What do your opinions have to do with spirituality?  Turns out when we enter a conversation only looking to share what we know, we miss out on the mystical potential that comes from opening up to what we do not know in dialogue.  An editor of Evolve Magazine in Germany and Cultural Anthropologist, Dr. Nadja Rosmann shares how connection and dialogue liberate the human spirit into possibility.

Biography: Dr. Nadja Rosmann has been a member of the evolve editorial team since October 2014. Nadja is a cultural anthropologist with a focus on identity research. She works as a journalist, communication consultant and scientific project manager primarily on topics from the fields of business and spirituality and operates the think.work.different weblog.

Quotes Worth Sharing:

• Performance culture has a destructive impact on humans.

• When people feel isolated, they feel like they have to fight for themselves to survive.

• Connection is the aliveness in any living organism.  You wouldn’t ask a tree why he is standing there and growing just like you wouldn’t ask why it is important for people to connect.

Show Notes: There are so many systemic structures in our work organizations to improve individual performance but not to connect people inside those organizations.  Companies want more productivity but the systems they create to produce more create also more isolation.  But more isolation creates less productivity.
 
The real solution is we must change the structures within which we live and work. 

Connection is a sphere you shouldn’t try to observe from just functionality.  Connection is aliveness like in nature or any living organism.  You would ask a tree why he is standing there and growing just like you wouldn’t ask why it is important for people to connect.

The entry points to cultural change and human well being might be different than what we used to think.  And this is also a very spiritual perspective.   You have to trust in something greater than just what is functional.  We simply have to explore, experiment, and experience it.

At the same time, the process of connecting doesn’t leave behind thinking, it just puts it into a different context.  Opening oneself up, being more transparent, makes us more aware of our human fragility.  If you can see in one other person’s eyes the same fragility you sometimes suffer from you connect on a completely different level and then realize that we are all connected.

We all are hiding, in a way, with fake smiles or stoic distance because we are still looking for better ways to connect but we don’t know how.

Sharing our fragility really needs time because we are just at the beginning of how to learn this. 

Evolve Salons creates a space where you don’t have to get too personal.  Getting too personal is not our main interest.  Sometimes if we are getting too personal we expect something back.  But our focus in on just opening up in the dialogue, not getting a response back.  And we have to be aware of how profound this is – a real cultural shift - because there really are no places to have an experience like this.  And you can’t really know it but let it come in through the back door through experiencing it. 

You kind of have to trust that between human beings there is an unknown potential and trust – trust and try.
No one is doing anything in the dialogues we structure for Evolve Magazine. We are only holders of the space.  We are just helping others feel and become aware of the space they are inhabiting and the potential and resonance between two people.

What creates more opening in dialogue?

1. Being interested in what you don’t know yet. Often we think our contribution to any dialogue is to contribute what we know.  But it limits us to what we already know. 

2. Listen to what and how people are speaking but also very present for the potential in the space between you and I. We have to allow for the landing of our words but the unfolding of our connection.  I cannot worry about where this content leads.  

What closes dialogue down?

1. Insisting on opinions – your opinions.

2. Insisting on your own agenda.

It is very limiting to the potential in dialogue to try to occupy a space with your own agenda.  It can get quite mystical and spiritual, when you consider not doing this.  We have to be free enough to not stay so long in one’s own thoughts so we can connect to another’s thoughts.  It is the land of no-self.

Meditation helps to get into the listening mindset.  If you can sit for awhile on a cushion and just open up - it is easier to remember this inner gesture when we are in dialogue.

And I do fail at this listening.  But we need to get rid of these feelings of guilt and shame when it comes to failure because failure is the best teacher of all.  Especially when it comes to listening and dialogue there will never be a space where we totally have it right.  If we think we do then we aren’t listening any more.
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To find more info about Nadja’s work and Evolve Magazine
One World Dialogue https://oneworldindialogue.com/
Visit Dr. Nadja Rossmann’s Blog: http://www.zenpop.de/blog/
Evolve Magazine: https://www.evolve-magazin.de/​

​We hope you enjoyed this dialogue with Dr. Rosmann.  As Sidewalk Talk has doubled in size since February of 2019 to today, we need monthly supporters to keep us providing free listening on sidewalks.  Upcoming and past guests include Harville Hendricks, Spring Washam, Parker Palmer, Charlie Easmon, David Kessler, George Kinder, Howard C. Stephenson, and Ashanti Branch and the list goes on. You can invest here or please share this conversation with all those who would be lifted up by it.