We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been—a place, half-remembered, and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.
Glimpses. A circle of friends sits on the lawn of a white farmhouse in the Midwest. There is a red barn, and a weeping willow, and a fire in a cauldron at night. We sing and raise power and speak with passion to each other. “This is the richest soil in the world,” someone says, and suddenly I feel sure that we could still do it; in spite of everything, we could still make a way to live that would be worthy of the richness of this land. America destroys so much—the cultures that were here before white America arrived, the buffalo, the forests, the wilderness—and yet the land is rich enough and vast enough to let us build anew. Here, beside this cornfield, in America’s heart, I can see that the community I envision is not so different from that which has existed before. A circle of tepees on the plains, the gathering of neighbors to raise a barn—these are not so different from the promise the land whispered to my immigrant grandparents fleeing servitude in the Russian army, the promise inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, the words we hear ringing again and again in all the documents we learned about in school that were said to be America’s foundation. Liberty. Justice. Equality. Freedom. In a dimension just the other side of our eyelids exists an America that keeps those promises, and sometimes when we blink too slowly we think we are there. Home.
In that America everything speaks with passion: the fields, the mountains, the trees, the birds, the children. Everything shines from inside out and everything has a dark, secret core where power lies. All things give away to each other, as the Indians say the animals and plants give away in death so that their deaths feed life. The America of the give-away has hands overflowing with abundance to fill every empty belly, a generous heart that doesn’t ask for returns, and a wild spirit that will try anything once. That America takes in strays, and her people know how to stick together. They know how to laugh and they know how to love.
When we open our eyes with the imprint of that America still stuck to the lids and look around us, the America we see appears unbearable. In this America we say to the child, “This won’t hurt,” and then apply the electric current. In this America we hold fast to every last crumb and lock things up tight until we ourselves are locked up in pain from our clenched fists and our clenched jaws. We are lonely, in this America—we are terrified as we see America putting its machinery into gear for a war that will kill us all. Mostly, we feel powerless. We feel there is nothing we can do.
Community. It is not enough to confront our self-haters, to change our inner psychic structures, to spin new myths and new stories. As long as we feel powerless in the political and social arenas, we cannot be free. We cannot make the decisions that most affect us. And if we identify the immanent Goddess with reality, then our spiritual practice must confront reality. The territory of the quest moves beyond the individual self, out of the wilderness into the streets, to the nuclear power plants, the weapons labs, and the jails. It moves to places where the drama, the clash, is played out, where the battle of our times is being fought.
Action is ritual, myth, vision, quest. For most of us are not living in the wilderness, able to discover in the heart of wilderness the shapes of fear that form our inner limitations and break through them to power. The shapes in our minds that limit our power-from-within are mirrors of the prison, the gun, the guard. To reclaim our power, we must move into the territory of the real threats with which our culture controls us. Like Inanna, Persephone, Osiris, Dumuzi—like all the Goddesses and Gods who descend and return—we too can enter the kingdom of that which we fear most, although for us it may take the form of a weapons lab or a county jail. We can dissolve the shadow of the inner bomb when we openly confront the makers of the real bomb. Within that kingdom, when we join in community, in solidarity, we too can find sources of strength and renewal—the true magic that dissolves fear.
And so we move toward each other, if only because the battle is too large for any one of us to fight alone. In community, we call forth power in a dimension that moves beyond the interests of the personal self, for power-from-within cannot exist in a vacuum. Power-from-within is more than a feeling, more than a flash of individual enlightenment or insight; it involves our sense of connection with others, our knowledge of the impact we have on others. Power-from-within is the power of the give-away, that comes from our willingness to spend ourselves, to be there for others at the price of risk and effort.
In this America we are taught to put self-interest first, to compete, to better ourselves as individuals. And so we are controlled by promises and threats—controlled at a level so deep that we are rarely conscious of it. At times a vision, an experience, may open our eyes.
Going to jail for a political action is an experience that can teach us more about consciousness than a hundred growth seminars. For in jail we experience the controls of our culture directly. We see their naked operation, unclothed by the usual niceties. Power-over is a vise, a clamp that holds us with our own hopes and fears. For there are always privileges to be won if we behave, and there is always someplace worse they can put us, something they can do to us or take away from us, if we refuse to be controlled. So we are caught. In jail we cannot escape knowledge of this control: the system itself has devised a thousand minor rituals, a thousand petty rules to drive the lesson home again and again.
So the purpose of cuffing our hands behind our backs is not to prevent us from attacking the police; it is to acquaint us with the extent of our helplessness. The purpose of the airless, windowless holding tanks, with their open toilets that can only be flushed from outside by the guards is to make us aware, when we are taken to a more decent place, that we can always be returned to a place that is worse. The purpose of stripping us to search us, of having us bend over, spread our cheeks, and cough is not really to discover if we have contraband stuck up our assholes, it is to teach us that humiliation is the favorite weapon the system has devised against the self.
We come out of jail angry, on fire with rage that does not retreat, because as we look around us, day by day, we see the same vise in operation. Everywhere we are surrounded with the pretty pictures of rewards to be won. They are plastered across the billboards and the magazines, they cavort on television. Yet it is not really the image of the car, the dress, the hot tub, the gold chain that we respond to, although these offer pleasure—it is the sense of status, the acknowledgment of our worth, they represent.
And on the other hand, the prison, the mental hospital, stand as the representations of the worse place—where they can take us if we resist control. Yet it is not that most of us live in constant fear of being carted off to jail, but rather that the jail is a symbol of the thousand petty rituals of punishment we face in our jobs, our homes, on the streets. There are endless ways—from the boss’s reprimand to the headwaiter’s sneer to the look on the grocery clerk’s face when we pull out our food stamps, for the culture to confirm our lack of worth.
Immanence means that each of us has inherent worth—yet we cannot feel self-worth because we believe it as a theological doctrine. We feel it when we connect with another person, when we can comfort someone in distress, ease someone’s pain, do work that means something to us. We feel our own worth when we help shape the choices that affect us.
To call forth power-from-within, to free ourselves, we must be willing to move beyond self-interest, to cease grabbing for the carrot and flinching from the stick. We must be willing to give away.
In community, we have power to heal each other and to help each other, power that goes beyond the individual self.
Here is a story: a woman is raped. This is not unusual: women are raped every day. This woman, however, is part of a strong and supportive women’s community. She believes she knows who the man is; but she cannot marshal enough evidence to prosecute a case. Perhaps she has a few doubts, herself, about sending someone to prison, where he may very well be raped, and will certainly not be reformed. Whether or not we agree with her doubts, she feels them.
She turns to her community. A group of women goes with her to the place where the rapist works. They wait until he leaves the building, and they surround him.
The women have no force at their disposal. They cannot call on the guns and prisons of the state. They simply confront the man with his act and his responsibility. They appear to him as a living community to say, “What you have done is intolerable to us.”
The man is ashamed, embarrassed, defensive. He is forced to look his victim in the face, to see her in a new context. Does he change? We cannot know. But in that community, he causes no further problems.
Here is another story: a young man has been in and out of mental hospitals most of his life. He is diagnosed as schizophrenic. His sister is part of a supportive community of political people belonging to many collectives and cooperative households. After discussion with her friends, she invites him to come and live near her. He moves into another cooperative household. At first he barely leaves his room. Gradually, with encouragement, he ventures out. Friends find him a job in a community business. He is not treated as a sick person—he is treated as a whole person. After a year, he finds another job on his own. He falls in love. He moves in with his lover. He no longer is a sick person.
Another woman has what is called a psychotic break. She checks into a mental hospital at a respected university. In the hospital they tell her she needs to get angry, to express herself. After the third day on which her assigned psychiatrist has rushed through the ward without responding to her questions, she kicks a chair in frustration. They lock her in a small room. She and her lover decide the hospital is making her sicker. She checks out.
She cannot stay alone because what is called her illness expresses itself as terror. She belongs to a feminist consciousness-raising group. The six other women in the group take turns being with her. None of them is a therapist and none knows what to do with someone who is in a state of terror—except to be there. It takes six of them, because one woman alone would have been drained and overwhelmed. After a few days the terror begins to subside. The woman is able to fight the inner demons, to regain a sense of control. She is never hospitalized again.
In community, we discover what we are truly worth as we help each other through the losses and the crises, as we work together to heal the damages inflicted by this culture. Within community, we can identify the vise of self-interest and resist its control. We can be free.
Community counters estrangement—it reconnects us with others, and with the natural community that surrounds and sustains us. Historically, the institutions of domination have established themselves by destroying community—from the enclosure movement and the witchburnings in Europe, to the colonization of Africa, Asia, South America, and Polynesia. This pattern continues with the destruction of Native American communities, traditions, and ways of life in the Black Hills and in the Southwest. If we see our work as re-inspiriting the world, then we must be intimately concerned with preserving and creating community. We must challenge the principle of domination by resisting the destruction of communities that remain, and by creating communities based on the principle of power-from-within, power that is inherent in every being.
There is a belief sometimes mouthed by members of so-called new-age spiritual groups that when you resist something, you give it energy, you create it. This is a simplistic misconception that comes from a misunderstanding of how energy works. It confuses resistance with denial. When we deny something, we create it—or at least, we create conditions in which it can grow and flourish, precisely because there is no resistance. In Nazi Germany, it was not the resistance to fascism that allowed the spread of Anti-Semitism and led to the death camps, it was the widespread denial, the refusal to admit that such things could happen. It is not resistance to the possibility of nuclear holocaust that will bring it about, it is denial.
Resistance causes conflict. In America as it is today we are taught to fear conflict. Women, especially, learn to be peacemakers, to back down when confronted, and to avoid challenging others. It isn’t nice to say no.
We confuse conflict with violence, yet the two are not synonymous. Violence is not anger; not shouting; not a feeling, a mood, or any specific action. I define violence as the imposition of power-over. The manager who imposes a speed-up on the line may be inflicting violence, even though she/he is soft-spoken and smiling. The Diné woman who points her rifle at the government offical who is trying to force her off her land is resisting violence.
Whenever we try to cause change, we can expect conflict. If there is no resistance to a change, nothing is truly changing. Instead of fearing conflict, we can learn to welcome the freeing of energy it represents. When we pit our energy against an oppressive system, it must meet our power with its own. Its energies, its resources, are diverted from their destructive work.
There is a certain element of daring involved in resistance—at times it feels like pulling the tail of a monster at a feast to disturb it. The forces we must face may seem, at times, overwhelming, yet a colony of ants can disrupt a picnic of giants.
To do so, however, we must attend the giants’ picnic instead of our own. Or so it seems. Resistance demands our time and our energy. Yet, if we do not resist blindly by mirroring what we are fighting, resistance itself can become a creative task. The very threats we face spur us to bond together in new forms, to see what controls us and to invent the means to free ourselves.
Magic is the art of turning negatives into positives, of spinning straw into gold. In the act of resistance we can spin the gold of our vision, can join together in ways that embody new stories, new forms, new structures, based on immanence.
Community is built from groups. The result of any creative work that requires more than our individual energies ultimately depends on how well we can work with others in groups. That realization is disconcerting, for groups can be maddeningly frustrating as easily as they can be supportive and empowering. There are, however, processes we can use in groups that help them to develop and work so that they increase and augment each individual’s energy.
To empower individuals, groups must be small enough so that within them we can each have time to speak, to be heard, to know each other personally. The time we give to a person and the depth of attention we pay to her/his words and feelings are measures of the worth we accord her/him. We enact the theology of immanence, the belief that we are each inherently valuable, by creating groups in which each person is given time and attention—given respect.
If we think of a group or a circle as a living entity, we can imagine that, like a person, it has a Talking Self, a Younger Self, and a Deep Self. It also has a structure that is determined by the responsibilities of each person and the relationships among individuals in the group.
The Deep Self of a group is the underlying spirit, the sense of connection and common purpose, the bond. That bond is created and strengthened by sharing energy—working together, sharing food, touching each other, making rituals, singing, chanting, nurturing, laughing.
The concept of a group-mind (and even that of a group bond) is a delicate subject to put forth in an age of cults. But the bond we are talking about is never one that requires people to stop thinking independently, to lose their individuality. On the contrary, a small group that functions by means of the principle of immanence—one that accords each person respect for her/his views, ideas, and feelings—strengthens the individual’s sense of self.
The Talking Self of a group is the thinking self, the group’s ideas, policies, philosophies, and conversations. Younger Self is the feeling self, one which is often ignored in meetings. It is also the group’s sense of humor, of play. A sound group must incorporate and work with all these levels.
Talking is what most groups do with most of their time. Unfortunately, nothing can be accomplished without talking about it beforehand, during the event, and afterward. Hence, groups have meetings.
Some meetings are better than others, but no meeting is as much fun as a walk on the beach, a dinner with friends, or a cozy evening with one’s lover. Meetings are work, and people almost always prefer to be doing something else. People will, however, attend meetings if they feel that the work is worth doing, and that their contributions are important.
In most hierarchical groups, at any given time in a meeting, a very few people will be doing all the talking. The others will be silent—sometimes impressed, more often bored, doodling, writing letters to absent friends, or thinking about what to eat for dinner. The few talkers end up making the decisions and formulating the plans; the others abdicate or feel subtly discounted. When groups work in this fashion, they reinforce the thought-forms of estrangement. Members get the idea that some people are valuable and others are not. And very often in groups—even radical and progressive groups—the people who do most of the talking and receive most of the group’s time and attention are those considered more valuable by society as a whole. It is not that the men, or the middle-class people, or the white people, or the highly educated people consciously conspire to keep others silent—it is that they have been subtly conditioned since childhood to believe that their opinions, and those of people like themselves, are valuable. Women, working class people, people of color, and people without formal education, are conditioned to think of their opinions and feelings as valueless. They are taught to listen to an inner voice that murmurs, “You shouldn’t say that. You only think that because something is wrong with you. Everybody else knows more about things than you do.”
Feminists who became conscious of the difficulty many women have in speaking up have developed a process that helps overcome the problem. We go around the circle, and each person is given time to speak without interruption. No one has to fight to hold the floor, or to assure that she will have a chance to talk. And even those who think their opinions have little value sometimes are surprised to discover how much they have to say when the meeting’s structure allots them time in which to speak.
The Native Americans do rounds in the sweat lodge, passing a rattle from one person to another. Whoever holds the rattle may speak, chant, call the elements, pray, or sing, as she/he feels inspired. The group-thinking and group-feeling processes that encourage shared power and circular structure are based on rounds.
When we do rounds, the quality of our listening is as important as the quality of our talking. If we maintain that everybody’s concerns and views have inherent value, we are obligated to listen to what each person is saying.
At the same time, when we speak we must become aware of whether or not other people are actually listening. Instead of repeating ourselves over and over because we sense that we are not being heard, we can learn to comment on the level of attention, to ask if people are bored, to shut up if necessary. Inflicting boredom on others is a form of violence.1
This exercise can help us become aware of how well we are (or are not) listening to others. It also helps us learn what we feel when we are being listened to, so that we can notice when we start losing our audience.
Divide into pairs, and choose a group timekeeper. Pick a topic related to the group’s purpose. (See Appendix B, “Tools for Groups,” for a list of suggestions.)
Each speaker talks on the topic for two minutes without interruption. (Times can be extended if you wish, but it is useful to practice with the two-minute limit in order to discover how much can be said in a short time.)
The other partner listens both for content and for feeling. At the end of the period, she/he briefly restates what she/he heard, without adding judgements (even approving judgements). In this culture, we are all trained to seek approval. One purpose of this exercise is to discover how good we feel when we are heard—whether or not we are praised. For power-from-within is the ability to base our actions on our own values and sense of Tightness—whether or not others approve.
Switch roles. Then tell each other what you liked or didn’t like about your partner’s response, and how you felt doing the exercise. Share responses in the group as a whole.
This exercise is useful in a group in which people feel disconnected from each other, because most of us connect more easily with one person than with a group. It can be done several times, changing topics and partners to create new lines of connection. It is also useful when groups are in conflict and no one is listening to anyone else, or when a group is in a situation that evokes strong and frightening feelings.
The quality of a group’s Talking Self can be judged by the quality of the language members use. Language that works in groups is the same language that works magic; it is simple, strong, concrete, direct, evocative of images and sensations. We cannot come into our power unless we can speak with passion. The clearer we are in our language, the clearer we are about our feelings.
Cliches and buzzwords mask our feelings, even from ourselves, by providing prepackaging for our experiences. When we hear ourselves using jargon, we are avoiding original thinking and avoiding being open about our feelings. When we say, for example, “That really pushed my buttons,” we are using a stock phrase so that we don’t have to say, “You hurt me. I feel angry. I’m scared.” Whenever members of a group decide to “give each other strokes,” I question whether they honestly like each other.
The group picks a subject, such as success, our mothers, or sex. We go around the circle. Each person is given time to speak. Time may be allotted for questions, clarifications, or responses. We speak from personal experience. When the circle has been completed, we have an open discussion about the common threads and the differences among us. From that discussion, we may develop an analysis.
This is the basic process from which much feminist analysis developed. We empower ourselves by seeking the truth in our experience, by making our own truths, not those of the Great Man, the basis for our theories.
A similar process is called Quaker Dialogue. Each member of the circle speaks about a common problem, and how she or he resolved it. We do not comment on each other’s statements or discuss them—but we learn from each other’s solutions.
This is a process for group thinking and/or problem-solving. When an issue or problem arises, we express it in the group. Members are encouraged to think up creative solutions, ranging from the wild and improbable to the practical. The ideas are written down (preferably on a large sheet of paper so everyone can see them). They are not discussed or criticized. The purpose of brainstorming is not to refine one solution, but to see how broad a range of ideas we can formulate. Criticism and a focus on practicalities, at this stage, only dampen our creativity.
A brainstorm may or may not take place in a round, but even in a free-form discussion, group members should be sure that everyone in the group is encouraged to speak, and that a few members do not dominate the process.
After the brainstorm is over, we can pick up a few of the proposed solutions, refine them, and decide on a course of action.
It is the fourth day of peanut butter and processed cheese in the gymnasium used for the women’s jail at the Diablo blockade. Spirits are high, but most of us have not been arraigned yet, and we are expecting to spend the rest of the weekend here, where you cannot close a door and escape, even for a moment, from everybody’s high spirits. We begin to hear grumbling around the edges—a sound of brewing discontent. About fifteen of us gather in a circle in the yard. One after another we speak, without being interrupted, without being questioned, or answered, or given advice.
“Everyone’s always talking about this wonderful unity we have—and I feel lonely. Terribly alone. My affinity group doesn’t get together and there’s all this superficial contact—everybody hugging and all that, but nobody I can really talk to.”
“I came here out of despair. I really couldn’t afford to take the time but I just couldn’t stand reading the headlines every day and feeling like there was nothing I could do. So here I am—and it felt so good to be out here, to be doing something, anything—even if it was just being a body, sitting in front of that damn plant. But then, when you see the forces they’ve got, the power—there’s so many of them and they’ve got all the weapons and the courts and the laws. All they have to do is sweep us up like so much litter. And I don’t know, I don’t feel full of love and peace and all of that garbage—I’m angry! I’m really fucking angry. I want to hit someone or kill somebody. But I don’t want to.”
“I had to leave my kids to come down here—and that’s okay, that’s why I’m here, because of my kids. But Jessica’s only three and I’m worried about her, and I just want to go home! I want my own bed. I want my own toothbrush! I want to be able to close the door and have some quiet and I can’t stand people walking on my mattress.”
And as each woman says what she feels, the rest of us murmur in agreement, “MMMMMMN. Yes, I feel that too. And that. And that. And some part of me—even that.” Until it begins to seem that we are all aspects of each other, or of some larger self, each of us expressing one facet of the whole. And the whole is rich; it is infinitely richer than silence, it is deeper than a cheer, a bright song, a group hug. We begin to feel that we know each other, that we are connected, no longer alone.
In feeling-sharing rounds, we go around the circle, and each person speaks about whatever feelings she/he previously thought were unacceptable. Each person may ask for response, or she/he may prefer not to. People are also encouraged to express any fears they might have about having exposed their feelings.
The Younger Self of a group is the feeling Self. A group bond is an emotional bond, and, of course, we connect by sharing affection, joy, pleasure, laughter, and trust. But our negative feelings—anger, guilt, shame, sadness, loneliness, and despair—are potentially even more powerful sources of connection. These are the feelings we tend to hug secretly to our chests, as the self-hater whispers in our ears, “You are the only person sick enough or nasty enough to feel like that.” To Younger Self, the conflict, when we feel emotions that are not nice, can become one of life or death: Do I, feeling like this, deserve to be connected to the human community? Do I deserve to exist?) To be loved? Younger Self is trained by the culture to believe that everything it feels is wrong. We are raised to compete with others from the moment we can speak, and yet taught that good people aren’t competitive. We are raised in a climate of violence, in which force is the national answer to every question, yet taught that anger and aggression are nasty. We are trained to feel that we are worthless unless others give us approval.
Yet Younger Self does feel angry, competitive, jealous, bitchy, dependent, weak, scared, and lonely. Often Younger Self believes it is the only one who feels these things, that everyone else is altruistic, kind, even-tempered, generous, brave, honest, and thrifty. Younger Self may fear that its feelings are so negative and so nasty that devastation would occur if they were released.
The more we remain silent about our negative feelings, the more separate and alienated we feel, and the more the unexpressed feelings become sources of group conflict. But when we feel that our anger, our pain, can be accepted and shared, we feel that our right to be the people we are is accepted at the deepest level.
Younger Self sniffs the air of a group very cautiously before it decides it is safe to show its true face. Unfortunately, most of the ways we habitually respond to feelings convince Younger Self that they are not acceptable. Nobody likes to see someone else in pain, yet when we try to cheer people up, to make them feel better, to solve their problems—or when we argue about the content of the feeling—we are telling Younger Self: No, it is not all right to feel what you’re feeling.
Groups get into trouble when members begin to take over each other’s problems, to give advice. Giving people new information can be empowering; giving advice makes people dependent, implies that they are not smart enough to assess the information for themselves. If we tell Joan to fold up her mattress during the day so that it will not get stepped on, we have told her nothing she couldn’t figure out for herself. And we have deflected the conversation from the full range of her emotional experience, negated her feelings, instead of accepting them.
There are many techniques for working with feelings in groups. We can begin each meeting of the circle with a weather report—giving each member a short time to talk about her or his emotional weather. We can stop periodically in the midst of discussions to breathe, to relax, to ask each person to state in one or two words what she or he is feeling. We can pay careful attention to the style of our communications, avoiding blaming, placating, computing, or distracting.2 We can state our criticisms as I messages such as, “I feel hurt when you do that,” instead of voicing attacks such as, “You’re a creep!”
Frankly, all of the techniques above may be helpful, but none of them guarantees a circle’s emotional bonding. In fact, they may work against it. In any group in which a great deal of value is placed on correctness—be it social, religious, political, or psychological—Younger Self tends to dive under the bedclothes. True feelings are not necessarily correct and when we express them honestly, they may not come out in forms that merit the growth-movement’s seal of approval. Younger Self prefers an atmosphere of irreverence, teasing, gossip, and, occasionally, open conflict to a hushed respect for propriety of any sort.
The truth is, you can’t fool Younger Self. Talking Self may respond to the content of another’s messages—Younger Self will respond to the emotion behind them. It doesn’t matter how carefully you phrase your statements as I-messages—if you are feeling contempt for someone, that person’s Younger Self will feel it. It doesn’t matter how often you say, “I hear you.” Younger Self knows whether or not you are really listening.
To convince Younger Self that its feelings are accepted, we need to listen honestly, and to feel our own responses honestly. For emotions never exist in a vacuum. A circle has a group heart, just as it has a group mind. Anyone who is feeling pain, rage, or fear is in touch with an important aspect of the group reality, that each person must, on some level, be sensing. If we cannot allow ourselves to draw forth our own painful feelings, if we try to shove them away or deny them, then we cannot accept them in another person.
This process is variously called Criticism/Self-Criticism or (by the Movement for a New Society) Evaluation/Self-Evaluation. It was developed by the Chinese Communists and has been widely adapted. I prefer to do it in the following manner:
The group decides on one or a number of questions. (See Appendix B, “Tools for Groups,” for suggestions.) An example is: How much time do I take up in the group, as compared with others? The groups does a round, with each person evaluating herself or himself on the question. After each person speaks, the group responds, telling her/him how accurate they feel the evaluation was, and perhaps augmenting it. The purpose is to discover what, if anything, the person needs to change, and how the group can be helpful.
I once kept a quote from Gertrude Stein pinned up on my wall. It said something like, “No artist needs criticism, only honest appreciation. If he needs criticism, he is no artist.”
In context, what she meant was that an artist must learn to be her/his own critic, not dependent on the judgement of others. A self-criticism session asks us to evaluate what our standards are and whether or not we meet them, instead of listening to other people tell us how we fail to meet their standards. In some groups, criticism/self-criticism is done by focusing a session on a general evaluation of one individual. I prefer the process described above because I believe that neither strengths nor weaknesses within a group are solely individual—they are qualities of the group as a system. So if Jane takes up far too much of each meeting talking, the problem is not that Jane talks too much—it is equally that Laura never says anything, that Tom goes to sleep instead of telling Jane that he is bored, or that the group needs stronger facilitation. Also, encouraging people to criticize themselves reinforces their sense of self-worth—their attitude that they are indeed capable of knowing what to do and whether or not they are doing it.
(This works best in units of from four to eight people.) Sit comfortably in a circle. Ground, and center, and breathe together. If you like, do the Tree of Life.
Go around the circle clockwise. Each person says her or his name, and the group repeats it.
The name can be spoken or sung. The group may speak it once or three times, and may sing it back to the person.
Now everyone closes their eyes. Again, go around the circle. Each person says her/his name, and the group repeats it. As we repeat each name, we visualize that person.
Again, go around the circle. Each person says her/his name. This time, with our eyes still closed, we let ourselves picture that person’s energy. We may sense a quality or an image, and as it comes to us we say it out loud:
“Rose.”
“Warm.”
“Turquoise and red.”
“A colorful tropical bird.”
We take time for each person until images have stopped coming and silence falls. (We are practicing our sensitivity to the ebb and flow of group energy.)
After we have gone around the circle, we focus on the center—breathing together, and visualizing all the images, and qualities, and energies of each of us flowing into the center. Gradually, an image or scene will begin to be created by the group energy. We describe it to each other, as aspects surface in our minds, until we are all clearly in the same place.
“I see a jungle.”
“I see bright-colored birds flying.”
“I see a mountain—a volcano.”
“Yes, the jungle lies on its slopes.”
“And I see a cave.”
“In the side of the mountain.”
“And we can follow it down to the fire.”
We can continue with the group vision as long as we like. It may become an elaborate mutual journey. We may find a group symbol or an image of power. We may discover a task.
When we are done, we breathe together again, and return ourselves to ordinary space and time, grounding whatever energy we have raised. Then we can talk about the vision and discuss its meanings.
In Reclaiming, we find that when we teach groups this technique, many people come away from the first exploration feeling annoyed or angry, feeling that the images are shallow and stereotyped. When we ask people what they were seeing that they did not say, often we get answers such as:
“I was seeing bones and blood—but everyone else was seeing flowers, so I didn’t want to spoil their trance. But now I feel alienated.”
“You’re kidding—I was seeing bones and blood. But since nobody else was, I didn’t want to say.”
As we continue around the circle, we discover that nobody was really in the pretty scene the group created. Rather, all were seeing much darker and usually more powerful images, but they were withholding them from the group. The discovery of how much we all withhold is disconcerting, and the trance exercise becomes a model of group process in ordinary situations.
If we repeat the exercise, with each person committed to expressing even negative images, we will discover a much deeper level of group power and bonding.
The process of decision making that embodies the principle of power-from-within is called consensus. Consensus was used by the Quakers (whose doctrine of the “inner light” reflects a Christian conception of immanence), but the process has been used informally among tribal groups for centuries, especially in Native American cultures.
Jerry Mander, in an article on the forced relocation of the Hopi and Navaho peoples in the Big Mountain area of Arizona, quotes Oliver La Farge, the Bureau of Indian Affairs Hopi Agent, on Hopi consensus:
It is alien to the Hopis to settle matters out of hand by majority vote. Such a vote leaves a dissatisfied minority, which makes them very uneasy. Their natural way of doing it is to discuss it among themselves at great length, and group by group, until public opinion as a whole has settled overwhelmingly in one direction.3
Consensus is not the same as voting. Nor does it merely mean unanimity. Groups sometimes think they are using consensus but revert to voting when they cannot reach unanimity. They are not truly using consensus, however, because the process is based on a principle that makes it entirely different from voting.
When we vote, we are still in the framework of duality. “Here are two alternatives,” we are saying, “choose one over the other. The choice most people make is the one we will act upon—whether the others like it or not.” The majority wields power-over the minority.
The principle of immanence, however, gives no one authority to wield power-over others. With consensus, we tell a new story. We say that everybody’s voice is worth hearing, that all concerns are valid. If one proposal makes a few people—even one person—deeply unhappy, there is a valid reason for that unhappiness, and if we ignore it, we are likely to make a mistake. Instead of spending the group’s energy trying to force or manipulate people into agreeing to something they don’t want, we can drop either or both alternatives and look for a new solution, a more creative option that can satisfy all concerns. We can afford to do this because the universe is not truly divided into either/or choices. It is rich with infinite possibilities.
The consensus process works best with a facilitator who calls on people and keeps the meeting focused. (See Chapter Seven, “Circles and Webs: Group Structures,” for more notes on facilitation.) One person puts forth a proposal. In a small group not pressured by time, the group may do a round on the proposal. More often, the facilitator asks if anyone wishes to speak about it, either to speak for it or to voice questions or concerns.
The concept of concerns is important. Negative reactions are not expressed as hard-and-fast positions. Instead of saying, “I am categorically against it,” we say “I am concerned about it,” and we give the reason. Voicing concerns leaves room for the proposal to be modified to meet those concerns.
For example, someone might say, “Kathy wants to join the group; I propose that we accept her.”
Someone else might reply, “I like Kathy, but I’m concerned that the group is growing too big.”
There are many ways that the proposal could be modified: we could decide to admit Kathy, and no one else after her; we could ask Kathy to wait until someone else dropped out of the group; or we could decide to help Kathy form a group of her own.
If a person feels that her/his concerns cannot be met and the rest of the group is enthusiastic about the proposal, that person can “stand aside.” For example, a member might propose that the group study and discuss a certain book. Perhaps one member has no enthusiasm for the project, or is already overwhelmed with things to read from work or school. She/he could decide not to participate, and let the rest of the group go ahead.
If one person has strong objections to a proposal, especially ethical objections, she/he can block the proposal. Blocks are used rarely and carefully. I can think of only a few instances (out of hundreds of meetings I have seen in which the consensus process was used) when anyone has blocked a proposal. Yet the ability to block a proposal gives each individual ultimate power to influence the decisions that affect her/him. If one person feels strongly enough about an issue to block it, she/he is probably aware of important factors the rest of the group should consider more carefully.
People may raise objections to a proposal, as well as concerns. When feelings run strongly against a proposal, it may be dropped instead of modified.
Consensus takes time. It works most efficiently in small groups; when a group is too large, it becomes impossible to hear everybody. Time spent reaching consensus is well spent, however, because proposals that are wholeheartedly agreed to by a group are carried out wholeheartedly. Voting may seem quicker (although not always—groups can spend long periods attempting to cajole one faction to change its position) but often an unhappy minority undermines a project pushed by the majority, or simply fails to carry it out.
No group, however, can decide by consensus whether to be shot or hung. The consensus process is not effective for choosing the lesser of two evils, for deciding between bad alternatives. It does not work in a dualistic framework.
For example, in the women’s jail during the third or fourth day of the Diablo blockade, when about three hundred of us were crowded into a cold gymnasium sleeping on pads crammed wall-to-wall on the concrete floor, we were given a choice by the guards: forty more women were arriving; we could have them in our room, making the crowding worse, or they could be isolated from us in a separate, and even colder room.
Instead of breaking down into affinity groups, we began to debate the question all together—always a mistake. Consensus works badly in large groups at the best of times. We were given fifteen minutes to make the decision. The pressure of time is another factor that makes consensus more difficult.
Feelings ran deep. Many women felt strongly that they could not stand to be crowded further. Others felt equally strongly that the new women should not be isolated. The tension caused by days of poor food and physical discomfort began to show.
Even so, the consensus process worked as consensus works: we came up with two creative solutions. The first was that the new women should go into the other room, but that free passage should be allowed between the rooms. This was vetoed by the guards. The second solution was that women from our group should go into the other room, and the new women should come into our room. This, also, the guards would not allow. So the fifteen minutes passed, and we came to no consensus. The guards made their own decision, and we women felt we had failed each other.
Yet in reality we did not fail, we were manipulated. Even though we could see at the time that we were being set up to be divided, we didn’t see how to stop the process. Looking back, however, we could have recognized, when our solutions were turned down, that we were not actually being given the chance to make a decision that would suit us. We could, at that point, have refused to cooperate any longer with the illusion that was being perpetrated. Our withdrawal would have made the reality of the situation clearer—that the guards, not us, were responsible for the conditions we were forced to endure.
When consensus does work, however, everyone feels both a personal sense of triumph and a sense of closeness to the group. The process requires maturity, and flexibility, along with willingness to give way for the good of the group, to listen rather than hold forth, to invent rather than insist. Oddly, as people practice consensus, they become more mature, more flexible, more willing to listen and to give away. Consensus calls forth the best that is in us, and so empowers us to work together in community.