Making Art With Dialogue

The word dialogue derives from “dia” meaning “through” and “logos” meaning “the word,” particularly the “meaning of the word.” Dialogue holds the image of a river of meaning flowing around and through the participants.

The late theoretical physicist-philosopher David Bohm sees that “meaning is being.” He says that a change in meaning is a change in being. Sharing meaning in dialogue with each other actually changes our being, as both artist and art.

Here at the center, members of the Bohmian Dialogue Group suggest a workshop that informs our practice of meditative awareness while listening and speaking. Monthly meetings on fourth Fridays will explore Bohm’s theory of “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” as an intelligent and compassionate approach to understanding and changing ourselves and changing our society.

He points out that thought is a system that includes body, emotion, intellect, reflex, and artifact. Dividing these parts from each other and from the wholeness of the system is the hidden source of the social, political, and environmental crises facing our world.

Bohm proposes that dialogue in the spirit of inquiry involves learning together “how” to think coherently, rather than “what” to think incoherently. Sustaining unconditioned awareness together unfolds insight into our relationship of “Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement.”

The workshop meets the 4th Friday of each month, 10 am – 4 pm, with optional bag lunch for noon hour. Gualala Arts $50.00.

Harriet Oden, Ph.D., received her doctorate in Philosophy and Religion, Concentration in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2008. She did her doctoral research on the topic of Bohmian Dialogue, inspired by her personal contact with the physicist David Bohm and Krishnamurti during several years working at the Krishnamurti Foundation of America in Ojai. Trained in psychotherapy under Stuart Sovatsky, Harriet’s practice invites people to discover meaning through acceptance and attention in mind and body. She has led workshops at Esalen Institute, practiced privately in Berkeley, and currently lives in The Sea Ranch.