The opposite of submission to social control is personal voice.
Yours and mine. It’s not waiting for some maestro to do it for us. It’s less looking at youtube videos to see what others are saying about it. Those others have their voices and their challenges.
We have our own.
More and more of us are becoming aware that our social reality has been and is being shaped by us in profound ways that challenge the roots of what we took for real. That shaping over time has also challenged the roots of who we think we are.
Image by Signe Ruddy
To work with this is personal work. Traditionally that’s involved meditation and spiritual practices. I like those. But I also like dialogue and deep personal conversation very much and practice them daily.
Today I practice “Dyad Meditation” most days, in addition to personal meditation. It’s a springboard to opening up a field of possibilities involving personal voice. It’s an exploration of the present moment, face-to-face with another in a focused protocol.
Dyad means pair. Dyad Meditation is fairly intense AND safe, which is not always a natural pair. Here I’ll just say a bit more about it and invite you into an exploration.
Although waking up today will take many forms, all will I think - must - include something beyond analysis, some form of personal practice. I also think that doing it in company with others some of the time will open a lot for a lot of people fairly quickly. I have a small mailing list and don’t expect to change the world but Dyad Meditation work is changing a lot of individual worlds, including mine.
What does dyad meditation look like?
It looks like doing intentional consciousness work on yourself in real time with another who’s doing it too. Historically this doesn’t happen as a practice, something that can be repeated daily or even many times daily. We’re not looking at the wall as is done in a meditation hall, or our private pillow. Rather we’re being witnessed in the moment with our personal work in telling our truth. It’s not uncommon to move into spaces of non-separation and connection beyond performance. Frequent experience of that is deeply helpful.
In the zoom age, two people go into a breakout room and follow a careful protocol to ensure a rigorous in-it-together exploration of personal experience. The way I do it, to increase “collective intelligence,” there’s time to share what’s coming up between participantsi n the “we-space.” There’s also time for the different dyad pairs to notice together what’s coming up in the we-space. Often it’s something new and beyond what emerged in the siloes.
This listing of a few points is not complete. However, the dyad typically includes:
Timed periods, e.g., five minute intervals of speaking and listening.
A question or prompt to be responded to. For example, Tell me what’s important for you to say that you haven’t been able to say; Tell me who you are, or Tell me how you hide in relationship.
Importantly, neither Speaker nor Listener refer to any part of the other’s process. They don’t mess their material with the other person’s.
A kind of “warrior-monk” clarity of the space is maintained in a number of simple ways; e.g., the Listener maintains eye contact with the Speaker and doesn’t drink water or do anything else. The Speaker contemplates the prompt and when they notice something that’s true for them about it, they tell it to the Listener. They don’t reference the partner or carry on a social conversation.
There’s more but this is an indication.
Dyads Meditation originated as part of a search for Enlightenment and this is still the norm. I practice there as well but it’s application to other purposes are clear to me and some others. I do see it as an alternative to being voiceless before arbitrary authority, a kind of strength training for personal voice. When we have better access to our voice we can use it how we choose. (Doing related processes and writing about them after were an important part of how I wrote Evolutionary YOU: Discovering the Depths of Radical Change.)
I offer Dyad Practice to people who want to use this format for clarifying personal voice and intention in the face of social control. It’s a safe way to speak and work with the unspeakable. Reply to this email for more info.