In this piece, I’m looking at dialogue as a living, breathing organism—not a performance, not a transaction, not a strategic chess match of egos. (Switch)
A dialogue as an invitation into the relational sacred—a realm where complexity is not a threat to be controlled, but a companion to be courted (Seed)
What happens when you leave the switches aside and contemplate the seeds? When you jump into the composting cradle, the field of co-becoming?
I am currently deepening my studies in supervision with Thinking Environment’s faculty Sophie Stephenson (The Thinking Project), and it is like a hot bath of aliveness and joy, a midwifery of ideas and inspiring connections.
We look at scaffolding conditions where complexity can be practised in a transformational dialogue.
Dialogue as a relationship where life is surging, courageous, nourishing, and breaking through.
A place where words, contexts, feelings, sensations, textures, sounds, all contribute to “seeding”, nourishing, not “switching”.
Two archetypes of interaction:
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Switch: deadened mode of communication rooted in hierarchy, fear, and interruption. A ditch of scripted monologues pretending to be freedom. It silences. It drains. Tedious. It upholds the status quo by dressing up disconnection in the costume of conversation.
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Seed: A relational ecology where words are not weapons or trophies, but compost and pollen. Dialogue here is a field of emergence—where sensation, silence, surprise, and slowness are honored as much as speech. This mode does not seek mastery or closure, but mutual nourishment and unfolding.
I’m exploring, contrasting, jumping from one to the other.
The opposite of a dialogue looks like a gathering that can intimidate (Switch), a hierarchical interaction where limiting assumptions, interruptions, and judgment create an atmosphere that silences authentic expression, depletes energy, and maintains the status quo
It leads me to feel unsafe or hesitant to express my deepest thoughts.
I find intimidating or forceful exchangesproduce shallow discussions, reinforced biases, and missed opportunities for deep, genuine connection and creative thinking.
So I’m longing for dialogue as a means of learning together (Seed), a way to reconnect when we haven’t seen each other for years, and we rest and share as if we’d left each other for a few hours only…. and it is deep from the get-go.
Seed: I’m longing for dialogue beyond words.
Where our life vocabularies enmesh, respectfully, daring and intimately.
Seed: We’ll know that we won’t hear all the other person’s thoughts, or grasp their entire life in 20 minutes. We’re travelling together just for a little while, and that’s ok.
Because, how we are is, as Gregory Bateson says, “not just that, and nothing more.”
When do you notice yourself “switching” even when you long to “seed”?
What interrupts your capacity to stay in the nourishing ambiguity of dialogue?
What might it mean to let the relational field—not just the participants—set the pace and direction of conversation?
What is unclear? Attractive?
Where is the curiosity?
What are your freshest thoughts?
