; we cannot be fully compassionate to others or ourselves.

Wisdom—seeing things as they actually are—is the third element of any path to enlightenment. We can see things as they actually are when the mind is calm and alert. The more calm and alert we become, the more clearly we see the nature of the mind and the nature of the world. Interpersonal practice supports this clear seeing by cultivating mindfulness and calm concentration.

Insight Dialogue also involves inquiry. Wisdom is supported by inquiring into the nature of reality and dwelling intimately with teachings that reveal that nature.

Wisdom grows in interpersonal practice by direct experience of interpersonal suffering, hungers, and freedom. Meditators experience their thoughts and emotions as impermanent, stressful, and impersonal. They experience firsthand the ease that arises when the mind ceases its habitual clinging. No intellectual understanding can replace this direct apprehension of stress and freedom. In Insight Dialogue, these insights unfold in mutual rather than solitary practice.

Much of our contact with people—emotional, intellectual, or otherwise—occurs through language. In Insight Dialogue, verbal communication is a primary medium of practice. Language brings into our practice the force of intellect and the associative power of words. Language also reveals limiting beliefs, desires, grasping, and fears. Because Insight Dialogue works directly with language and relationship, it can bring about profound transformation in individuals and groups.

The impact of a meditative practice should be discernable by the wise, reflected visibly in the human decency of the practitioner. Insight Dialogue is an interpersonal practice that seeks to meet these criteria.

Introducing the guidelines

Traditional silent meditation has different forms of practice, each guided by different instructions. Insight Dialogue also has meditation guidelines to support meditators as they change their habitual ways of interacting with others. Each guideline can be used in daily life as a simple reminder to calm down, become aware, and notice and release old habits. In Insight Dialogue practice, the same guidelines work together to point the way toward profound spiritual awakening.

The practice involves discussion and contemplation of profound subject matter—fear, joy, desire, and the inevitability of change, for example. The content of an Insight Dialogue discussion is not the primary focus, however. Becoming aware of how the heart-mind functions is at the core of this practice.


What habits hold us captive? What is left when these habits fall away?

We can pay attention to our bodies and to the ongoing stories we tell ourselves. We can observe our reactive emotions. It is not easy. The mind is very quick. Reactions feel automatic. But as a result of practice, we can calm down. We discover we can become more alert, better able to notice the movements of the body-mind. The Insight Dialogue guidelines support us as we notice these things, release attachments, and relax out of stresses.

Pause

To pause is to stop some activity temporarily, to let it go.

The body-mind is astonishingly sensitive. Its habit is to grasp at whatever touches it: sights, sounds, touches, smells, tastes, and thoughts. It grasps to understand: What is this? It grasps to hold onto pleasures, to wrestle with pain, and to obsess about fears. Seeing another person, it grasps to hold her or to push her away, to know him or to be known by him, to touch, to fix, or to adjust.
When we Pause we move from grasping to non-grasping, from clinging to non-clinging. This movement is the pivot point to freedom.

Waking up from habit mind is the first step on any path. The first instruction in Insight Dialogue is Pause. Step off the train. Dwell a moment with immediate experience before speaking, or while listening. The pause is mindfulness. It is an interruption of a lifetime of habitual forward pressure. It opens the door to the present moment.

It takes energy to change the momentum of a heavy moving object; it also takes energy to interrupt the habitual push of the reactive mind. The energy needed is called right effort: the intention to calm down and wake up. Just one moment of clarity can open the door to new possibilities.

Strong intention is essential to cultivating greater awareness—but even strong intention needs some way of working with in the habits of the heart-mind. Without the support of a practice, it is difficult to do anything other than what we have always done: live in the trance of conditioned emotions and thoughts.

So we practice. Attending to the breath or to the body pauses the torrent of habit. How is the body, right now? When we get lost in the fabrications of the mind, carried away by emotions, we can pause and become mindful. The body can ground us in mindfulness. Practice and gentle guidance are necessary.

We can observe the pleasant and unpleasant qualities of experience, observe the rising and passing of thoughts and moods—just passing phenomena. We may suddenly notice that we are not, in fact, these phenomena that come and go. Mental phenomena move more quickly than bodily sensations, however; to be aware of them without falling into identification takes agility and practice.

We can Pause before we speak, while we are speaking, or after we are done speaking. The Pause can be long or short according to circumstances. It is not about time; it is about mindfulness. Generally speaking, when the emotion is strong, the pause is long. This is not a rule, however, only starting point. When mindfulness is well established, the pause takes almost no time.

Relax

The mindful Pause often finds us in the middle of habit-driven thought or emotional reaction. Stirred by the emotional spike of a recent interchange or by the ongoing rush of thought, the body is agitated. If we do not meet these experiences skillfully, we will be flung back into unaware and identified activity. We need further support.

The second instruction is Relax. When we Pause into awareness, we also Relax the body and mind. This meditation instruction reflects tranquility, an important factor on the path to awakening. At first, it is as direct and simple as it sounds. We bring awareness to those parts of the body where we tend to accumulate tension, and allow that tension to relax.

Whenever we recognize tension, we can choose ease. There is no other practice, really, than this letting go. We only need to choose. Choosing the ease over and over again is the practice. Our formal support for making this choice—for remembering that this choice is available to us—is one simple word: Relax. This guidance is not offered to the body only, nor to the mind only. The body and mind move together, not two but one. When the body relaxes, the mind calms down. When the mind calms down, the body relaxes.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just tell our bodies to relax, and they would obey? Many headaches and ulcers would vanish; we would be happier, and live longer. But it just doesn’t work that way. Tense muscles take a while to release. Adrenaline takes time to be cleared from the blood stream. The reminder to Relax cannot be obeyed instantly, despite our best hopes and intentions. Patience and practice are necessary.

Thoughts and the mental component of emotions also have a kind of momentum; they do not cease their forward push simply because we have become aware of them. The habits of the mind run deep, fast, and with a lifetime of energy; stopping and settling into the moment with ease does not always come easily.

We can meet our disordered thoughts and feelings with acceptance. We need not run away from discomfort, confusion, fear, unhappiness, or judgments. Accept is to the mind as Relax is to the body.

When we notice the signs of tension in the body—a tightness in the belly, or the sinking feeling of sadness—awareness can remain soft and present while the feeling unfolds. The tendency to fly backwards in aversion to the unpleasant sensation is replaced with the conscious reminder to Relax, to accept. In this change, old habits of continuing or amplifying tension are replaced with new habits of ease and acceptance. In this way, Relax heals what the Pause reveals. Thoughts rise and fall as excitements come and go during interpersonal engagement, but the mind does not identify with these reactions.

When thoughts are met with acceptance, we are free to respond appropriately instead of reacting habitually. This acceptance, when fully ripe and unconditional, is love. This is not emotional love, but the simple lovingkindness of total non-aversion (adosa, in Pali). It is the heart-mind that is receptive to experience and activated in natural kindness, or metta (the Pali word for lovingkindness that is the namesake of the Metta Foundation).

When thoughts and emotional reactions are met with acceptance, with Relax, with metta, they loose their motive power. There is no clinging to the thought or emotion, and no judgment. This simple kindness, to ourselves and others, is the doorway to transformation and freedom.

Open

Pause and Relax establish the traditional meditative framework of mindfulness and tranquility. In Pause, we step out of habit and meet the moment afresh. We awaken out of identification with reaction. We become aware of the body, emotions, and thoughts—without clinging. In Relax, we meet our immediate experience with acceptance, receptivity, and kindness.

Now we come to the third interpersonal meditation instruction: Open. With Open, awareness extends to everything around us. Pause and Relax could be instructions for internal individual meditation, but Open invites us to extend this accepting mindfulness beyond the boundaries of our skin to encompass the external world. This extension opens the door to mutuality, and is the basis for interpersonal meditation.

When we extend awareness beyond the skin-encapsulated self, our meditation grows to include other people and our surroundings. We meet other people with the same mindfulness and calm acceptance with which we are learning to meet our internal experience. If we are meditating in dialogue with one other person, we meet this person with wakeful acceptance. If we are meditating with a room full of people, the awareness opens wide to receive the whole. With mindfulness of both the internal and external, we are aware of the ever-changing relational moment.

We can begin to explore Open by becoming aware of the body sitting, just as it is. With a focused inward awareness, we find some place where attention is drawn because of a sensation, perhaps the touch of the body upon the chair or cushion, or a point of discomfort in the hip or knees. By bringing full awareness to that area or point, mindfulness becomes stabilized there. Now, right at that point, we meet this sensation with acceptance. This awareness is very precise, but very kind. We then begin to expand that kindly awareness to the rest of the body, until the entire body is saturated with receptive mindfulness.

Now we simply do not stop there. In Open, we allow awareness to extend beyond the body. We may first notice the expansive quality of the wider sense of hearing. If our eyes were closed, we might open them and notice that the entire room is in our field of awareness. We may notice that the person (or people) in front of us are also in our field of awareness. We are simply and fully present with others. The same kindly, accepting, mindful awareness that was touched by internal phenomena of the body-mind is now touched by the other. In Open, awareness encompasses the external as well as the internal. It is wider, more spacious.

While some traditional meditation practices encourage a wide open awareness, most do not include awareness of the specific humans we are with—they do not open the door to encounter in co-meditation. In Insight Dialogue, we open this door.
With non-clinging, the mind learns to move freely between internal and external experience. This pliable mind state is important to all meditation practice, but it is especially important in Insight Dialogue. When someone speaks, awareness may open outward in hearing. Emotions or ideas may momentarily pull us into identification and reaction. Aware of our reactivity, we can Pause, stabilizing awareness in the body. Opening again—perhaps as our partner is still speaking—awareness may now include both our body and the other’s voice. In the silence that follows, awareness may turn inward, noticing delicate reverberations of thought. As we practice, we become able to move more easily between internal and external awareness. These inner and outer shifts can be known by mindfulness without grasping and identification. Pleasant or unpleasant, we remain aware—not caught up, but aware.

When something touches awareness, the fundamental experience is one of contact and of consciousness arising from this contact. It makes no difference whether the awareness is of an internal thought or of something external, such as hearing another speak. It is still “me” experiencing this. But right at the point of contact, in the moment of contact, this subject/object relationship vanishes. It is no longer experienced as “me knowing.” The once rigid boundaries of self and other soften; both are known simply as experience.

The open mind is receptive and non-clinging. As self-concern quietly drifts away, opening becomes more complete. In fullness of opening there is no boundary between the internal and external. There is nowhere to go; there is only awareness. The only boundary was the sense of self, which we find is an illusion.

mindfulness—Pause;
calm acceptance—Relax;
and mutuality—Open.

This is how we meet the moment: awake, loving, and spacious. But what do we do when we find this moment is changing uncontrollably? Or conversely, when the predictable, habit-driven world hardly seems to be changing at all.

The fourth meditation instruction in Insight Dialogue is Trust Emergence. With this instruction we are invited into the numinous but observable impermanence of all experience.

Trust Emergence is rooted in wisdom. That is, it supports seeing things as they are—unstable, and far more complex and fluid than the mundane glance can ever know. The dynamic quality of experience demands a robust practice; it also provides the object of that practice: change itself. Trust Emergence invites us to dive headlong into the tumbling moment by guiding us in relating to each other and to the totality of experience.

Trust refers to the faith required to leap into this seething sea of change. Emergence refers to the process by which the complex things we experience arise spontaneously from underlying contributing factors. For example, we see emergence in the way conscious thought arises from a cauldron of sensation, memory, and emotions. To Trust Emergence is to let go into the changing process we call “now,” with its uncontrolled sensations, thoughts, emotions, interactions, words, topics, energies, and insights.

To Trust Emergence is to enter practice without the bias of a goal. This does not mean we do not hope for better communication, wise relationships, or the emergence of collective intelligence, compassion, or peace. While these “background aspirations” remain, we set them aside. To Trust Emergence is not to set aside intelligence, only the frozen images, judgments, and expectations that interfere with intelligence by gumming up clear and fluid wakefulness. We expend the energy to remain in the ever-changing present.

Both Open and Trust Emergence call us to release short-term attachments and the personal agendas that hide us from each other. When we speak with others, often we are occupied with planning what we will say next and, especially in larger groups, where we can find space to insert our contribution. In the Pause of Insight Dialogue we become aware of this micro-planning; we Relax the tension behind it, Open to our partner or the group—and in that very moment let go of even these little plans, and Trust Emergence.

Most of us carry a great burden: the burden of personality, with its obligations to inform or entertain or respond to others in expected ways. Trust Emergence can lead us beyond these expectations. Trust Emergence is not an instruction to enter into stream-of-consciousness talk, but it is a doorway to deep unknowing. By telling ourselves to Trust Emergence, we are simply reminding ourselves of what is patently true: the world is spinning—from subatomic particles to galaxies, from physiology to consciousness—and we just don’t know where it is headed. We don’t even know what thought is going to come up next in our minds; five minutes of silent meditation will convince all but the most bull-headed of this truth.

The senses are our gateways to emergence. Just as the body is the terra firma of the Pause, ever-changing sensations are the simplest way to reconnect with impermanence. This can be directly experienced in the body by bringing awareness to changing bodily sensations. If we take the time to become aware of a specific sensation—where our bodies touch our chair or cushion, for example—if we attend closely enough, we will notice that this sensation is constantly changing. It is changing in obvious ways, such as the area it seems to occupy, or how pleasant or unpleasant it is, and in subtler ways. Sensory change is a physiological, biochemical, and electrical fact, and also a perception manufactured in the mind. Sensations keep arising and fading dependent upon the stimulus and the sense organ, like our skin or our ears. But this is known by consciousness, which is also constantly changing along with what arises. The knowing, “I am feeling this,” is a spontaneous, emergent result of all these things together. Here, where we contact the truth of impermanence, we can practice Trust Emergence.

To Trust Emergence in Insight Dialogue does not mean we immediately abandon habits of distrust, or give ourselves up to whomever we happen to be in practice with. As awareness of change, Trust Emergence is not about trusting people, but trusting ourselves, our capacity to meet the unknown and emerge from the experience wiser and more compassionate than we entered it.

Trust Emergence does not equate with personal irresponsibility, or with a passivity that sits back, uninvolved. In contrast, Trust Emergence is the wisdom of recognizing the truth of impermanence, and the strength and agility to meet this truth head on. When we are trusting emergence, our perceptions are more true and accurate because they do not originate in delusions of stability. The simple reminder to trust invites us to let go of illusions of control and to relax, to drop the weight of being in charge of what is beyond the grip of the rational. When we Trust Emergence, our decisions are more trustworthy because they are not directed by a grasping heart or a controlling mind.

Trust Emergence is a matter of letting go, non-clinging, freedom. We do not come to Insight Dialogue practice to reveal our conceptual knowledge and gain more knowledge, but to know the nature of the conceiving mind and to drop its impossible burdens. We enter practice expectant, alert, ready for anything and for nothing, hunters and gatherers walking in the unknown—calm, alert, patient, and ready.

Listen deeply

Pause-Relax-Open establish the mind state for being fully present in the mutual, emergent moment. In this vibrating and aware moment, we listen and speak. In this vivid state of mind, we communicate. The Insight Dialogue meditation instructions that directly address this are Listen Deeply-Speak the Truth; we will focus first on Listen Deeply.

Listen Deeply opens the senses, heart, and mind to receive the moment fully. To Listen Deeply is to listen with mindfulness, surrendering fully to the unfolding words and presence of our co-meditators. Grounded in clear awareness and sensitive to the speaker’s offering, we are a receptive field touched by the words, emotions, and energies of our fellow human beings.

Communication is mutual gift giving. We offer each other the gift of presence, the particular wisdom of the moment, and the muscled and softly textured heart. We receive the spoken word with appreciation for this gift. We listen with the generosity of patience, unhurried by a personal agenda. We aspire to the type of generosity Thoreau suggested when he said: “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” With the mind expanded by Open and Trust Emergence, we are touched; tranquil, we do not interrupt our listening with an internal dialogue. For the moment we are not preoccupied about how we might respond to sooth, fix, impress, or dominate. We listen with kindness, compassion, and responsiveness.

As the words of another touch us, the astonishing loop of communicative contact is closed. What began as an emotion or thought in the mind of the speaker has landed in our heart-minds. For the voyage, the speaker’s thought was enclosed in the conditioned craft of language and launched into the world as speech sounds. Our ears were touched in the contact of raw sensation, and our minds, touched in mental contact, interpreted those sounds. Then the associative machinery of a conditioned lifetime took this input and proliferated it into thoughts, emotions, and internal visual images. All of these reactions yield the experience we call understanding, as in “I understand what you said.” But the constructed and subjective nature of that understanding is rarely observed in action, or taken into account in our felt sense of everyday communication.

In meditation, mindfulness reveals this process of mutual contact, and the reactivity that almost always accompanies verbal communication. In Insight Dialogue, we see how compelling we find each other’s stories. We are attracted to the words and the cadence of our companions, as some part of our psyche is filled with the sweetness of apparent contact. We inhabit the story we are being told, internally creating its images and emotions in an effort to understand and empathize. We are taking it as our own.

Listen Deeply has active and perceptive aspects. In active listening, we apply the energy of attention to the many qualities of experience. We seek understanding, absorb detail, and navigate the inlets and bays of the ever-shifting coastline of verbal relating. The receptive aspect of Listen Deeply emphasizes the stability and sensitivity of awareness. There is no reaching out, no going anywhere. We are calm and vigilant. There is no grasping at what is heard.

We shift from focused attention to meanings, emotions, or energetic presence to a wider listening. With this shift, the overall flow and direction of the dialogue become more readily perceived. Rather than attending to individual words, we may allow the river of sound to pour over us, revealing its larger contours. Changes in pitch and loudness may become more musical than linguistic in nature; energetic changes can be seen as changing sensation.

Deep listening meditation teaches us to discern in all sounds the rising and passing of experience; this is wisdom. It also teaches us to discern the pains and joys of our shared human experience; this is compassion. As these different qualities of listening emerge, we meet their emergence with trust.

Listen Deeply rests on personal silent practice. Listening is stillness and the vibrating of that stillness. Receptive listening dissolves selfishness. Its inherent stillness allows the cries of internal self-making to die down. Attention is not gathered around me and my needs. Even so, listening deeply also includes a delicate inward listening that parallels and enables receptive listening to the other. There is no-self that Listens Deeply as the Truth speaks itself.

Speak the truth

Up to this point, we have been exploring how we can dwell in meditative awareness with others. As we Pause, we can Relax and accept what we find, and Open our awareness to encompass external as well as internal experience. We Trust Emergence, resting in the flux of experience; we meet the delight and the insecurity of change without knowing what the next moment will bring. Listening Deeply to our inner voice and to the voices of others, we come to the precipice of outward action.

Attuned to the moment, we Speak the Truth. Communication inevitably arises in any moment of emergent interpersonal contact. Seeing and being seen yield an emotional interchange, with or without words. Bodily proximity generates a flow of energy between people. It is uniquely powerful, however, to meet each other through the power of language. Whenever we speak, some bit of the heart-mind is revealed; every day, through the mystery of language, we touch each other mind to mind, heart to heart. The guideline Speak the Truth grounds this mutuality in morality and mindfulness.

Speak the Truth rests in the moral and mutual elements of our practice. In Insight Dialogue we are committed to ethical speech, to truth, and to kindness. Given the human propensity for reactivity, and the power of language to spin us out of present-centered awareness and into self-centered habits, it is no surprise that most meditative practices do not include speaking. With Speak the Truth we are invited to bring our highest intentions and our refined perceptions into language.

The simple guideline Speak the Truth invites us to re-examine the process and function of verbal communication. To speak the truth we must know the truth. Because we are referring to the subjective truth, the truth of our experience, we must listen internally in order to discern this truth. Thus, speaking enters meditation practice through the door of mindfulness. Mindfulness can reach into our speaking because of the stabilizing support of the other Insight Dialogue guidelines. Clarity arises when the mind is energetic, mindful, calm, and spacious (Pause-Relax-Open), and unattached (Trust Emergence). This clarity allows us to discern the truth of the moment. Speak the Truth reminds us to cultivate mindfulness in action.

It is not easy to establish mindfulness while speaking. Words are conceptual representations of experience, and when we speak, we can easily jump into the stream of ideas and cease to be present. When the conceptualizing associated with speaking pulls us out of the moment of experience, mindfulness of bodily sensations can help us return to the immediacy of experience. For example, noticing the posture of the body or the sensations at the point of contact with our seat will reveal and reconnect us with the moment. The mind has the capacity to do this while speaking, just as we can know our emotional state or thoughts as we speak.

To observe ourselves as we speak can reveal much. We may discover for instance that our hunger for being seen interferes with conveying the simple truth. Our words are drawn from a huge vat of memories and views; because speech flows from the mind and we think and feel much quicker than we speak, we often speak from conclusions. This is not a bad thing; it is efficient and often necessary. It is not, however, extraordinary. When we speak quickly or for long unbroken stretches, we are more likely to speak from habit. Calling on the Pause to interrupt such a flow can be a helpful reminder. Without the Pause, which is more about mindfulness than about time, truth is rarely spoken.

Words spoken from habitual hungers and stress have great power to harm. When a spouse says, “You always do things like that,” the little word “always” may reference thirty years of hurt. When we bring meditation practice into our interactions, we can explore other possibilities. In Insight Dialogue we are invited to slow down and perhaps find some fresh words among the reactive. At the same time, we hold no delusion that we will never speak from habit.

While language may be the source of conceptual traps and misunderstandings, it also carries great positive power. Words can even be used to deconstruct themselves. Sometimes, Insight Dialogue sessions can sound like absurd circularity. Whether hilarity or discomfort result, practitioners are offered a uniquely clear view of absurdity of a mind that believes in the logic and validity of its own fabrications.

Although Insight Dialogue is a meditative practice, it rests on the same foundation of kindness that is the ground of ordinary human decency. The golden rule, of speaking and listening as we would like to be spoken to and listened to, provides a basis of ease and safety. In ordinary life, small talk—the observations and jokes that have no real point beyond establishing a friendly relationship—foster relaxation, camaraderie, and happiness. Are we speaking to excite and entertain, or to express the truth of this moment, perhaps by affirming good will and mutual esteem? Kind speech no less than wise speech conditions the future by cultivating wholesome mind states.

Real life is messy. Insight Dialogue is not intended as a shield behind which we hide from our anger and fear. Speaking the truth encourages emotional and intellectual honesty as an inherent component of the path to freedom. Wrong speech, on the other hand, hurts. It puts a painful clamp on emotions, arouses agitation, and leads to confusion. Lying, cruel, contentious, and frivolous speech all disrupt this meditation practice. Speaking the truth does not mean using even true facts to wound, or to give vent to damaging emotions. If we find ourselves with the urge to lie or to speak cruelly, we Pause and take the time to ask if what we are about to say is based in greed, hatred, or delusion—or in generosity, love, and wisdom.

Of all the possible things we could say, to what do we give voice? Much of what we might say is not wrong or cruel, but does this mean it should be said? Here we come to the greatest challenge of Speak the Truth. As we learn through practice to perceive the momentary truth of our own experience, we begin to realize that the mind is awash in thoughts and emotions. When a thought or feeling presents itself, we can instantly speak it or observe it and let go. What do we do? What does it mean to speak the truth? The question, “What do I speak” cannot be answered by a formula. Speak the Truth calls us to live with the paradox set up by emergence and mindfulness. We come to recognize meditative speaking as something that has less to do with words than the source from which the words emerge.

Through practice, we learn to recognize the truth as we develop an intimate relationship with our own speaking. Delicately present with the moment of experience, we watch speech emerge from the body, thoughts, or the unknowable unconscious. Recognition of what to speak comes with practice—like listening to music, or appreciating poetry or art. No one answer about what to verbalize can be given. Through trial and error we learn when favorable conditions increase or decrease.

Recognizing the truth of the moment, we speak it with confidence yet without self-driven attachment. As mindfulness, loving-kindness, openness, and trust in emergence become more stable, and as we listen deeply to the internal and external, we learn to trust our discernment. There is a boldness in this that is neither aggressive nor ego-bound.

Without ego interference, the mindfulness of Pause, the calmness of Relax, and the boundlessness of Open find expression in our words. Speaking does not interfere with dwelling in the flux of emergence. When Speak the Truth and Listen Deeply meet, the between comes alive as a shared experience. Communication becomes meditative contact. The voice and ears of compassion become one; we meet each other in this human experience.

The guidelines working together

Keeping in mind the six Insight Dialogue meditation instructions as separate elements provides a strong support for practice. This is especially true at the beginning, when we need the support of particular instructions to counter our abundance of interpersonal habits. It is also true whenever greater energy or clarity is called for.

The individual guidelines are also easier to bring into ordinary daily practice. For example, we can remind ourselves to Relax or to Trust Emergence at any time. When our minds are scattered, or our hearts agitated, a specific, clear focus can help us find the meditative moment. Pause can help us step out of the preoccupations of a frenzied mind, calling up the clarity of prior practice and transforming agitated energy into wakefulness. When emotional attachments arise, a reminder to Relax can help us calm the body and meet pain and grasping with acceptance and love. Some times are better than others for the spaciousness of Open—perhaps our distracted state would only become more diffuse. Trust Emergence may enable us to ride a wild wave of agitation as a fresh and adaptable foundation for clear awareness. Listen Deeply may open us beyond shrunken patterns of self-concern and receive the words—and the humanity—of family members, friends, and coworkers. As six individual instructions, the guidelines provide touch points or reminders for integrating practice into our daily living. When we use them, everyday life can become an opportunity for real insight. Insight Dialogue groups sometimes discuss these experiences as a part of their practice time.

Pause—call forth to slow down, to drop ignorance, to see more deeply, and to brighten the mind.
Relax—call forth in the face of stress or challenging truths, and to bring ease to the body-mind.
Open—call to move out of isolated practice, loops, and selfish patterns, to be out of contraction.
Trust Emergence—call forth for energy, to end doubt, and to ride the moment.
Listen Deeply—call into inquiry, receptivity, and to extend the heart.
Speak the Truth—call forth to end stasis, to enhance generosity and courage, to bring meditative interaction.

A careful practice of these individual guidelines reveals they are also one in experience. The interoperation of these meditation instructions is suggested by the way they are grouped: Pause-Relax-Open can be considered as one guideline; Trust Emergence as another; and Listen Deeply—Speak the Truth as the third. We can think of them as six separate instructions, or as three groups, or as a single instruction or path.

Each approach emphasizes and supports different and important aspects of the practice. Seeing them as six separate guidelines encourages us to focus fully on each in turn, exploring their nuance and depth. Three instructions are easier to remember, however, and reveal the flow between Pause, Relax, and Open, the centrality of letting go in Trust Emergence, and the reciprocity of Listen Deeply–Speak the Truth. Taking all the guidelines as a single instruction reveals the all-at-onceness of meditation, the concurrence of qualities that is the hallmark of the mature heart–mind.

Pause is essentially accepting (Relax), spacious (Open), and given over to impermanence (Trust Emergence), from which reception and expression issue (Listen Deeply-Speak the Truth).

Relax yields easy mindfulness (Pause) and a wide or even unbounded (Open) awareness. Relax moves easily with changing experience (Trust Emergence), from which speech blossoms and is received (Listen Deeply-Speak the Truth).

Open invites the mind to be undistracted and alert (Pause), tranquil (Relax), and encompasses all emergence, including listening and speaking.

In Trust Emergence the mind is fully present (Pause), non-resistive (Relax), unhindered by fabricated boundaries and not clinging to self-concept (Open); the mind listens with the lightness, agility and curiosity of not-knowing, and speaks from the moment.

When we Listen Deeply we must be mindful and fully present (Pause), steady and profoundly receptive (Relax), permeable to receive the external as well as the internal (Open), and poised on the tip of the moment (Trust Emergence) where sound becomes hearing, hearing becomes listening, and contact occurs.

In order to Speak the Truth, we must awaken (Pause), rest with acceptance of what arises (Relax), listen internally and externally to know the truth of the moment (Listen Deeply), open our awareness to share with others (Open), and surrender to the truth that is emerging in the moment we would speak (Trust Emergence).

The guidelines can also be seen together in other groupings of two or three, each group revealing other aspects of practice. We have seen how Pause and Relax combine to yield clear, loving awareness. Combining the empathy possible with Listen Deeply and the moment-to-moment detachment of Trust Emergence, we can be fully yielded to another’s story and yet cognizant of its impermanent and insubstantial nature. When we combine Pause and Trust Emergence, our practice takes us to an edge where we are shocked into energy and aliveness—and opened up to humor, as our attention reveals the elements of awkwardness and absurdity in our everyday existence. Open with Trust Emergence together condition the essence of surrender; while Open–Trust Emergence–Speak the Truth is the essence of interpersonal courage. The combination Pause–Trust Emergence–Listen Deeply brings us face-to-face with the vibrating mystery of things; Relax–Listen Deeply engenders patience and receptivity; Relax–Open–Listen Deeply so fully de-centers us that we come to the brink of selflessness and emptiness. These combinations of the meditation instructions invite us to truly be with one another.

The guidelines can also be viewed as one; from this perspective, they disappear in the simple truth of being. This is the mature practice: fully interactive, relational, and mutually committed. There are no reminders, here, just presence with each other. We have taken care of mindfulness; now it takes care of us. And if there is a lapse in mindfulness, that’s just part of being human. We accept our humanity with humility and love, and open to the very next moment.

Furthering Insight Dialogue practice

Up to this point, we have been exploring how we can dwell in meditative awareness with others. As we Pause, we can Relax and accept what we find, and Open our awareness to encompass external as well as internal experience. We Trust Emergence, resting in the flux of experience; we meet the delight and the insecurity of change without knowing what the next moment will bring. Listening Deeply to our inner voice and to the voices of others, we come to the precipice of outward action.

Attuned to the moment, we Speak the Truth. Communication inevitably arises in any moment of emergent interpersonal contact. Seeing and being seen yield an emotional interchange, with or without words. Bodily proximity generates a flow of energy between people. It is uniquely powerful, however, to meet each other through the power of language. Whenever we speak, some bit of the heart-mind is revealed; every day, through the mystery of language, we touch each other mind to mind, heart to heart. The guideline Speak the Truth grounds this mutuality in morality and mindfulness.

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