Inner Dialogues | July 09, 2010

Inner Dialogues - well, that's the name. The name of my first book. It has not come out yet, but it will. I have the name now with me. It came to me as I was traveling in the train on way to work one morning. For a moment, I took a pause. What does it mean? What is it for? Will I really write a book?

Well, if I look at it, ultimately, it seems that we live life all in dialogues. The more I see of life, the more I realise that what I create and live in is my view of the world. I feel safe inside, and the world feels safe outside. I feel insecure inside, and I am scared outside. And I realise that it is so beautiful. Just as in a movie, multiple dialogues can keep happening, so is the case with me. I suspect it happens to others too - including you, the reader.

What is a dialogue? The online etymology dictionary has this to say:

dialogue: early 13c., "literary work consisting of a conversation between two or more people," from O.Fr. dialoge, from L. dialogus, from Gk. dialogos, related to dialogesthai "converse," from dia- "across" (see dia-) + legein "speak" (see lecture). Sense broadened to "a conversation" c.1400. Mistaken belief that it can only mean "conversation between two persons" is from confusion of dia- and di-. (Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dialogue).

So, basically it is about a conversation - of coming across to each other. When I speak with myself, I find that I do not always come across. Speak with myself !

Yes, I find that I talk with myself. Not like the way I used to in childhood as part of growing up (well, to confess, sometimes, I still do that); but as a way of communing with myself. I go out and see a finely dressed person and I say to myself, 'what a gentleman!' The next moment, I see him spit on the road and my thoughts are: 'ughh! what a disaster.' Usually, it happens this way.

So I come back to my dialogues. No one hears them, or knows about them. Yet, they feel it. I however, not only feel them, but also know and hear them. Remember how as a child, our parents would catch us and ask, '...so what are you thinking...' God - how I hated it, to be caught. But then, come to think of it, they perhaps experienced the outcome of the inner dialogue within me. And that inner dialogue creates my reality. I experience them in various forms: thoughts, emotions, feelings - call it what.

If you thought that the Inner Dialogue is about having a thought, then you are both right and wrong. Right because it is indeed a thought. But wrong because the Inner Dialogue is that primordial conversation that I have with myself that there is no one really there in that space to be there with me. I am utterly alone in that conversation. It is that conversation which blends all myriad forms of expression known to me: feelings, thoughts, emotions. It is that which keeps me alive to myself and to this world OR it sometimes divorces me from myself.

The inner dialogue is my inner frame of reference. Long ago, I read that behavioural scientists use a peculiar terminology: "schema". In their view, each individual has a "mental schema" which put very simply is a 'mental model' of the world. And we live our life based on that model. I suspect that that mental model is composed of the Inner Dialogues.

But sometimes, I pause and reflect. What is reflection? Comes from the verb, 'reflect'? And that is what a mirror or any polished object does. It shows what is. And the degree to which it shows is proportional to the degree to which it is clean and shiny. The degree of cleanliness and shine is proportional to the effort gone into cleaning or the process of making it. So does that mean, that for my reflection, I need to have something clean within?

Well - what does that mean? I suspect it means that I should be able to examine the thought for what it is? And not add on other pieces of data. Something that the humming voice within my head does. And what happens in these moments of reflection - of the pause?

I stop. I find that when I just stand, I do not see motion elsewhere. In the motion of my thought, is there a motion of the next - one I say, the other, something within me does. Call it 'sanskar' or 'karmic imprint' or 'memory' or whatever. And that is what I mean by inner dialogue. This inner dialogue is what keeps going on - till I pause and reflect when if I am blessed, it slows down.

But more often than not, the dialogue goes on. In my understanding, this dialogue goes on irrespective of our level of consciousness - awakening, dreaming, sleeping. In wakening state, I can hear it the loudest - if I pause. As for dreams, I guess it is obvious - they are the conversation. I am not so source of sleeping, but I suspect that it is still there - for I wake up to the feeling of having been there as I lay sleeping.

One way to become more aware of myself, is to examine these dialogues within. I realise that the next step I take is based on the outcome of the inner dialogue held previously. And I continue and I go on. I have found it of meaning to stop and pause from time to time. And just see the dialogue. Sometimes, I have found that it is not just a dialogue - it is a complete script. Other times, it is a full play. Sometimes, it is just a playful banter - at other times, it is a wall of stone, as strong a wall as any medieval castle or fort would have.

Over time, I have learnt that it is this inner dialogue that gets entrenched and makes my reality. It is the inherent tension between the uttering of the 1st statement by myself and the 2nd by something within (I as of yet don't want to label it - but you may equate it with a variant of 'subconscious'), I find that creativity exists. That is the space for choice. Of an alternate. Of creation of an alternate reality. Of examining a possibility.

But what exactly is an 'Inner Dialogue?' I seem to have meandered all over as usual. To be honest, the answer eludes me. Perhaps, that is why I search for it. Quantum physicists tell us that reality is changed in the way it is observed. In my keenness to observe this Inner Dialogue, and give a definition to it, I seem to be changing it. Honestly, I don't want to chase. I seem to like the fact that I can sometimes (and I wish I could do it more often) just observe and be with it. That moment is so empty and yet so full of itself. So nothing of fullness and so full of nothingness.

It is to these Inner Dialogues that I pay my respect to. Respect: you may ask why? For it is these inner dialogues that have helped shape and sustain me - to be in this world. Granted that not all are the ones, I would like to have, they nevertheless have served a purpose - a purpose that I chose at some moment. Only when I can respect what is, can I move to 'what could be.'

What could be: _________ (fill it for yourself). In the space and pause between the Inner Dialogue, there is nothing and there is everything. And that too is an Inner Dialogue.