The Light Show  

Thanks to those who joined us for a transformative show on Tuesday... <p>

As Teresa shared her early experiences of prejudice, words began to flow about the pre-judgments that abound in our current world, about the body senses of separation that follow from these positions, about the deep need to listen for authenticity and appropriate actions.  In the inner realities that we inhabit, there is a reason many of us shy away from politics and many other arenas, where judgment and separation abound, and where very little real listening is apparent.  It is deeply painful...

It is time to move into these inner realities with courage and determination, to clarify and embrace all the ways in which we avoid what we prefer not to experience, to be present with what is so... and thus to enable the changes that we so desperately need in our world.

Please join us on Thursday, October 30, 5 pm PT, where we will continue THE conversation, welcoming guests from Canada who have followed their inner truth into some new forms of political engagement.  Clare Peterson and friends from Buddy's Group on Vancouver Island will bring their experiences to our conversation, exploring the potential of authentic relationship to foster new models of women in politics...

As we live into this time of political polarity and economic crisis, are we remembering in our communities and neighborhoods that it is time to come together to make a new future happen for all our children and their children no matter how we vote or what we choose to do with our money? Now is the time to open our hearts to love the whole world, to understand that we're all afraid, that we're all doing our best from our own experiences, that we all care about what happens to all the children. Let us live in our hearts which don't seem to make the other guy wrong while we're making our choices.
For 3 weeks before the election this show will be conducting a campaign to engender a higher conversation, inviting guests, music and art to assemble and create a buzz about unity, community, and neighborliness in a time of crisis when every heart is needed to create a new kind of society where everyone wins.

Real conversations seem to require a spaciousness that can be challenging as our lives become full and busy.  On Thursday's Conversation Campaign show, we focused on how we decide to say "yes" when different aspects of our lives invite us in... 

I (Jeanie) shared several moments when I  have received a kind of inner guidance... "to listen" as a 14 year old, to "share my voice" as an adult... As I explored my experiences with these "invitations", I could feel how I had "heard" only part of the message in both cases... that I was dividing my world into listening and speaking, either / or. 

It became clear that choosing to say yes first requires a listening spaciousness, where the full truth of the invitation can emerge.  And that the listening quality filled with our presence can infuse even our speaking, thereby bringing a greater precision to everything that we say.
 
We concluded that sometimes holding a "lifeline" for each other can bring us back into the spaciousness, the timelessness where something unexpected and new can arise in conversation.  And what would life be like if each conversation was indeed a lifeline into the solutions we are so desperately in need of in these times? 

Join us and contribute your experiences and wisdom on Tuesday's October 28 Show , 5 pm PT, where will continuing to explore ... having conversations as if our lives depend on them.  We think that evolving this new kind of spacious conversation may indeed be absolutely essential for the coming together that needs to occur at this moment in human history!

The Conversation Campaign
Conversations that take us to the Heart of the Matter

What is in your heart today? What is true for you? This is the place to share what is most longing to be revealed among us. In our hour together, let us listen for and speak to what matters most. In conversation, let us with each other share our unique expressions of life; our gifts of curiosity, compassion and insight. We are here with you, sharing conversation -- woman to woman, heart to heart, soul to soul -- across the globe. Join us as we embark and partake in conversations that take us to the heart of what matters!

When she was a child, listening to her parents sharing difficult moments, Bonnie Kelley learned to listen between the words and thoughts for hope and possibility.  Then she would pull her new "thought blanket" around her to feel safe.  As she reflects in our Conversation Campaign segment today, opening to the spaciousness between the thoughts has grown into a way of "being in conversation", a pattern she now understands to be healthy and essential for conversation that is real and alive.
 
The "infinite possibility between thoughts" (Gregg Braden), the "continuum created by the listener" (David Whyte), and Bonnie's life experiences point us toward those aspects of ourselves which are open and free, and able to listen around the thoughts instead of defending against them.  When we notice the tension in our bodies or between people, we can draw upon this open re-source always with us, speak to ourselves or others in "whimsical" ways that shake up the tendency to freeze in our thoughts without the possibility of evolving past them.

Julie Heyman joining us in reflection, felt that many of the spiritual phrases we know so well... being in the moment... with two or more... coming into resonance... are phrases that in the essential experience are like the child-like innocence of listening between the words.  Referring back to our childhood experiences, we all may find learnings that are being called forward now, to be shared in real conversations that take us to new understandings.
 
Please come join us for Thursday's Conversation Campaign show, where we will continue exploring our collective wisdom, this time through the experiences of Jeanie DeRousseau.

Welcome to The Conversation Campaign, an on-going conversation about things worth thinking through, listening for, reflecting on and evolving together. In response to the deep political partisanship and economic crisis of the times, we – Jeanie DeRousseau, Bonnie Kelley, and Teresa Ruelas – have stepped forward to invite a field of connectivity and heart-based higher thinking, a conversation that brings us together, fully engaged, fully alive to something bigger and greater and good beyond our individual lives. Please join us in nurturing this field in a way that has us slow down long enough to let the Silence in, to loosen our grip on what we know, to open the space for something new to emerge in our midst. Together let us call one another into conversations that access that newness for the sake of us all. Let us assemble and create a buzz about unity, community, and neighborliness in a time of crisis when every heart is needed. The future is here and now…let us begin again.