 Laura Lee explains
why she does all this. We’re here to
learn. To Enjoy some good and fascinating conversation as we go
exploring – (so "conversation for exploration" is well named, yes?)
and it’s a big universe out there, so we’ve been at it since 1990. I value conversation. I talk my way through life. This is not the
way of everyone, and I find it interesting that I choose for a mate
someone who relies on ‘direct knowing’. My husband Paul and I find
that we ‘track’ each other’s growth; we seem to be in sync. We don’t
try, we just seem to end up, looking for answers and insights into
the same issues at the same time. But we go about it very
differently. He will sit in meditation, or wake up from a night’s
dreaming, and just ‘know.’ He has remarkable intuition that speaks
to him so clearly. He trusts it, and needn’t go any further.
For me, intuition is just a starting point, and while I listen, I
find it is the inspiration for lines of inquiry, that send me out
researching. I’ll check out some books, but more importantly, I’ll
start asking a number of different people about their angle on a
certain issue.
Maybe it’s the generalist in me -- heard, leveled as a criticism,
that knowledge in america goes a mile wide, but an inch deep.
I love sitting down with those who have been researching their field
for the last 20 years, who have dived deep and stayed focused. They
have seen things that I never will, under that microscope or through
that telescope or wherever they are peering or poking. They bring us
a piece of the puzzle. And what is fun is putting that piece
together with the pieces all our guests, and gradually, we fill in
the landscape, we get to know some new territory.
This may be a crazy personal strategy I’ll share with you, and I
think it must be based on a personal conviction I’ve held all my
life -- that I’ve been here before, many times. I often ask myself,
what can I do in this lifetime that I couldn’t in others? What is
special about the opportunities of right now, right here? I knew at
12 years of age that I didn’t want children. I just knew that I’d
been there, done that, and that I didn’t need to this time around.
(I am content to stand on those sidelines and cheer on the women who
go for it!) |
I am thrilled to live in this day and age when we can know so much,
from the microcosm to the macrocosm, through the technologies that
allows us to see deeper and farther than ever before. I don’t think
Science is reading all the data right, or has collected all the data
so it can read it right. I don’t think Science has a complete set of
assumptions to work with – it’s left consciousness out of the
equation, and its not going about its job with the deep sense of
spirituality that would transform mere knowledge into wisdom.
Science lacks the connection to the grand web of life that is the
foundation of the life led by our indigenous ancestors -- and for
the major portion of the human experience thus far. Our scientific
age is the anomaly here, and we have yet to get it right.
And so I’m drawn to the indigenous worldview, and to wisdom
traditions the world over. It’s a rich tapestry that the human
family has woven over the centuries, and I find it comforting to
plug in, through the spoken word, and beyond – appreciating art and
artifacts, music, dance, ceremony, and Nature.
And, now you may think me really crazy. But I feel that it’s not
just here that we reincarnate, it’s not on many other worlds. We
are, deep in our hearts, explorers and tourists. Why would our
eternal souls choose to experience only this tiny planet, beautiful
though it may be, when there is an entire universe to discover? Our
souls can wear, for the length of an incarnation, the biological
suits of many planets and forms and species, I’m sure.
But I think conversation can go much farther than that, and serves
us in ways that we don’t readily recognize. We are a talking species
that, in talking all the time and for so many purposes, takes
talking for granted. Good conversation is my favorite vehicle for
learning. doesn’t get the credit it deserves, I think, as a vehicle
for learning. And conversation, the kind that lifts you to new
heights of the Aha Experience, that gets your neurons buzzing in
that most delicious way, is overlooked as a form of entertainment.
So we aim to have some fun here . -- Laura Lee
copyright 2003
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