We are all looking for answers but maybe we are not asking the right questions. We talk about the next big deal, the most organic brand of chicken nuggets, the hardest Pilates class, the failing economy–the external circumstances in our life but…

What if we evolved those conversations?

In an interview on NPR, late Irish poet John O’Donahue asked,

“When is the last time that you had a great conversation, a conversation which wasn't just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture. But when had you last a great conversation, in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew, heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you on to a different plane... a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterward... I've had some of them recently, and it's just absolutely amazing, like, as we would say at home, they are food and drink for the soul.”

Maybe all we are really asking for is…
a meaningful conversation.

As a tour de force, it is subtle, soft, quiet—seemingly unessential. It will not save Aids babies, rescue refugees from Afghanistan, clean the water in Tanzania or keep the polar ice caps from melting. Not yet.

And yet, what if, individually and as a culture, we developed a more emotionally empathic vocabulary? Deepened our grammar for what it means to be awake, aware? Expanded our syntax of self-awareness? What if we learned to talk about what really matters to us? Discovered our selves in each other? Each other in our selves?

Realized that we are all connected? To everyone and everything?

What if we went beyond the sound byte? Had conversations about how certain music, poetry and art makes us feel more alive? More beautiful than we ever dreamed we could be? More loving? More able, simply, to be? What if we taught our children how to do this? Our schools? What if we became a culture that rediscovered our inner resources?

What if we began changing the world one conversation at a time?

THIS is Evolve The Conversation. A movement in which we shift the focus from the external circumstances (our job titles, income, weight, successes, failures, appearance) and personal biographies (where we come from, went to school, what happened to us) that currently separate us, to the internal beauties and truths that resonate, inspire and connect us. A movement in which we create a space for transformation by honoring the power of conversation to awaken, heal, delight and inform us.

The movement begins by hosting a series of salons (think cocktail party meets book club meets metaphysical therapy) across the country and world that feature artists speaking about deeply transformative topics, like liminality. It will be filmed to form episodic web, a series for broadcast and a documentary. It will be adapted into a play, a book, and an educational template for schools. It will be created with the intent to travel the world, to transform it by raising our level of awareness of the quantum connectedness we all already share.