1

The Future of Humanity Final Project

Nayeli Vallejo
OGL 340: The Future of Humanity: Dialogue in the Workplace
Dr. Michael Pryzdia
June 23, 2022
Word count: 2,759
 2

Part One: Seven questions for consideration:

1. How can I stop blaming external forces and take accountability for my actions when I

truly believe it was the cause of an external force? How do I convince my mind that there

is no one to blame?  

2. Is our daily routine killing our creativity and causing us to decay internally? Do we have

to switch our day to day lives to begin questioning everything we consider reality?

3. Do I have to give up my religious beliefs to reach a level of truth I have never seen or

experienced before? If religion is a wall put up from our experiences and belief systems

that create perceptions and assumptions, do I have to suspend it?

4. What would a world without boundaries and borders look like? Is it too late to ever be

able to change that since countries, nationalities, passports, identifications already have

been established?

5. If we are slaves to our past, how can I free myself from it to think without shadows?

6. Can proprioception of thought help battle depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and many

other mental disorders that exist?

7. If dialogue is truly beneficial, why isn’t this practiced in grade school so kids get exposed

to this at a young age? Would it be impactful if people learned to dialogue early in their

life?
 3

Journal Entry 1: Week Ending May 22nd, 2022

The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge has opened my mind to think about my learning

disabilities and how they have affected me throughout my life. Sometimes I fail to see the assets

I have to offer to the world and focus on the flaws. This can be helpful at times because it makes

me aware of my weaknesses allowing room for improvement and growth. But am I embracing

my assets and using them to the best of my potential? I would have to say no. My biggest

learning disability is “I Am My Position”. I am an extremely loyal person when it comes to

relationships, jobs, and even services such as getting my nails done and where I take my car to be

maintenance. I tend to confuse my identity with my position because I get so complacent with

my job role and forget that I am capable of so much more. I wonder, if I got rid of this learning

disability, where would I be today professionally? I need to start believing in myself and go for

positions I have wanted to go for but have been too afraid to apply for because I don’t feel I

would succeed. Currently, I go into work and do my job at a level of what is expected from me,

nothing less and nothing more. I need to learn that my job is not my identity, and I can achieve

so much more. One should not allow the perceived boundaries of their job to keep them from

spreading out and doing so much more for the organization they work for.

Journal Entry 2: Week Ending May 27th, 2022

This week’s readings were a bit difficult to understand because I have a hard time understanding

physics. The Implicate Order theory by David Bohm implies that there is wholeness, and we are

all interconnected with everything and everyone. I had trouble understanding the unfolding and

enfolding part of the theory. I do, however, understand that all our thoughts enfold and affect the

rest of the world. There are consequences that we don’t see that affect the rest of humanity and
 4

environment. Sometimes we act without seeing the true effect it has on everything and everyone

around us.

According to David Bohm, the creative energy dissolves when we get stuck in a repetitious

cycle. He used the words “decay internally” when referring to civilizations who vanished due to

loss of creativity. It made me look at the way I live my life today. My life is very repetitive

following the same routine almost every day. These routines do not allow room for creativity

because we go day by day accepting everything as it is. I rarely ever question anything I learn or

that is told to me. I recognized that this is not okay, and I may be causing myself to decay

internally. We don’t need to be scientists or artists to flourish our creativity. I currently accept

the reality that I see through my perceptions, and I need to start asking more questions and

opening my mind more to other ideas.

David Bohm also made a great connection between science, artist, and spirituality. I had never

seen the three as similar before reading his teachings. It opened my eyes to a connection I had

never made before. The three utilize creativity to achieve a new mode of perception. I feel like

the three see life through a different lens than what the average person would. They are just

trying to see a different reality than what is presented to us by society, knowledge, and

experiences.

Journal Entry 3: Week Ending June 1st, 2022

Reading about dialogue really opened my mind to new ways to truly understand people and build

coherence. It made me think to the days when I was a kid and we gathered at the dinner table to

talk about anything with my family. We weren’t talking to an agenda or to solve a problem, we

were just talking about anything. Little did I know that we were having dialogue except for
 5

having our assumptions heard. I don’t think it ever got too deep where we listened to our

opinions and suspended them. I would love to try this at the dinner table now with my children. I

usually just ask them how their day was and what they did but rarely do we ever just talk about

anything.

There are so many things from the readings that just captured my attention, and I became

fascinated with. The idea of suspending our assumptions was my favorite. I am very good at

empathizing and trying to understand other people’s reasons for the actions to the point that I feel

uncomfortable sharing that with other people because I will be judged as siding with them, but I

don’t condone their behavior, I just understand why their behavior is a certain way. For example,

serial killers. I have watched so many documentaries and videos on certain serial killers and I

have come to understand that their upbringing shaped who they became as an adult and how they

thought. A lot of them experienced abuse growing up and were exposed to things children should

not be exposed to. I do not condone serial killers for taking lives, I just have a better

understanding of why they became “monsters”. School shootings is a very sensitive topic

because they are tragic events that transpire in our country today. Considering what has

happened in Texas recently, I couldn’t help but to think of Bohm’s ideas with dialogue and how

dialogue can help find the root to a problem. We have a huge problem that the nation faces, and

everyone is trying to find ways to fix it, but we must get to the root of it. Have we engaged in

dialogue; would we be facing these horrendous acts of terror today? If politicians sat down and

had dialogue, brought their assumptions to the surface, such as we can’t get rid of guns because

we have the right to bear arms, or ban guns because they ruin lives, and come to an agreement,

would that bring change? Each party is holding on to their assumption as an absolute “necessity”

and that is where we are failing. This problem will never be solved unless people listen to one
 6

another’s opinions and realize their necessity is not a necessity at all. How I wish we can bring

Bohm’s teachings to practice during times like these so we can build a harmonious society where

we can understand one another because at the end of the day we are all one whole and each and

everyone’s decisions and actions affect the entire human race.

Journal Entry 4: Week Ending June 6th, 2022

During these week’s readings, I learned what the function of proprioception does. It’s fascinating

how we don’t know how important a function like proprioception is until we lose it. The

example of the lady where she woke up in the middle of the night hitting herself and thought

someone was attacking her due to a loss of proprioception was very interesting (Bohm, 1994, p.

121). David Bohm’s idea that our thought lacks proprioception is very scary to me because

thought is creating problems and we get the allusion that thought isn’t responsible for anything.

My whole life I was under the impression that we were free to make our own thoughts and we

are responsible for our thoughts, but really, it has its own way of movement that is connected to

our feelings. As soon as I read this, I applied this to my anxiety. Sometimes a scary thought will

pop up in my head and I begin to feel sick to my stomach, my heartbeat begins to accelerate, and

I begin to feel fear. I always ask myself, why am I thinking these things and tell myself to think

positive. This is thought not having proprioception. It’s creating a problem within me and saying

it’s not the thought, it’s me thinking that that’s the problem. Sometimes thought is coming from

our past experiences, what has been taught to us, our memories, culture, and beliefs (Bohm,

1994). I noticed that when I watch the news, I see very negative things happening around me,

and this triggers fear in me. Thought will pick up bits and pieces from something I learned from

the news and come up as a fearful thought. I must create awareness and acknowledge that
 7

thought is arousing the feelings that make me feel anxiety. By becoming aware that it’s thought

doing all of this, I can hopefully stop experiencing so much anxiety.

Journal Entry 5: Week Ending June 11th, 2022

Krishnumarti’s videos were fascinating to watch. I enjoyed listening to his word of wisdom.

What particularly grasped my attention was that we have built fences of beliefs and perceptions

that have created problems and divided humanity (Core of the Teachings, 1980). Everything that

I have ever learned, believed, saw, and experienced has been built up as fences that block us

from being able to see the truth or the reality. Our thought is influenced by all these ideas and

perceptions, and we feel the necessity to need to defend them and hold on to them. This made me

think of this as almost as hoarding. We want to hoard all our beliefs and not let them go because

we have some sort of attachment to them because they are all we have ever known, and we

identify with them.

He talks about time being the psychological enemy of humankind and we are slaves to time

(Core of the Teachings, 1980). This resonated with me so much because we are so stuck on our

ways from stuff that we have previously learned, experienced, witnessed, and lived. This has a

huge influence on our thought and the way we perceive things. I wonder how I can move

forward in life without being a slave to time. This has caused many problems for me because I

am always fearful of things that have happened before to happen again and to happen to me. This

exact mentality has kept me from doing a lot of different things and taking risks in life. I have

blocked many ideas out just because I have heard someone else already had a bad experience. I

need to be aware of what the thought system is doing when an opportunity comes up for me to

try something new.

 8

Journal Entry 6: Week Ending June 16th, 2022

Assumptions shape the way we communicate our thought and most of the time we are not aware

they are assumptions. This is an exact example of thought not being aware of what it’s doing. Up

to this point, I learned that thought is a system of movement that is creating problems but doesn’t

acknowledge that it’s doing it. We must build proprioception to become aware of what thought is

doing. Learning to suspend incoherence seems like something very hard to do. After reading that

we must step outside of the thought and observe it and decide what we want to do with that

thought, I began to practice this theory. It is very beneficial, but I find myself stopping at every

thought to observe it and question it. I wonder how I can do this in a way that it can feel more

natural and doesn’t feel like I am doing a lot in my mind. For example, proprioception in our

body feels very natural and we don’t feel we have it because it’s something that just happens

without us having to acknowledge it. Has Bohm and others been able to create proprioception of

thought in their lifetime?

Being aware of the feelings I am feeling caused by thought will be very helpful for me in my

personal life. I am already applying this, and I really enjoy having the ability to acknowledge that

I am only feeling this due to the thought. I have the choice to accept that or change it. This is

particularly beneficial when dealing with anxiety. Thought itself is controlling my senses,

emotions and everything I am feeling. The Oracle scene from the Matrix movie really helped me

connect what I have learned so far in this class. The oracle already knows what Neil is going to

choose but it is important to know that the real question is why he chose that. Our mind is full of

past knowledge and experience that we can almost be predictable. We already know what we are

going to think because all these perceptions create our assumptions. We must learn when to

suspend them by determining when it’s incoherence.

 9

Journal Entry 7: Week Ending June, 22nd, 2022

I can’t believe that I have reached the end of this course and in 5 short weeks I learned so much.

I appreciate everything I have learned because I can use these teachings in my personal and

professional life. When we can connect what we learned to our lives is when knowledge is the

most effective. Reflecting on what I have learned, I envision a world that is indivisible

embracing its’ wholeness. In The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge, an astronaut Rusty

Schweickart described what he experienced when looking at Earth from up in space. He saw the

Earth from a different perspective than anyone seeing it from inside. He saw wholeness, the

entire earth as one. At first, he connected with the areas he knew of or lived in and then as he

continued to see Earth, he realized it’s all one. When thinking of this, it makes me wonder why

we have divided everything. Almost our entire lives are surrounded by divisions and

segregations. Humanity tends to classify everyone and everything into groups creating division

between everything and one another. This is a result of fragmentation caused by thought.

Thought is creating all this division and it’s not aware that it has created a huge problem.

It's really sad to think that we have created the greatest gadgets, technology, creations, etc., yet

we have not figured away to be united and create harmony amongst humanity. Our own ideas of

reality, perceptions and assumptions have built a wall against things we don’t “believe in” and

separated us from those who think differently. I know of so many families who don’t speak to

one another over a misunderstanding or having differences that they can’t agree on. If only

people would give up some of their beliefs that they hold on to as necessities, they would see life

in a different light. Humanity would build a coherent culture where there’s harmony and

acceptance.
 10

References

Bohm, D. (2004). On Dialogue (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Bohm, D. (1994). Thought as a System. Routledge.

Core of the teachings. (1980). Jkrishnamurti.Org. Retrieved June 23, 2022, from

https://jkrishnamurti.org/about-core-teachings

Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art & practice of the learning

organization. Image Books.