Delusion takes some doing to undo.

First, we need really to get that interrupting is a violent act. To begin with, we need to understand what interruption is. We have to recognize all of its

pernicious and artful forms.

And then we have to examine it at a ‘cellular’ level. We have to see the untrue assumptions that drive it, take them apart and start over with true ones.

Keeping the promise of no interruption is a tough job.

Tough because this promise is an unspiralling galaxy of a thing.

During that time we discovered that inside this promise not to speak, this

simple three-faceted agreement to stop interrupting (to start giving attention, to stay interested and to ‘share the stage’), there is a lot going on. Inside this promise there appears to be a kind of ‘coding’ for removing blocks in thinking. It appears that the mind, when not interfered with, asks itself a range of catalytic, almost ‘innate’ questions when it gets stuck, breaking through blocks for itself, so it can be on its way again. All of that seems to happen when the promise of no interruption is in place and the mind is soaring.

And in that promise, too, there is a rich colony of catalysts. There are at least ten conditions – the ‘components of a thinking environment’ I mentioned, conditions we are providing when we give attention and don’t speak. These ‘components’– attention, equality, ease, appreciation, feelings, encouragement, information, difference, incisive questions and place – we will explore in fresh detail later. The point here is that they actually generate thought. To decide to live them is to decide to cherish independent human thinking.

We do need to accept that the power of persuasion at its worst lies in its design to interrupt. It is supposed to interrupt us, our independent, cogent, thinking selves. And it does.

We can create a thinking environment even in the dwellings of extreme disagreement. We can, quite simply and profoundly, promise not to interrupt. We can honour the three ingredients of that promise: to start giving attention, to stay interested in where the person will go next and to ‘share the stage’ equally.