I'll meet you there

I attended a discussion today on "Why are we here?", from which I wrote the previous post. As with many discussion groups I have attended, there seemed to be this sense of urgency among the participants - urgency to get their point of view across, urgent to be heard, urgent to answer the challenge leveled at their pet theory.

Many people either had "the answer" or were looking for one. It was an intellectual discussion, which I do enjoy, yet I found I was seeking to hear people's experience of wrestling with the question more than the answers they had found. For a while, I sat there inwardly criticizing them for being too much into theory instead of experience, and busily putting together a compelling argment for why they should not try to prove things. Even when the paradox of that struck me, I found it hard to give up.

And I thought to myself, what would a meeting be like if everyone stopped trying to draw conclusions, and just experienced each other's life instead? Would we all just sit there and stare at each other? How would we talk? Could we still ponder the mysteries of life without aiming to come out of meeting having decided who was right and who was wrong?

Yes - I have experienced that, and I know it is possible. It is the yin of conversation rather than the yang - it is the listening instead of the talking. It is talking just enough so that we can listen to the experience of others, rather than listening just enough so we can talk about our own ideas.

Seeking meaning through rational discourse is a bit like Barry Manilow singing "I write the song", which was written by Bruce Johnston.

I have had enough of theory. I crave touching someone's soul, and having their soul touch mine. I long to reconnect to the intimate web I was born into, the mystical world of connection with everything in me and around me.

"Out beyond right and wrong there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

 Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'

Doesn't make any sense." - Rumi