Show Transcripts

SW09: Conscious Conversation

Hello, I’m Irwin Kula and welcome to “Simple Wisdom.”  Over the last 20 years, I’ve had the amazing experience of traveling around the country, bringing the wisdom of an ancient tradition to the challenges of daily living, in the hopes of helping people make their lives a little bit more creative, meaningful and loving.  

Today we’re going to talk about talking. There is probably nothing we do more – in fact, we could be called the speaking species.  First, we are going to explore the power of speech itself – how significant it is in our lives, how it pervades everything.  Then I’m going to offer a definition of conscious conversation that I think you’re going to see as a little bit different from the normal ways in which we think about conscious conversation or ethical conversation.  And then I’m going to apply that definition to some of the day-to-day ways in which we speak.  

First, let’s start with how powerful words are and how powerful conversation is. You may remember from your civilization courses in college that the world is divided into four different groups – there are the inanimate objects, the flora/plants, the fauna/animals, and then there’s the human being.  In many wisdom traditions, the human being is called the speaker.  In fact, it could be that instead of calling us homo sapiens, especially now that we know there are a lot of other animals that have intelligence, we might be called homo garrulous and I really mean it.  We’re talking all the time – either we’re talking to people or we’re having internal dialogues in which we are talking to people on the inside of our minds – we’re hectoring them, we’re entertaining them, we’re demeaning them, we’re praising them.  And if we’re not talking to people on the inside in our internal dialogues, we’re talking to ourselves.  Our mind is always working – we’re giving ourselves lectures, we’re giving ourselves mini speeches, we’re having running dialogues with ourselves – so words are everywhere.  Actually, one of the things that distinguishes us from other animals is that we use words to describe just about everything: objects, thoughts, ideas.  Animals do send signals and messages.  They can signal that “I’m here,” “I’m going to attack you,” “I’m going to court you,” but human beings create words to represent every object, every emotion, and every thought – which means literally we create worlds with our words.   

There is a wonderful, cute wisdom story from the Talmud, the classic Jewish text, that captures this.  After God created the world, God brought the angels who were quite upset about the world being created.  They weren’t interested in the sharing of the turf, but God brought the angels and invited them to name all the creations.  The angels couldn’t do it, so then God brought Adam – His prime creation, His pride and glory – and said: “Adam, you name everything.”  Adam names everything and then turns to God and names God.  Now think about what it means that we name God.  Forget about the God up there – that’s not what I’m talking about – but this wisdom is really saying that the most important of our ultimate realities to which we have access is because we use words.  That’s the power of words.  Now we know this power. Wisdom traditions say things like in the beginning there was the word “logos.”  Jewish wisdom says in the beginning when God created, God created with words: “Let there be light,” and there was light.  These are all ways in which different traditions capture this central insight on how powerful words are in our lives.  And the thing is that words are so powerful, but I’m not quite sure we take words as seriously as their power.  

I literally thought about this today.  We spend a lot of time thinking about what clothes we’re going to wear. What do you think is more powerful – the clothes we wear or the words we speak?  Clearly the words we speak, but the words just come out – they flow out.  We spend almost no time thinking about the words.  We’ve all gotten into trouble. Don’t you cringe sometimes?  I cringe sometimes when I’m impatient and yell at my children as the words are coming out – I cringe.  Or with a spouse or a lover -- you know you make that joke about her weight or the clothes and you didn’t mean it that way, but it comes out that way and the hurt lingers. There’s probably no one thing we can do that would more transform our lives than to get conscious about our conversation – to get conscious about our conversation.  

There’s a wonderful story that captures how difficult it is to control our words. The story is told that a man was traveling through the town continuously scandalizing the rabbi and spreading rumors about the rabbi.  Well, actually, after a few weeks he felt bad.  He went to the rabbi and said: “I want forgiveness – what can I do? I want to repent.” The rabbi said to him: “Here is what you have to do. I want you to go home and take a pillow – a feather pillow – and cut the feather pillow open and I want you to scatter all the feathers.” The man went home, took a feather pillow, cut the pillow, scattered the feathers in the wind and came back to the rabbi and said: “Okay, I’ve done it – am I forgiven?”  The rabbi said: “You have to do one more thing.  Gather the feathers.” The man was startled.  “What do you  mean – gather the feathers?  I can’t gather these feathers. It’s impossible. They are scattered everywhere.”  “That’s exactly the problem,” said the rabbi. “You do want to make amends for what you did. But it is as difficult to make amends for words one has spoken as it is to gather feathers – they are scattered in the wind.” Well, that’s our lives.

So what do we do?  Can we have a definition of conscious speaking that maybe can help us? Well, here’s the one we grew up with – at least I grew up with this: “Always tell the truth.”  “Honesty is the best policy.”  “Never tell a lie.” We all learned this.  “You can never go wrong if you tell the truth.”  Actually, this goes back a long time.  This strand of conscious conversation goes all the way back to the 4^th century.  St Augustine, the important church father, said that if you tell a lie you lose eternity.  And in the 18^th century, one of the greatest philosophers, Immanuel Kant, took that idea and taught that lying or telling the truth was a moral absolute and he even said to save a life –you’re not allowed to lie. That characterizes a world view.  Anybody who talks about truth that way and lying that way -- and it’s an extreme view – really believes that there is such a thing as objective truth, that there is this truth out there that we all could see, that’s the truth we have to seek and that’s the truth we have to speak,  to have conscious conversation.   

But Jewish wisdom has a profoundly interesting take on this and it is suggested by this story.  It’s a story about Hillel and Shamai, two sages from the 1^st century, who were debating about what you are supposed to say to make a bride feel great on her wedding day.  There is this tradition that continues even today in traditional circles of dancing and singing around the bride and groom so that they feel great because they are supposed to be like Adam and Eve starting a new world. Well, the discussion is – the debate is – what do you say to the bride?  Hillel said, “Everybody exclaims to the bride: the bride is so beautiful – the bride is so gracious.”  Shamai, anticipating Kant 1700 years later, said: “What are you talking about, Hillel?  But what if the bride is ugly?  Do you still say she’s beautiful?  That would be lying.”  The rabbis decide that in fact you must say that she is beautiful not because you’re lying -- and here’s the genius – not because you’re lying, but because there is a deeper truth to the moment.  You see, there are two kinds of truth.  There is the truth that is objective.  There is the truth that you recognize and that everyone can share, but there is another kind of truth.  There is a deep subjective and personal truth that is connected to our relationships and to the moment.  There is the kind of truth that has to do with how I upgrade this relationship – how I enhance this relationship – or whether I diminish the relationship that is servile to the immediate context.  We all know those kinds of things.  Here’s an example of the difference between objective truth and subjective truth – both of which are truths.  My wife asks me before we’ve gotten to the party, when we’re still at home getting dressed, “Honey, how does this look?” and I think it looks terrible.  Since I have a trusting relationship with her, I will say, “Honey, I’m not so sure.”  But if she asks me the exact same question when we’re already at the party, I still may feel that it doesn’t look good.  But at that moment there’s a deeper truth. There’s a subjective truth that has to do with who she is as a human being. That subjective truth is, “Honey, you look great.” Both are true.

Conscious speech – conscious conversation – is to understand the difference between objective truth and subjective truth and to know when to tell which.  Here’s an example with my kids.  If my child does a report and shows it to me a week before the assignment is due and I think it’s not up to snuff, I will tell my child, “You could do a little better.  You could do a little more work on it since you still have a week.”  But if she shows me the same book report at 7:30 in the morning when the bus is coming at 7:40 and I don’t think it’s up to snuff, I will say, “Honey, you did a good job – I want to see it when you get it back”  It’s not that one is lying and one is telling the truth.  That’s what we have to understand.   

The genius of the Jewish wisdom on this is that both statements are true.  One is an objective truth, an abstract notion of truth that everyone shares.  By the way, it is essentially because everyone shares it that we think it’s true and, between  me and you after the 20^th century that we had, whenever too many people share the same truth I’m a bit concerned.  I like the subjectivity of truth.  I like to be able to understand who we are – to understand that the truth has to do with our social relations and is sensitive to this particular moment in time.  After all, if all of these wisdom traditions teach that words create worlds, I take that seriously.  You know what words create?  They create the social world that we live in together and I can use the same exact words to hurt or to heal – to harm or to inspire – simply dependent on the relationships.   

There is a wonderful story from the bible that is actually quite radical – that makes this point.  It is about Abraham and Sarah, the patriarch and matriarch in the bible.1  Abraham is 99 and Sarah is 89 and three messengers come to tell Abraham that Sarah is going to have a child.  Now you can understand Sarah is overhearing this and she finds this somewhat amusing and begins to laugh.  By the way, laughter is the name Isaac.  Sarah laughs and she says, “I’m so old and he is so old, how is he going to make love to me?”  The next verse has God coming back to Abraham and saying, “How come Sarah laughed about how old she is?  And God leaves out that Sarah made fun of how old Abraham was.  All the commentators go nuts.  They say, “How could God omit the truth?  How could God lie?”  And they all say the same thing. When truth comes in confrontation with peace – peace has to win. Think about our families for a second. Think about how often we say things that are true but are hurtful and somehow we think it’s morally okay because it’s true.  

This is true with gossip all the time or what is called lashon hara – a kind of evil tongue.  When words are true they can sometimes be the most damaging. For example, you say to a person who you know was not invited to a party, “Hey, did you hear about the party?  I got to go to this amazing party and the house was beautiful and the food was great.”  It’s true, but you said something true that has been hurtful to the relationship.  Why did you say it?  Subjective truth means you must ask about your motivation.  Objective truth says motivation is irrelevant.  Which view of words you take will create a different world?  It is not an accident that in Germany in the 20^th century where Kant came from, people deliberated whether they could lie to save people from the Nazis.  We have memoirs of clerics who actually made the decision to lie and in their memoirs they are racked with guilt – rather than celebrating being able to save lives.  There’s a tremendous difference between objective truth and subjective truth.  Now I don’t want to be misunderstood.  It’s not that we should go around lying – you have to know which truth to tell when -- but conscious conversation demands that we understand the difference between the two forms of truth.   

One of the places in our lives besides in our interpersonal relationships at home – one of the places where this distinction is most serious – is in the issue of critiquing another person.  It says in the Book of Leviticus that you’re actually supposed to critique a person for something that they do wrong to you because otherwise you’ll feel a grudge.  The verse says, “Don’t hold a grudge – love your neighbor as yourself.”  So you’re supposed to critique.  Think about what trust there is in the capacity of human beings to grow and develop and change.  There actually is a prescription to engage people when they hurt you – that’s an indication that subjective truth is so important.  You’re not allowed to just let it go because the wisdom tradition knows you can’t really let it go – the hurt festers.  Now watch subjective truth applied to critique.  Let’s say someone hurts me. They humiliate me in public.  If I have to critique from a subjective experience, the first thing I have to ask is: “Did they really humiliate me?”  Objectively, they obviously did – but subjectively did they really humiliate me deep down?  Let’s say they did and you come to it. Then you have to ask a different question: “How am I going to critique?”  I could come out then and simply say, “Hey, you critiqued me – you hurt me.”  You can say something like ”you always do that.”  Did you ever hear that?  You turn one event into an “always” -- that’s not critiquing from an understanding of subjective truth.  Conscious conversation requires you to ask about your motivations for critiquing:  “Am I genuinely looking to create a new equilibrium and stay in the relationship?”   

Subjective truth cares most about the relationships or, to put it in wisdom language, what subjective truth cares about is two images of God.  You’re an Image of God and have infinite value and I’m an Image of God and have infinite value.  And it’s two people with infinite value conversing and that makes all the difference in the world.  Subjective truth commits to relationships, subjective truth commits to human beings, subjective truth always asks about the people in the room and about the consequences to the feelings of the people in the room at this particular moment.  Objective truth is abstract and cool and it’s very important for us to understand the difference between these two forms of speaking.  Only if you can find what’s really going on with the other person can you even get the subjective truth.  By the way, what does that indicate?  What it really indicates is that you have to care about another human being in your speech.  Well, do we?  How often do we actually think about the other person as we’re speaking?  How often do we think about the self-esteem issues of the other person?  Of the day that other person had?  Of whether that other person is coming home tired or not tired?  Of whether a child had three exams that week?  Truthful conversation can’t be had – unless you understand the other person in his/her context.   Which world would you rather live in – a world in which people speak to each other objectively or subjectively?  

I want to live in a world in which the other person cares about me before s/he speaks – and not about some objective truth that is true in general.  I want a world in which when someone has something to say to me that’s tough, s/he says it in a way that actually cares about my growth and my development.  I want to live in a world in which, when someone speaks to me, amongst the things s/he has in mind is to raise me up and not diminish me, to treat me like an Image of God – not as if I’m some cool outsider receiving some abstract truth.  The most important quality of subjective truth is how integrated the words we are saying are in the relationship and I can’t say that enough.  We’re taught over and over again that truth is independent – don’t tarnish the truth with our emotions.  Don’t tarnish the truth with our emotions?  Our emotions are who we are as much as any other part of who we are and, by the way, that also goes to understanding and forgiving people when actually they use uncomplimentary words in a moment of anger.   

Once you understand subjective truth – it’s not only how you speak, but it’s how you understand and listen to people.  When we think of conscious speaking – conscious conversation – we generally think of ourselves speaking and very rarely listening.  Conscious conversation includes listening because if it’s conscious and relationship is at the center, another person is there. Conscious conversation means you  don’t gobble up all the oxygen in a conversation.  For example, conscious conversation in an argument implies that an argument is not primarily something you win or lose, but something that two people engage in to try to clarify what they mean to each other and even to evoke new insights.  Have you ever been in one of those arguments where what it was really about was winning?  The other person was aiming to destroy you, so even if you win it feels terrible.  Conscious conversation says no.  There are two of us here.  The argument is real, but the goal is a resolution in which both of us could still live in the same world.  Think if we applied conscious conversation to public discourse in America.  Instead of the goal being to humiliate your opponent, it would be to create new kinds of connections and inevitably new sorts of policies.  Instead of the conversation in the public domain being out to kill each other, it would be for the social good because before you said anything you would have to ask how my communication is going to affect the relationships. 

I want to suggest a few practices that can help us become conscious of this kind of conversation. The first practice is a “criticism fast.”  I’m critical.  I get home and, if the house is not in order, I’m criticizing – if the kids don’t have their homework, I’m criticizing and I feel terrible about it.  I learned this from a very close friend, teacher and author, Joseph Telushkin – a “criticism fast” -- and it’s really good.  Note who you tend to criticize most and abstain from offering any criticism for a 24-hour period each week..

The second practice is a “gossip fast.”  No gossip - it’s very easy to know what gossip is. Just ask yourself , “Would I say this if the person was standing here?”  And it will be so easy.  And the last practice is to make somebody feel better with words every single day – one person – use words to upgrade.

If you do these practices and you take seriously the difference between subjective and objective truth, you will understand the wisdom of the Psalmist who teaches that the person who wants and earns life is the person who guards his tongue from evil.  That’s “Simple Wisdom” and I’m Irwin Kula.  Thank you very much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again.