Values and principles of DLG
Values
  • Compassion. We seek to return to universal compassion in all our work, and remind each other to notice in ourselves when anger, fear, panic, or insecurity may be influencing our thoughts or behaviours. It is also important to remember to take care of ourselves, especially when the urgency of our predicament can easily lead to compassion burnout.

  • Curiosity. We recognise that we do not have many answers. Instead, our aim is to provide a space and an invitation to participate in generative dialogue that is founded in kindness and curiosity. Valuing curiosity also invites us to challenge some of the ingrained or ‘invisible’ assumptions that underpin our worldview. For example, is the anthropocentrism implicit in the notion of ‘societal collapse’ helpful? How can we acknowledge and counter the privilege that often underpins this discussion?

  • Respect. We respect other people’s situations and however they may be reacting to our alarming predicament, whether they are first learning about impending collapse or already experiencing it. We seek to build and curate nourishing and inclusive spaces for deep adaptation.
Principles
In our unprecedented times, we acknowledge there is no right or wrong way of going forward, no special people who have all the answers. This is why the first two principles of holding a DLG space are rooted in the spirit of curiosity:

Principle 1: Co-creation

We invite anyone interested in DLG to share, explicitly, their own practices. These can be based on individual experience (practices that people have found helpful when going through their own DLG journey) or emergence (ones that emerge from DLG spaces as people gather and feel inspired to create together), as well as exploration of a multitude of well-established facilitation processes that assume that knowledge is relational, provisional and subjective.

Principle 2: Open dialogue

A DLG gathering provides a safe space for loving generative dialogue. It is about exploring questions together rather than giving answers. Thus, we invite community starters and facilitators to create gently held spaces to support collective learning, activated by their own presence and energetic awareness of group dynamics and flow. Our predicament and deep adaptation to it also calls us, as individuals and as a collective, towards deep emotional, psychological and spiritual work. We believe that this work is best done within a spirit of compassion.

Principle 3: Awareness

In a DLG, we come together to deepen our individual and collective consciousness by remaining with what’s present within each of us here and now. From that space, we aspire to enable and embody loving responses to our experiences related to our predicament, with a focus on reducing harm. We also invite awareness of the ways in which the ‘invisible’ stories of progress, patriarchy, power, and ‘othering’ – which have collectively shaped the journey towards our predicament - may still be moving unconsciously within each of us and continuing to influence the ways we make sense of the world and relate with each other, so we can acknowledge and seek for ways to move beyond them.

Principle 4: Connection

The story of separation is part of what got us here in the first place and we are not equipped to navigate our times in isolation. As we come together, we come into a space to relearn how to connect with each other, as well as to the greater force that lies beyond us from a space of compassion and curiosity. We welcome the different names everyone will use to call that force (Nature, Universe, God etc) and explore how we can relate with what’s unknown within, outside and ahead of us.

This brings us to the third core value of DLG - respect. This is the basis of the last 2 principles:

Principle 5: Inclusivity

We welcome differences that might have kept us apart before (age, gender, sex, ethnicity etc) and allow them to sit next to each other in a spirit of solidarity and equality. We also direct that inclusivity inward by inviting ourselves and each other to welcome any energy, to show up fully and express the variety of what arises in our bodies, hearts and minds.

Principle 6: Ownership

Everyone is invited to step into a DLG space with a clear intention that each of us seeks to recognise our experiences as our own, rather than blaming others or debating our claims about other people or groups. When welcoming all energies, we need to be ready to face conflict and the uncomfortable emotions that might arise as we seek the way towards ourselves and each other. This is why we ask questions that help us take responsibility for our own experiences, returning to our center and leaving space for others to do so too. For example: “Why is it that this emotion that I am experiencing right now is triggered within me? What is the way in which it serves my growth and that of the collective?”.