Card #150 – Socratic Dialogue

This is a propitious time for conscious discourse with a spiritual ally. The ally could be a person, an oracle, an entity or your higher self.

Most conversation is chatter, small talk, there to keep lines of social connection open with the least substance and thinking possible. If you have a commitment towards consciousness, this type of communication will be inadequate and irritating after a certain point. It is crucial to have spiritual allies with whom challenging, thoughtful discourse is possible. The Socratic dialogue must be guided by intuition as well as thought or it quickly descends into Philosophy 101 amateur hour. Something needs to be at stake in such conversation, and there needs to be explicit and/or implicit permission to give challenging feedback. Such Socratic dialogue does not need to be interpersonal. If you have the capacity for it, the dialogue can be intrapsychic, your mind can dialogue with your higher intuition and these psychic functions can be personified in the imaginal space within. Patanjali, in his yoga aphorisms (which are at least two thousand years old), says “Always, everywhere be talking to people about God.” If you take that literally you would become a very tiresome person indeed. What I think he means is that you should talk to other people at the highest level that they are capable of engaging. We should not inflict Socratic dialogue on those who do not meet it halfway. As Aleister Crowley says, “If I tell a man something he is not ready to hear, it is the same as if I have told him a lie.”