How to Explore Inner Work with Your Circle of Eight
There are too many types of inner work to list all of them. There is meditation of all types. There are the resources of psychology, expounded in literally hundreds of self-help books. There are physical disciplines and explorations: yoga of many varieties, different forms of dance, various types of therapeutic massage and touch. There are programs for spiritual growth in books, online, and taught directly. There is shadow work, breathwork, dreamwork; journaling and art as inner exploration. There is dynamic exploration of spiritual or magical models, such as the Kabbalah, the Iron Pentacle, and the chakra system, applied to inner understanding and development. There are spiritual, religious, and personal growth teachers, gurus, and leaders of all types currently alive and teaching online, in person, around the world and through books and recordings.
So much is available to us via the vast reaches of the Internet, relatively easy travel, and a culture that, while it doesn’t focus on or particularly encourage inner growth and spiritual exploration, certainly doesn’t condemn or limit it. In the last twelve months, for example, and among other things, with a group of five others I have completed a ten-month working of Twelve Wild Swans, a Reclaiming-based book aimed at facilitating personal and magical growth. I’ve attended a day-long workshop of Deepak Chopra’s in London with a thousand other people. I’ve been to two Reclaiming WitchCamps, one as a teacher and one as a camper (of four and six days, respectively); listened to a lecture series on sacred relationship (twelve ninety-minute lectures online) and followed that up with listening to further talks on relationship (again online) from Judith Ansara and Robert Gass; and I’ve participated as a student in an online six-week course on Reclaiming’s Pearl Pentacle. I’ve done some personal processing with Byron Katie’s Work and Four Questions; attended half a dozen Five Rhythms Dance evenings, and begun a seven-month chakra working. I’ve seen a counselor several times over my relationship breakup and spent four months working on an intense personal level with the characters from the Norse goddess Freyja’s story. I’ve kept a personal diary every day and journaled at more length on areas of personal growth and challenge. That’s not including rituals I’ve done by myself and with others, or the courses and workshops I’ve taught.
Every person in your circle will be a resource for the whole circle. In their journeys through life, their spiritual exploration and personal development, they will have learned meditations and personal processes, attended Rebirthing intensives and tantra workshops, been part of dream groups, twelve-step programs, and co-counseling groups, and learned a huge variety of techniques, skills, and practices. Each person, also, will have been through difficult and challenging times in their lives, dark nights of the soul, and during or after those times they will probably have reached deep understandings about themselves and have sought out resources and support and healing. They now have these resources to potentially share with a group. They will have read books and attended lectures, workshops, or events on different aspects of spirituality and personal growth, at least some of which will have been inspiring, educational, or intriguing. These may be directions they can follow up or offer as explorations or starting points for group process, learning, or discussion.
How to Begin Inner Work Within the Circle of Eight
1. Agreements
Before you embark on intensive or focused inner work within your Circle of Eight, forming agreements among yourselves helps create a container both energetically and practically. You may already have agreements about magical work, frequency of meetings, level of commitment, and behavior during circles; these agreements can be revisited and added for this inner work. Agreements of this nature really need everyone to be a part of their creation; if you have new people join, revisit your group agreements.
Some discussion points that may lead to group agreements include:
• What is confidential within the group, and what may be discussed outside the group? How does this work on a practical and energetic level? I often work from the basis that skills, techniques, and processes are not confidential, and one’s own experience can be shared any way one chooses, but no one can discuss or reveal another person’s experience, words, or sharings. Some people like to add that people within the group can’t even talk about what they witnessed with others also in the group, or that they need to check it out with the relevant person before doing so.
• What types of inner work are appropriate, preferred, and of interest? Is the group mainly interested in psychological processing and not meditation, for example, or is the group open to experimenting with many different types of inner work?
• Who should teach or lead this work, and how is it preferred to be taught or led? Does the group wish to rotate leadership and teaching so everyone has a chance to present what they have learned or are interested in? Should sessions be co-taught between two or more people? Should the style be experiential, informative, informal, or a mixture of these?
• What avenues exist or may be put in place for dealing with issues that arise during this work, either personal or interpersonal? How will the group support each other?
2. Material
Create two lists, possibly on large pieces of paper so everyone can see them easily. One list is for “skills and practices,” where each person lists all the skills they have in areas of inner work, including things they know only a little about or have just begun exploring. They can indicate their level of comfort and familiarity with each item on the list. The second list is for “areas of interest,” where everyone lists what they are particularly interested in exploring with the group. Rather than repeating items on this list, place ticks next to each item to indicate the number of people interested in each one.
3. Outline Sessions
Looking at your two lists, there may be an obvious starting point. For example, two people may have indicated they have some experience with dreamwork and four people that they have an interest in exploring dreams. Your first session could therefore be an introductory dreamwork session. If it goes well, the group may wish to extend that into several sessions or return to further dreamwork later.
There may be something attracting strong interest that no one feels equipped to teach or lead. For a session on this topic, some research can be undertaken by one or more people. It’s also possible to begin exploring that topic from a discussion base or approaching it from angles you are already familiar with. For example, if the group was interested in Jungian archetypes, you could begin with visualizing or shamanic journeying with an archetype, followed by free drawing or writing, rather than from an academic knowledge of Jung’s work.
A great session for becoming inspired with inner work is to have each person bring a fifteen-minute process, experience, or presentation on any area of inner work. Thus in one meeting you may get to do a meditation, take a glimpse at shadow work, do some breathing practices with a few yoga poses, be introduced to inner-child work, play with some tarot cards, and hear about a self-development book someone read. This is a great stepping-off point; it may be that the group decides to do much more shadow work, possibly incorporating conscious breathing; that others want to read the book described; that meditation is introduced for ten minutes at the start of each session; and that creativity and play are requested to become a stronger part of circle work.
If you have a collection of confident, trained, and experienced people in your circle, you may want to make one position—for example, the South—the teacher’s position. Then for one round of the circle—eight meetings—allow the person holding that position to lead a session in whatever they are best at, whether that’s by negotiation or decided by them. Alternatively, two people—for example, those sitting in the North and South—may hold one session between them; this would take only four sessions to complete a round.
4. Use Feedback
After each session it’s great for the group to give feedback, especially on how they felt this type of work went in your particular group. Be sensitive to those who have spent time and energy presenting it, and praise what you felt worked best. Unless this is part of your agreement with each other or it has been specifically requested, don’t enter into strong critique. Speak honestly about whether you want to continue this type of inner work within the group or if you feel it’s time to try other things.
Speak for yourself, that is I felt this work was exciting or I found it hard to go very deep with this, rather than speaking for the group with “we” statements such as We didn’t like this. Be encouraging; after all, you want people in your group to continue to participate and offer what they know. Be as specific as possible in your praise: I loved the visualization you led us on or I learned a lot from the introduction you gave or I was impressed by the level of trust you inspired. If it has been agreed to offer feedback, make sure it is constructive, such as I found it easiest to hear when you spoke really loudly or I felt safest the times when you explained what the purpose of each exercise was before we did it or I could tell you knew a lot about the subject and I would love to hear more of your thoughts about it.
5. Experiment
Perhaps no one anywhere ever before has combined a Kabbalistic pathworking with yoga poses and breathwork, followed by free drawing and expressive dance—but you might. Perhaps dreamwork, shadow work, and inner-child work overlap and merge for months in your circle, without anyone needing to separate them or choose one over the other. Perhaps you propose a topic such as intimacy, anger, or life purpose that everyone works on in different ways, either individually or as a group. One person might guide the group creating artwork, another person teach journaling techniques, another lead a shamanic journey, and another offer an interactive process. Since you are in a Circle of Eight, you might combine your directions with your offerings in ways that possibly no one has ever thought of or tried before.
Dive in…