Polishing our Edges

Many of us are lone rangers longing for community, yet wary of being swallowed up by a group. I enjoy my solo time and working one-on-one with people. Yet a deep longing for belonging keeps me joining circles just to learn how to be in community.

My teaching partner Dan has concluded that every group, no matter what the stated common goal, is really about learning how to be oneself in a group. Spiritual teacher and right livelihood guide Rick Jarow goes on to say that work itself may be just an elaborate excuse for us to mend our common karma. My biodynamic craniosacral therapy teacher Gary names our group identity plainly: we as a training group are tending to traumas big and small held in our individual 'social nervous systems' and that of the group as a whole.

In other words, we need each other and we need practice. How else can we learn to communicate, cooperate, and resolve conflict?

People drawn to monastic life have their edges 'polished' by living and working in close, communal quarters. It's easy to be spiritual with your own practice and nobody around to ruffle your feathers. But we serve each other best as mirrors and teachers. What a gift when I become aware of my reaction to X's behavior. Now we're in spiritual practice! My noticing wakes me to what must be my own area of next growth and healing. I bow to X for being a perfect reflection for me.

Any well-facilitated group can be a strong, fluid container that gives breathing room for each individual and encourages cross-pollination. That's how I like to lead and hold space, and how I like to participate. I feel safe to be open and purely myself, excited to learn with the group. I get over my shyness and play well with others.

Our human frailties arise quickly in groups. Alliances are bound to happen as we are drawn to and repelled by certain others. But how do we form bonds, not cliques? Do we understand that everyone is here in this particular group for a reason? Can we enlarge our compassion, inclusion and our willingness to be with someone different? Especially if we don't like him/her? What do we do when we feel exiled? Do we hold leadership or sit back? What do we do with our judgments?

All these questions apply to our inner relationships as well. The more self-compassion we have, the easier it is to meet another openly. And the more we allow our edges to be polished in community, without losing ourselves in group think and group speak, the more we can be truly present with ourselves just as we are.

O is for Openings

In a recent movement workshop, we were instructed to walk, skip, leap in whatever direction at whatever rate through the studio. I sped up. Nearing a wall, I'd push off with my hands and ricochet in another direction. Walking fast backwards, we were coached to say "thank you" if we and another collided. It didn't happen. Without knowing each others' ever changing trajectories, without disrupting my instinctive arc, I kept finding the open space to move into. I left open space in my wake for others to enter.

Why doesn't this seamless hive intelligence happen on the street? I believe it's because we often tune out our awareness of being part of a larger group. Cell phones exacerbate the situation. In individualistic driver mode, we don't necessarily look for openings, but wonder why everyone isn't getting out of our way. In our public life we don't have the same agreements or intentions as in a movement workshop.

It made me remember other larger groups, other dance spaces filled with forty or fifty people zipping across the room, nobody colliding. It's as if we were all aware of being in relationship to the whole. My small 't' taoist friend Howard often says that he follows the openings, looking for where there's already flow and movement in his life. That's what we all were doing in the larger dancing group and so the whole group body flowed.

I like that, being welcomed forward by the seemingly empty space or life openings. Opportunity knocks and we answer or we don't. Nature abhors a vacuum, so invites us to fill it momentarily by our stepping forward or leaping into it. What openings are beckoning for you? What invitations do you ignore or resist? Do you get stuck in setting your trajectory to where your way is blocked?