David Bohm — Dialogue and Deep Listening
In April 2017, I attended the World Work Seminar in Porto Heli, Greece, hosted by Arny and Amy Mindell. It was a profoundly moving experience that touched me to the bone. That year’s theme was Deep Democracy in a World of Divides: Shifting Consciousness in Politics, Economy, Ecology and Relationships.
What stayed with me most was the understanding that real democracy is, at its heart, a practice of deep and open-hearted listening—listening without an agenda or preconceived outcome. True presence. It is a quality I continue to endeavor to cultivate.
The physicist David Bohm once wrote:
“If we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature, we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or otherwise defends his own ideas.”
In On Dialogue, physicist and philosopher David Bohm explores how genuine communication might help us move beyond the fragmentation and division that shape both our individual lives and the world we share.
For Bohm, dialogue is not debate. Debate often involves defending a position, persuading others, or winning an argument. Dialogue asks something quite different of us: that we come together in a spirit of inquiry, suspending our assumptions and becoming aware of the thoughts, beliefs, and reactions that shape how we see the world.
The word dialogue, Bohm notes, comes from the Greek dialogos: dia, meaning “through,” and logos, meaning “word” or “meaning.” Dialogue, then, is about meaning moving through and among people. Rather than belonging to any one individual, understanding can emerge from the space between us.
One of Bohm’s central ideas is the practice of suspension. He does not mean suppressing or abandoning our opinions. Rather, we learn to hold them lightly—to notice them, examine them, and make them available for shared exploration without immediately defending them. In doing so, we begin to see our own thought processes and the often-hidden assumptions beneath them.
Bohm believed that many of our conflicts arise from fragmented thinking—the tendency to divide ourselves from others, one group from another, humanity from nature, and thought from feeling. Dialogue offers a way of becoming aware of this fragmentation and, perhaps, allowing something more whole to emerge.
True dialogue therefore requires:
- Listening without immediately judging or preparing a response
- Suspending assumptions and deeply held beliefs
- Noticing our emotional reactions and impulses to defend
- Speaking honestly without trying to persuade or dominate
- Remaining open to uncertainty and the emergence of something new
- Allowing meaning to unfold collectively rather than insisting on a predetermined conclusion
In essence, Bohm’s dialogue is the practice of creating a space where no one needs to win, where assumptions can be held in the open, and where genuine listening allows new meaning—and perhaps a deeper intelligence—to emerge.