401 — Life Is a Series of Conversations: Evolution Is the Progressive Deepening of Conversations

Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The Conversation. 1895.

Summary: In this episode, we explore conversation as a core structure of Cosmos. It is a “Conversational Cosmos”, all the way down and all the way up — from conversations between subatomic particles that generate atoms to the conversation between the Infinite and finitude that births the manifest Reality. My dear friend Howard Bloom beautifully deployed this term conversational to refer to the nature of what he, in the classical paradigm, still understands to be a “materialist” reality.

We deploy the same term with Howard as an expression of what we call the “pan interiority of Cosmos”.

We look at the key concepts of CosmoErotic Humanism — Eros, Intimacy, Value — in relation to conversation, and find that intimate conversation is the ground of Eros from which everything arises: there can be no deeper contact, no shared purpose, no intimacy without conversation. Value itself emerges from conversation between opposites, which moves from contradiction to paradox. Truth is in paradox, and when a conversation can hold paradox, it can bring us to synergy — to emergence of greater wholes.

To the great question of Fichte and Schelling and Wittgenstein and John Leslie and so many others, why is there something rather than nothing?, Integral theory points out wisely that there are really only two possible answers. One is Oops! — it just happened. The other is: something is going on. We don’t ever want to claim absolute certainty about “what is going on”, that would be regressive fundamentalism. We bow before the mystery.

But one thing is certain: In the language of the “new story of value”, CosmoErotic humanism:

“God is the Infinite Intimate.”

“Infinity desired intimacy.”

In other words; God wanted to talk.

Infinity and intimacy are in conversation.

That is why we are here. And what a conversation it is.

The ground of Reality is conversation

This is our third week of talking about story as the structure of the Universe. What I want to talk about this week is one dimension of story — conversation.

Barbara Marx Hubbard and I founded One Mountain to be literally the seat of a revolution, and to come together to have evolutionary conversations.

Evolutionary conversations have to be boundary breaking.

By boundary-breaking conversations, I mean conversations that break the boundary of politeness and civility. We should always be civil and polite, but that shouldn’t be the goal of the conversation. The goal of the conversation should be something else, and that’s what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about the nature of the conversation we are trying to have here at One Mountain.

What is an evolutionary conversation?

And what is a conversation?

And what is evolution?

And what is the evolution of conversation?

And why is the evolution of conversation actually the evolution of love — and the very purpose of all of Reality?

It’s not that conversations matter. It’s that conversations are everything.

When I say, conversations are everything, what I mean is that the basic unit of human life is conversation. Life — human life — is a series of conversations. If you strip aside all of the sounds and furies of human life — underneath everything — is conversation.

That’s a very big realization. Life is a series of conversations. That is the essential; to borrow a term from Leibniz, the monad of life is conversation.

A different term we can borrow, which was in fashion before Einstein, and now it’s coming — appropriately — back into fashion is the ether (Einstein, in a speech in 1919 in Leiden, pointed out that he didn’t mean to dismiss it, he just said that relativity didn’t require it). The ether is the substrate of Reality, the ground of Reality in which everything arises. The ground of Reality is conversation. The conversational ground of Reality is what sources — what emerges — Reality.

Reality is not just awareness. If you look at Eastern thought, it tells us Reality is awareness. But Reality is not just awareness, Reality is more than awareness, Reality is an aesthetic of conversation — or said differently, Reality is allurement. It is attraction and allurement in relationship to autonomy. But it is always allurement. There is never not allurement. There is always allurement, and allurement is always the allurement to conversation.

Not only is human life a series of conversations; conversation is the structure of Reality. It’s a Conversational Cosmos all the way down the evolutionary chain and all the way up the evolutionary chain.

I’ve been thinking about a conversational cosmos for about 20 years; I first started talking about it in those terms in 2002 and 2003, when I met a man named Doug Stone (maybe it was 2000, something like that — 2001, 2002, 2003). A dear friend and student of mine, a colleague at the time, who was a lecturer at Harvard Law School, wanted to take some of the key ideas and the wisdom of the lineage of Solomon and apply them to the Harvard Negotiation Project, which was about how you do negotiation. And the head of the project was a gentleman named Roger Fisher, who had written a book with Bill Ury called Getting to Yes. I was delighted to support its emergence; I think it was called the Harvard Negotiation Insight Initiative or some such. It opened with a dialogue between myself and Bill Ury at Harvard Law School. Out of that came a conversation with someone named Doug Stone. Doug had written a book called Difficult Conversations, which was a follow-up to Roger Fisher and Bill Ury’s book, Getting to Yes. Both books were about conversation. Getting to Yes was about how you get to a yes in a conversation. Instead of using the word conversation, they used the word negotiation. There was a whole negotiation literature — and then, the negotiation literature became the conversation literature. There was a book called Difficult Conversations, and around the same time, another book called, Crucial Conversations.

I tried to say to them that the literature was too thin — it was too pragmatic, too mechanical; we need to realize something deeper: it’s not that negotiation (which then became conversation) is this technical, mechanical, strategic process, but as i said it back then: There are three core realizations at play.

First, “Life is a series of Conversations”.

Second, “Life is an expression of reality and Reality is a series of conversations”.

Third, “Evolution itself is the progressive deepening of conversation”.

In other words, conversation is the structure of Reality. It’s a Conversational Cosmos at its very core. And that is why our dear friend and partner, Howard Bloom, in his scientific writing on the structure of reality calls reality a conversational cosmos. [And Howard and I have had many conversations about the nature of the conversational cosmos. We deploy the term differently, but we are rapidly moving towards a synergy, and what a gorgeous conversational ride it has been and continues to be. Barbara Marx Hubbard, Howard Bloom, and myself had many dozens of stunning conversations before Barbara passed. Barbara intuited that Howard and I talking, together with herself, would be wondrous and she was right — she convened the conversation and the conversion continues.]

And the evolution of conversation is the plotlines of reality. And every conversation is really a love story. Therefore, knowing how to have a conversation is everything,- knowing carnally — evolving the conversation — deepening your conversation deepens God. In other words the goal of Reality is the evolution of conversation which is the evolution of God.

Messiah is the capacity to have conversation

For example, in the Hebrew wisdom literature, there are some hidden passages that interpreted the word Messiah, which occur in the both Aramaic literature and in the later Hasidic literature that Martin Buber talked about. Messiah is what we call, in our conversation here, Homo amor. I’ve talked a lot over the years about how the notion of Homo amor — or the emergence of a New human and a New Humanity in response to the Meta-crisis — is not transhumanism. It is the opposite of transhumanism; it is the emergence of a deeper humanity.

Transhumanism says, let’s go from carbon to silicon. Let’s leave humanity behind. Homo amor is not transhumanism.

Homo amor is the deepening of our humanity. The only potential true response to the death of our humanity has to be the deepening of our humanity. The opposite of the holy is the superficial, the superficial leads to the falling apart, to the breaking apart, to existential risk, to the meta-crisis, to the second shock of existence, to the potential death of humanity — the end of humankind — or the death of our humanity.

One of the expressions of a potential death of our humanity suggests that the human being is no longer going to operate out of —

• this deep sense of shared heart,
• this deep sense of free will,
• this deep sense of the drama of decision-making,
• and the deep sense of freedom,
• the deep sense of Eros and love — love being a true Reality of Cosmos and not a social construct.

There is this transhumanist humanist vision, which people like B.F. Skinner held very strongly. B.F. Skinner, who was an early behavioral psychologist who reigned at Harvard for six decades, was an early transhumanist. The MIT Media Lab is dominated by applications of Skinner’s thought to the design of the internet, which is this transhumanist vision, which says that that old vision of the human being as being this sacred, free, infinitely dignified, divine, unique expression of the Field of Infinite Value is actually not true. That’s transhumanism.

The response to transhumanism in its various forms, which leads to the death of humanity or the death of our humanity, is a deeper vision of humanity. The deeper vision of humanity is Homo amor, a New Human and a New Humanity. We go from homo sapiens to Homo amor (and we’ve described Homo amor in many different conversations in One Mountain).

Homo amor is not different from Messiah of the early great lineages. But in the early great lineages that talked about Messiah — including the Hebrew lineage, and obviously the Christian lineage, and the Islamic lineages, and there are different versions of Messiah also in Buddhism, in Kashmir Shaivism, in Confucianism — there are different versions of this new, emerging human ideal. But Messiah was either hijacked ethnocentrically (each religion said we own Messiah), or it was limited to one human being owned by one religion. And we are saying, no, no, no —

• Messiah is not an ethnocentric triumph of a particular religion,
• and it’s not one human being becoming this new dramatic, gorgeous expression.

No, Messiah is the democratization of human greatness, which is the realization of the New Human and the New Humanity. That’s Homo amor.

• Homo amor becomes the Intimate Universe in person.
• Homo amor becomes Eros in person.
• Homo amor becomes the Universe: A Love Story in person.
• Homo amor becomes the Amorous Cosmos in person.

And the Amorous Cosmos is the Conversational Cosmos, so what Homo amor knows how to do better than anything else is how to have a conversation. And Homo amor —

• who becomes the Universe: A Love Story in person,
• who becomes Infinite Value in person,
• who becomes a unique incarnation of the Field of Value

— capacitates new possibilities of conversation.

Evolution becomes the evolution of conversation. The ultimate value is the capacity to have a conversation. Anti-value destroys conversation; the very nature of anti-value is the destruction of conversation.

Baudrillard, the French philosopher, talks about the simulacrum. The Wachowski brothers, when they made The Matrix, had everyone read him, because The Matrix was a kind of simulation, and the nature of the simulation was to create a reality which wasn’t real, in which conversation was never aligned with Reality. You could never talk about what was real, because what was real couldn’t be talked about. There were no conversations that were real. Everything was simulated. This destruction of conversation is core to the meta-crisis, and core to the anti-value that drives the meta-crisis.

For example, polarization. Polarization is at the very, very core of the meta-crisis. Polarization means there is no conversation happening. Conversation means, I can move from polarization to paradox.

Now, the word Messiah in the hidden texts of the literature, Messiah, is related to the word maShiach, which means ‘conversation.’ Messiah, Homo amor, is the capacity to have a conversation. The emergence of a new Field of Value and a New Human and a New Humanity capacitates a new possibility to have conversation.

Conversation moves from polarization to paradox

Anti-value is polarization. Polarization means, at its core, that a conversation can’t happen.

The move to conversation is the move from polarization to paradox, and paradox is different from contradiction.

• Contradiction is polarization; it means a conversation can’t happen.
• Paradox means, it’s not a contradiction — not because we’ve resolved the opposites, but because we’ve brought the opposites into conversation, which is the source of beauty. A beautiful conversation.

Conversation is what beauty is. A real conversation — not a simulacrum where conversations are all fake, feigned conversations, artificial conversations, but an authentic conversation — is when the conversation holds contradictions and doesn’t look away. We stay with each other, and we have a genuine conversation, we don’t look away. We go from polarization to paradox. Opposing ideas have a conversation.

Instead of being pro-life and pro-choice, and polarize on the abortion issue, life and choice begin to have a conversation because they are both in the Field of Value together. They are both expressions of this deeper ground of a conversation, because conversation is Eros, which is value. Value is conversation.

The word for value in the original Hebrew is erech. The code of law in the wisdom of Solomon lineage is called Shulchan Aruch, which means ‘a set table’. And a set table means ‘where everything’s in the right place.’ The word aruch ‘set’, meaning everything in its right place, is actually an original Hebrew word, which means things that are in right relationship. The word for value, erech, also means right relationship between things, or things that are in right conversation.

Conversation means you have oppositional moments that are talking to each other. They are in right relationship, they are in right conversation, and therefore they generate value.

This is so deep and so beautiful. Value is never one idea or one thing. Value is not one thing, one idea, one position, one ideology, one claim, one argument. No, value is not life, or choice, or any one value.

Value itself emerges from the conversation between opposites that doesn’t mire itself in contradiction, but moves from contradiction to paradox.

That’s what value means.

Value means polarized opposites that were contradictory are now paradoxical. This is why we always say that paradise is paradox. It’s not paradise, it’s paradox. Paradox is paradise. The Garden of Eden means: opposites can be in a relationship, which is paradoxical, in which no one turns away from the conversation.

It’s a Conversational Cosmos.

Reality is Eros. That’s one of the keys of CosmoErotic Humanism, this New Story of Value.

What is Eros?

We have an Eros equation:

Eros equals the experience of radical aliveness, desiring ever deeper contact and ever greater wholeness.

The Eros equation is a description of Reality.

And it is just a formula, read slightly differently, to describe conversation. In other words, ever deeper contact means I am not satisfied to be in a monologue. I can’t just be in my own head. I need to get out of my head, and out of my heart, and out of my body — and find your head, and your heart, and your body. I want to make contact, and contact is conversation.

And then, when I make contact — conversation — I create communion. Communion happens through communication. Communication, when done well, is conversation. And then, conversation creates ever greater wholeness. And wholeness means: instead of having a contradiction which pulls apart and polarizes, the opposites — the different parts — don’t fall apart, they don’t cause existential risk, they don’t cause breakdown, but each part realizes that it participates in a larger story.

A particle (which means a small part) participates in the larger whole, which is the Field of Value, and the Field of Value itself is constituted by different parts that are in the right relationship. That’s called erech. Erech means contextual right relation between parts, and erech means value.

The Field of Value, the Garden of Eden is the field of paradise, which is paradox because the parts always remain in conversation.

I have two students of mine, dear friends and students, who have been in a conversation for a few years, and at a certain moment, they had a little bit turned away from a certain kind of conversation. And so, I just tenderly suggested, hey, maybe take a twenty hour drive together at some point, because you’ll start talking again. Let’s get back in conversation, but let’s not try and have the conversation from a place of identity politics, where I am defending my wounded identity — let’s just have a free spacious real conversation.

A real conversation can move from contradiction to paradox, where all of a sudden you don’t need to resolve everything, because you are in conversation, which, by itself, is ecstatic. Conversation by itself is somehow ecstatic, and allows us to create a synergy.

Eros is conversation

What is a conversation?

Sexing, for example, is understood by the lineage as a conversation.

What happens in sexing? The upper lips and the upper lips speak together, which then creates arousal, and then upper lips might meet lower lips. But the conversation is the movement of upper lips and lower lips.

What does that mean?

Lips are connected to Eros, to language, and lips are connected to tongue; in Hebrew, lashon means both tongue and language, which is one of the sacred tools of conversation. Lips, upper and lower, create conversation, which is why sexing is called, in the lineage, conversation.

Because conversation is the place where I come to my edge. I come to the edge of me, and I realize that at the edge of me, I am not satisfied. That’s what conversation means: at the edge of me, I am not satisfied. I am lonely at the edge of me. I am at the edge of me, and at the edge of me, I am not filled. At the edge of me, I meet my desire.

And what is my desire at the edge of me?

It’s a desire for you. It is a desire to be in conversation with you.

The pornographic is a sensation without conversation.

Art is the deepening of conversation.

If you look up a definition of pornographic online, virtually all the definitions say it is explicit sexual images. It’s not correct. The pornographic is explicit sexual images which are non-artistic, or which are decontextualized from conversation, because sex is a conversation, and a conversation has a plotline. In the pornographic, the plotlines are artificial. They are silly. There is no genuine plotline, meaning there is no genuine conversation. And fuck me harder is not a conversation, just to be clear, when it is decontextualized from life — from life’s pain, and life’s beauty, and life’s potency, and life’s tragedy, and life’s post-tragic, and life’s tears, and life’s laughter.

Sensation without conversation is pornographic.

Sensation with conversation is erotic sexing.

Remember, there are twelve billion years of Eros before sex, so the sexual models the erotic.

And what is Eros?

Eros is conversation.

Eros equals the experience of radical aliveness — protons, neutrons, and electrons moving towards contact, towards conversation. They actually talk to each other. And when they talk to each other, they realize, oh, we are separate, we are distinct, but we also have a shared identity. We have a shared ground of value, so we can create an atom. We recognize each other, and we feel each other, and we are in a shared Field of Value, and now we can create a shared purpose because we are talking to each other.

The Eros equation of CosmoErotic Humanism is really describing conversation.

And the intimacy equation —

• Intimacy equals shared identity in the context of otherness, plus mutuality of recognition, feeling, value and purpose —

— is really about conversation. The desire to be intimate is the desire to be in conversation. Conversation means we have to recognize each other — we need mutuality of recognition. We need to feel each other — mutuality of feeling. We need to have a shared ground of value, which is why we are working so hard at the Center to create a ground of value, to create a shared Field of Value, without which we only have polarization, which is anti-value.

Anti-value is polarization, anti-value is anti-Eros. The anti-erotic destroys conversation.

We can’t have a conversation when we polarize. If we polarize, we have existential risk.

We need to create a shared Field of Value in order to restore conversation; and then, we can get to the last dimension of the intimacy equation, which is shared purpose. Then we can have global coordination to respond to global challenges, because we have global coherence, because we resonate with each other, because we are intimate with each other, because we are in conversation, which we can be because we have a shared ground of value.

The sexual models the erotic, which means the sexual is a conversation, and this conversation models all erotic conversation. You don’t have erotic conversation by calling someone to talk to you in explicitly sexual words. That is not an erotic conversation. It might be, if you have a depth of relationship — if you have boundary breaking words in the context of profound commitment in a relationship, that might be an erotic conversation.

But erotic conversation means a boundary breaking conversation —

• I break the boundary of superficiality,
• I enter into the depth,
• I deepen conversation, which deepens my humanity, because to be a human being is to be in conversation, or to be a human being is to be an incarnation of a new possibility of conversation.

But Reality is actually conversation all the way down and all the way up. It’s a Conversational Cosmos.

Conversation means an exchange of meaning in which we are responsive to each other. So, protons, neutrons and electrons exchange meaning. Three quarks exchange meaning. Configurations of intimacy in quarks, up quarks and down quarks, create protons or neutrons, and quarks have a values book, which decides how they are going to respond to each other, because they are having conversations.

And all conversations are a conversation of value. There is no conversation that’s not a conversation of value. All conversation is about value. It’s never about anything else. All conversations are value conversations. But it’s not a conversation about values. It’s a value conversation. That’s what a conversation is by its nature.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

I don’t know about you, but I am enjoying our conversation today because we are finding our way. It’s a new conversation. I am just enjoying finding our way.

Here is a question that Fichte and Schelling loved to ask; and it was also asked by Wittgenstein. The question is:

• Why is there something rather than nothing?

Isn’t that a great conversation? Why is there something rather than nothing?

It’s a great way to start a conversation. There are all these social etiquette books for how to start a conversation at a party. I would suggest this. Just start there. Walk into a party and say,

• Hey, my name’s Jack. Why is there something rather than nothing?

The Buddhist response is, Who’s asking? But with all due respect to Buddhism, that’s classical Buddhist avoidance. Actually, it’s a good question: Why is there something rather than nothing? Buddhism works to avoid the conversation; that’s why Buddhism moves into silence. Buddhism says it’s all about silence. It’s not exactly right. Reality is about silence out of which conversation needs to emerge. In other words, you need this depth of silence, and from the silence the conversation emerges.

For example, in Hebrew lineage in what’s called the story of the chariot, which is the most important text in the lineage of Solomon’s erotic mysticism. There is a description of a kind of ecstatic medicine journey, if you will, and there is what’s called the secret of cashmal. Cashmal is a particular color, but it also describes a particular phenomenological interior experience. I’m on a medicine journey, I’m having experiences, and the experience is called cashmal. It is the silence out of which words emerge. A deep silence, and the word emerges from the silence. Buddhism spends too much time in the silence, and doesn’t get us where we need to go — to the conversation.

Some of the Western religions often spend lots of time in dogmatic arguments, which are bad conversations and never get to the silence, but you need silence that generates conversation.

This is my suggested conversation starter at the next party you’re at:

• Why is there something rather than nothing?

There are basically two responses to that question.

One is what a friend of mine called, Oops. It’s the philosophy of Oops. Why is there something? Oops. The philosophy of Oops is: something just happened, Oops!

That is considered to be the sophisticated mainstream philosophy of post-modernism, beginning in mid and late modernity. Oops! It is quite an arrogant philosophy, I might say, because what it claims is that if you don’t believe in oops, you are somehow infantile. There is something wrong with you. What’s wrong with you? You don’t believe in oops? This is the theology, or the philosophy, of oops.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Oops!

Oops has a lot of names. You can call it reductive materialism, or you can call it scientism, or you can call it logical positivism, or you can call it Neo-Darwinism. There are lots of names. There are lots of distressing disguises to Oops, but it has been quite successful. It has dominated the legacy cultures of most of the world, and most of the leading intelligentsia in the world actually believes in Oops! And they have managed to pull off this kind of enormous sleight of hand, which is: if you don’t believe in, oops, you’re somehow regressive or infantile.

There is a second philosophy, and the second philosophy can be summarized really very simply — and it’s really that simple.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Because something is going on.

Forget about what is going on. There are a lot of somethings going on; there are a lot of names for that. David Bohm called it the implicate order. The lineage of Solomon called it Adonai Hu Ha’Elohim, and Kashmir Shaivism called it Atman is Brahman, and other people called it Matt, and other people called it Geist, and other people called it sunyata. There are a lot of names for the self-actualizing Cosmos, the self-organizing universe. Some people just call it nature, when they ascribe this kind of infinite potentiality to nature. But the idea is: something is going on.

Something is going on versus Oops!

God wants to talk

Now, what is going on?

What’s going on is very hard to know. It’s very easy to get into dogma. You’ve got to really open the Eye of the Heart, and the Eye of the Spirit, and the Eye of Consciousness, and the Eye of Value to really understand what’s going on.

But whatever is going on, one thing’s clear:

Infinity desired intimacy.

In other words, Infinity wanted to have a conversation. There was a desire. There was an imperfection in Reality, and the Infinite wanted to talk. Reality exists because God wanted to talk. It’s that simple actually. Whatever that means, the Infinite desired intimacy — and intimacy means, let’s have a conversation. When you can’t have a conversation anymore, there is no more intimacy.

Sometimes what happens in a relationship is: more and more conversations are off the table. You can’t talk about this, and you can’t talk about that, and you can’t talk about this unless you’ve got ten stages of preparation in order to make sure to insulate against all the potential slings and arrows. In most relationships, most real conversations are off the table, so relationships become non-intimate. An intimate relationship means there are no words that can’t be spoken now. That means there are no conversations that cannot be had.

That doesn’t mean that all conversations should be had at all times. That would be moral idiocy, obviously. You require a context, because, as we said, erech is value and erech is also right relationship between parts — right context, right place. For everything, there is a time and place under the sun (and over the sun). But essentially, even if you have them once a year, all conversations can be had. That’s what it means to be intimate.

Infinity desires intimacy means Infinity wants to have a conversation, which is why the inception of Reality is described by the lineage as wanting to talk.

I am not going with no-thing desiring some things, because I want to stay in the language of conversation. It is a conversation. God wants to talk. Desire is always desire for a conversation. That’s why we said sex is conversation.

Goddess wants to talk.

She wants to talk. She wants to chat.

She wants to flirt.

Ultimately, she wants to make love, the kind of erotic union with the Divine as a form of conversation.

To have a conversation means that instead of having a contradiction, you have a paradox.

For example, how could the Infinite possibly talk to finitude? In fact, how could there even be finitude? The Infinite means that the Infinite is everywhere in everything. If the Infinite is everywhere in everything, how can you have another? You can’t, because that’s a contradiction, right?

Until you understand that the Infinite itself is an open set.

• Infinity is reaching.
• Infinity desires.

What does Infinity desire? Infinity wants to talk, it wants to have a conversation.

With who?

With you! With you!

That’s why you exist. Infinity wants to talk to you.

It’s shocking. That’s called prophecy.

• Prophecy is a conversation in which Infinity initiates, and Infinity evokes.
• Prayer is a conversation in which the human being initiates, and the human being invokes.

But both prophecy and prayer are a conversation. We turn to the Divine to talk, which is different from sitting to meditate. It is infinitely more powerful.

We need to meditate. Meditation has value. There is a silence of presence. There is a ground of being, which we can access in the process of cultivating awareness. But meditation is placing our attention on awareness. Chant, prayer, prophecy is placing our attention on allurement, and allurement is desire, and it is desire for conversation, for contact.

That’s what Eros is. Eros is the desire to make contact, which is the desire for conversation.

The Infinite and the intimate are in conversation with each other

Conversation always means I am at my edge, and I now desire to meet you at your edge, where we exist is not automatic separate selves. It’s not what Daniel Kahneman identified as “fast thinking” (and won the Nobel Prize for this); he says that fast thinking, which is automatic, unconscious, non-reflective, reflexive, habitual, is virtually all of the human being — not all of, but virtually all of. And Alex Pentland talks about that which can be controlled in the human being — and organized, and manipulated (this is the word that he uses).

No, no, no. That’s not true

• The human being actually is reflective.
• The human being is free.
• The human being is profoundly feeling and uniquely feeling.

I have this capacity to actually have a unique conversation, where I am at my edge —

• I am not in my automatic,
• I am not in my habitual,
• I am not in my superficial,
• I am not in my non-reflective,
• I am not in my reflexive,
• I am at my edge, and I am naked before you,
• and I want to find you, and I am open.

I am open to your impact, and I want to feel you feeling me, and I want to feel me feeling you, and my desire at the edge is for us to have a conversation.

When the two cherubs, who are above the Ark of the Covenant in the sanctum sanctorum in the ancient Jerusalem temple of Solomon, turn towards each other, they are face to face, and then out of the space in between them emerges prophecy, prayer, or the word of the Divine.

• The space between the cherubs is conversation.
• The word of the Divine is conversation.

And it’s not that they are a sacred conversation. All conversation is potentially sacred. And all of life is potentially sacred. The greatest revolution of Hasidism, which Martin Buber talked about, is that it broke the distinction between ordinary secular conversation and sacred conversation. The master said there is no such thing as that split. There is no secular conversation and sacred conversation, all conversation is sacred conversation.

Life is a series of conversations, and conversations means: I bring opposites into conversations with each other.

The Infinite and the intimate are in conversation with each other.

• Instead of Infinity getting lost in an infinity of indifference, an Aristotelian infinity of indifference,
• or intimacy getting lost in a pagan local shamanic intimacy of impotence, which is often what they did —

Infinity and intimacy come together, and we have an Infinite Intimate who is infinitely potent and lively intimate in every moment, who is uniquely in conversation with you.

What this all means is Reality is conversation, and conversation is:

• a conversation with myself, intra-subjective: I’m talking to myself;
• a conversation with you, inter-subjective, I am talking to you;
• a conversation with Reality, with She, with He, prophecy and prayer —

but it’s all conversation, and it’s a unique conversation. No conversation is the same — and so, She the Infinite wants to talk to you.

There is a practice in the lineage of Solomon to go walk in the forest, walk in the forest and don’t meditate, talk to She, walk in the forest and just talk. And in the language of one master, Nachman of Breslov, talk as when one friend has a conversation with another friend. That’s how you talk to the Infinite. You talk to the Infinite conversationally.

There is a unique conversation for which I was born and you were born, and I talk to the Infinite conversationally, with that sense of immediacy and that sense of authenticity. And in that conversation, nothing is off the table, so the Infinite can meet the intimate.

Free will can meet determinism, life can meet choice, the individual can meet the community.

Truth is in paradox, and paradox means conversation

In other words, all the things that are opposites, meet each other in conversation —

• yearning and fulfillment,
• beauty and ugliness,
• body and spirit,
• laughter and serious,
• God and human,
• autonomy and communion,
• order and chaos,
• control and surrender,
• the hero and the villain,
• choice and no choice,
• wisdom and folly,
• uniqueness and sameness,
• anger and equanimity,
• death and life,
• silence and speech,
• open and closed,
• success and failure,
• depression and joy,
• wave and particle,
• solid and fluid,
• intelligent and random,
• heresy and faith,
• power and powerless,
• certainty and uncertainty,
• purpose and no purpose,
• perfection and imperfection —

— all of them meet each other in conversation. The second you pick one and you split them, there is no conversation.

It’s not yet harmony and synthesis, not yet. No — it’s a conversation.

Harmony and synthesis is the end of the conversation. No, no, it is a paradox! Notice I didn’t use the word harmony. I didn’t use the word synthesis. intentionally. No, it’s paradox. I stay in the conversation even though I haven’t gotten to synthesis. I am not in harmony.

I have a dear friend that has come to many teachings that I’ve been privileged to give since 2015, and we have a disagreement on a vision going forward. In the future, we may get to harmony, but we are not going to get to harmony now. We really have a different vision, for lots of reasons. And we have done a great job of staying in the conversation, and I am super proud of both of us for not trying to resolve it in an immediate harmony or an immediate synthesis.

Now, in the end, what we’ll get to a synergy. We will be able to synergize. In other words, paradox can bring me — not to synthesis, but to synergy, meaning something comes together by staying together.

That’s exactly what a relationship is.

A relationship is: we are not going to leave the conversation.

We are going to be respectful in the conversation. Respectful conversation matters. There is no room for abuse in conversations. We can bring our full passion, our full love, but it’s always tender. It’s never fierce without tender. Tender and fierce are never separate from each other. They are always in conversation. It’s never hard without soft. It’s never outrageous without deep, profound, spacious, calm. It’s never being without becoming.

In other words, truth is in paradox, and paradox means conversation, that’s what it means.

We are now, at this moment, in society of polarization, which is anti-value. It’s called in the lineage Sitra Achra, the other side. It’s an Aramaic word. The other side means there is no conversation. I’ve turned away — the other side. It’s on the other side, there is no conversation. The conversation is over.

Stay in conversation. Doesn’t matter if it gets hard. Don’t turn away.

I would say the essence of demonization is the refusal to be in conversation. We only demonize the one that we stop talking to.

Now, it’s not that we just dialogue, but when we have a conversation, we are willing to be loved open by the other person.

It’s why sex is conversation.

Sex is conversation because I allow you to penetrate me. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the male or the female. It’s irrelevant if there are two males or two females. That’s not the point. The point is sexing involves a radical receiving and a radical penetration. We’ve got to both be receiving and both be penetrating. That’s what real conversation is.

And then, we synergize, but we’ve got to be willing to stay in conversation, and sometimes not one conversation. A great love means we’ve stayed in conversation, and we’ve gotten to this gorgeous synergy of a new wholeness —

• which is a new Eros,
• which is a new possibility,
• which is a new intimacy,
• which is the move from polarization to potency,
• which is the move from contradiction to paradox —

which is paradise. That’s Homo amor, that’s the New Human, that’s the New Humanity.

I just want to thank everyone today for staying in conversation. I know that the conversation started slow. That’s one of the things we need to do. We need to start slow.

Let’s start haltingly. I would say, we started today haltingly. We were finding our way. We don’t start with wow. Let’s find our way — and I just want to thank everyone, from the bottom of my heart, for staying in conversation. What a joy it’s been to be in conversation.

Something is going on.

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