A soul is instincts in dialogue.

I don’t know how it happens. Somehow language articulates silent or inarticulate reality into a unified, diverse manifold.

Dialogue unites that which is separate and alien and dialogue differentiates that which has been been reduced to sameness.

When two (or more) speak with one another in the spirit of dialogue, when all hear and are heard by a Thou, and when all are prepared for profound surprise — a new being arises among them and each participates in the life of this being.

Analogously, when we allow a suppressed spirit within us to finally speak (and as a rule such marginalized spirits are rough and ashamed) — when the person we think we are finally hears more of himself… a new being arises among the instincts and each instinct participates in this new being: a new, renewed I.

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A person who speaks to himself is not insane, if he is aware that it is to himself he is speaking. He is insane when he speaks to some alienated element of himself as if it does not belong, as if it is something outside of himself.

In fact, a person is sane only if he does speak to himself.

Analogously, humanity itself is sane when it speaks to itself as itself — when individual people speak to one another as fellow human beings.

Humanity is insane when it delegitimatizes some part of itself by excluding another person from the dialogue that constitutes humanity.

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Does humanity have a purpose, or a trajectory, or a wish, or a possibility to become a universally integrated humanity of all, in whom each and all participate, beyond each and all, comprehending and incomprehensible? A sane humanity that neither ostracizes nor reduces? A humanity of knowing finitude, living toward greater finitude, living toward an infinity that cannot be mastered by any means?

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The more a soul outspirals into wholeness the more its ear can hear the fullness of the human voice. And also, the more one outspirals, the more fully one’s soul integrates. The integration without and within are the same movement. This is the positive reason for listening.

This outspiraling dialogue is my “ought”. (At its best) it wants to be a positive, desired ought. (At its best) it knows it cannot be demanded. It cannot live in condemnation of its opposite.

Nobody should feel ashamed for not yet wanting dialogue.

Faith: Things can be better.

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Articulate: from Latin articulatus, past participle of articulare ‘divide into joints, utter distinctly,’ from articulus ‘small connecting part’.

Zip! Zoop!