Conversations Overview

In addition to running teaching and learning courses, The Proteus Initiative offers spaces for, and the facilitation of, living conversations between and within organisations, social formations, and groups of actors. These are all too rare opportunities, in the busyness of our product- and delivery-driven lives, to engage in real reflection about the particular issues which concern us. Space to get to another level of depth, to meet each other in new and essentially human ways, and to collaborate on explorations into the heart of our concerns.

It is easy to dismiss the notion of conversation, of real dialogue. Another talkshop, perhaps, another round of meeting; and nothing to show for it. Money spent on hot air, without visible impact. Little material output to show for our time and money (apart from reports which no-one reads). But no. Real conversation, Goethean conversation, has real power of transformation in it; it is, in fact, the harbinger of consciousness, the herald of a new way of being. Conversation opens things up, allows us to go deep within ourselves, and from within ourselves, to find the other. Conversation is as much about listening as about talking, as much about understanding as being understood. Real conversation has magic in it, the power of raising the unconscious, the hidden, the avoided, the denied, to consciousness. Where we cannot escape the responsibility of our own behaviour.

Much has been written about the power of conversation and dialogue. There are many forms which conversation can take. It is not just about people sitting around talking aimlessly. There is rigour in genuine conversation, an attempt to unearth the matters at hand, to reveal the hidden, to understand ourselves and the other, to explore the inner nature of the thing at hand, to articulate understanding and so enable new understanding. Conversation enables polarities, mired in their own assumptions, to speak to each other, so that a third, and new, reality is able emerge.

Conversation can be facilitated, but facilitative method does not consist of tools, techniques, exercises, procedures. Facilitated conversation is not about meeting procedures or training courses. At best it is about a free yet focused and intelligent coming together. Without predetermined or even expected outcome; the emphasis is on the free emergence of observations, thoughts, feelings and ideas from the intricacy of conversational, personal, contextual and conceptual interaction. At the same time, the process is not simply “left to happen”; it is guided, facilitated, encouraged to develop, to deepen, to enlighten.

The Proteus Initiative’s task is to ensure open, free and continuous evolution of the process of conversation, to enable an intelligent reading of the matter at hand to emerge. To support and ensure that there is human warmth - which is different from agreement - between those participating; to challenge tendencies towards superficiality, jargon, the glib and fast conclusion or the stuckness of a relationship or pattern. To keep the focus alive and open, yet always focused, and intent. To be awake to where the process is going, where it’s been, how it’s coming into being. To anticipate, and find the right question to move the conversation on. To work with those participating to make meaning of the conversation; be able to draw the threads together, help weave the forming tapestry. Be aware that anything may emerge; be ready to let go.

The Proteus Initiative will, from time to time, convene such conversations - perhaps at the Towerland Wilderness Centre - around important subjects, and will extend invitations accordingly.

Alternatively, organisations, social formations and groups of actors can request The Proteus Initiative to facilitate such conversations around subjects, and at venues, of their choice.