> [!summary] Progressive Summary # Structured Notes ## Definitions ## Chapter Summaries ### Atmospheres ### Foundations #### Commencement / Purpose Shift from Certainty/Belief (Faith) to Ambiguity and Emergence (Mystery) #### Discernment / Agency Shift from Power and Control (Status) to Service and Stewardship (Responsibility) > The other fundamental challenge for groups is ‘who gets to decide?’ Questions of status, rank, and power are hugely important for people working in groups. We want to know where we stand and who is in charge. Discernment is what makes it possible for groups to work with questions of status, rank, and power more consciously and in ways that don’t seek to reduce complex relational, social, and cultural dynamics into simplistic binaries or polarities. #### Containment / Identity Shift from Self Concept and Personality (Me) to Group Concept and Belonging (We) #### Acknowledgement / Context Shfit from Physical Environment (Materialism) to Metaphysical Enviroment (Relationship) #### Movement / Action Shift from Literal and Instrumental (Work) to Symbolic and Metaphorical (Play) #### Achievement / Attitude Shift from Challenge and Difficulty (Struggle) to Ease and Acceptance (Surrender) #### Reflection > If I had to describe the genre that this book belongs to I would say it was a ‘portal fantasy’. The notion of an extra-ordinary world of metaphysical space that groups of people can unlock together certainly sounds like something out of science fiction. So perhaps the six foundations are keys to a portal. A door with six locks. Opening onto new – or ancient – worlds. > > As the group learns to discern the foundations of social process at work, and starts to notice what is possible when we collectively pay attention to that process, we start to experience deeper aspects of the collective experience. As we learn to work with our intention, we can shift each foundation from a closed and contracted position to an open or expanded position. ![[Gather Together-20240919143212021.webp|932]] ![[Gather Together-20240919143248780.webp|767]] ### Voices #### Participation > The group is a context where we can find our voice, break our silence, tell our stories, compare notes, and witness each other’s experience. Like the cinematic technique of breaking the ‘fourth wall’ – when the actors make eye contact with, and speak directly to, the audience – the relational field of the group provides a context where each of us can invite the ‘other’ in. The breakthrough in this cosmic game of hide and seek is to gather together. When we have a group in our lives we are no longer alone. > First, I think we need to recognise our deep primal need to be seen and heard and witnessed and validated. This is the first of many tests that the group must go through. If I sit down in a group and I am not seen and recognised, then it’s really hard for me to feel like I belong. I have to generate all the belonging myself and that’s hard to sustain. > > This is why the check in is such an important ritual. When everyone gets an opportunity to introduce themselves and say why they are here, a strong sense of belonging naturally emerges from the relational field that those speech acts have generated. The simple act of introducing ourselves and naming our purpose is a wonderful example of the power of symbolic action. > Whenever we’re invited to speak into the circle of a group, we confront the question of “which wolf to feed?” The adaptive self that pleases people, or keeps them away, or shows off, or diminishes our value, and hides our deepest desires well hidden, even from ourselves? Or the authentic self that speaks our truth, and risks connection, and can ask for what we want and need, even if those wants and needs are impossible to meet? > > We could say that group work is transformational for people for two reasons. Firstly, there is enough relational containment for the authentic self to feel safe enough to really ‘show up’. The second reason is that there is enough relational containment that the adaptive self feels safe enough to really ‘act out’. All parts of us want to be loved and accepted. When we introduce ourselves to the group, we want to know we belong. Some of us approach this by playing by the rules, others by testing them. People’s fundamental question when they speak into the circle is, “is this a safe enough place for me to show up wholeheartedly?” This question seems to include ‘both of me’ and ‘all of me’. > > When we design gatherings we need to factor in this **backlog** of unacknowledged, unrecognised, and unwitnessed selves. Participants need space and time to be seen and heard. If this is not wanted in the big group, then we need to make room for it in small groups. It can also take place in pairs, and in personal reflection. Then we can make a start. As a colleague said to me recently, “it took me three days just to get to a place where I was ready to participate.” Such is the pace of life and the psychic space that has to be traversed between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary. # Quotes