Twelve years ago, my wife Jetty persuaded me to take part in an Insight Dialogue retreat organised by SIM and led by the American retreat teacher Gregory Kramer, author of the book Insight Dialogue, which has since been translated into Dutch and published by Asoka.
I was hesitant. I would actually have preferred to spend a week at home. Since 1979, I had already attended many retreats, some lasting as long as three months. All of them had been silent retreats, with only a brief exchange with the teacher every two or three days. I could not imagine that a short seven-day retreat would add very much to my practice.
During the retreat with Gregory, I became familiar with the six guidelines used in Insight Dialogue (ID) for interpersonal mindfulness practice in pairs or groups: Pause, Relax, Open, Trust Emergence, Listen Deeply and Speak the Truth. Using these guidelines, we were invited to explore specific areas of life, such as desire and impermanence.
It eventually became one of the most revealing retreats I had attended in many years. I became aware of all kinds of inner patterns and emotions that tend to remain much more hidden during ‘ordinary’ silent retreats. It was confronting, yet at the same time deeply expansive. Practising with the six guidelines helped me, and continues to help me, to integrate communication much more fully as a valuable field of practice.
Gregory is clearly inspired by Buddhism. The ID programme therefore has a distinctly Buddhist atmosphere and uses many concepts that can also be found in Theravada Buddhism. I was very pleased when, a few years later, I heard that Florence Meleo-Meyer and Phyllis Hicks had developed a more secular communication course, inspired by Insight Dialogue and created with Gregory’s permission.
This programme is officially called IMP, Interpersonal Mindfulness Practice, or Interpersoonlijke Mindfulness in Dutch. It is gradually being used more widely in healthcare and other professional settings. Research into the programme has now been conducted at the Centre for Integrative Psychiatry in Groningen, and we hope the findings will be published soon.
Both programmes offer great depth and richness within the unpredictable world of communication, where we so easily become entangled in limiting habits and inner patterns. They bring a fresh dimension to meditation practice and offer something hopeful: mindful communication is something we can learn.
The following poem, Listening Is Enough, by Marinus van den Berg may express something of the value of one of the six guidelines: Listen Deeply, or Listening with the Heart.
You may think you need to say something.
You may think you need to cheer me up.
You may want to see me laugh and enjoy life again.
You may think you need to comfort me and offer advice.
What I ask is this: will you listen, again and again,
to my story, to what I feel and think?
You only need to be silent,
to look at me and give me time.
You do not even need to understand my sorrow.
But, if you can, simply accept it
as it feels to me.
Your listening presence
will change my day.
Frits Koster
This blog was previously published on:
https://www.vipassana.nu/