## Metadata - Author: [[William Matheson]] - Full Title: Gather Together - Category: #books ## Highlights - One such behaviour that is really unhelpful in group work is ‘freaking out’. When someone in a group freaks out, it adds complexity to what is usually already a complex social field. Not freaking out is difficult for many people from a modern European cultural background because we are simply not used to being aware of our assumptions, nor are we used to letting go of the sense of entitlement that comes from never having our beliefs or way of life challenged. When these things start happening, we think the appropriate response is to freak out. This is incorrect. The appropriate response is to stop talking and start being curious about what might be happening for other people in the group. ([Location 549](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=549)) - When we do manage to glimpse ‘the whole’ of what we might call reality, our conscious mind tends to produce the cerebral equivalent of an error message on a calculator. The common terminology for this cognitive error message is paradox. This comes from the ancient Greek paradoxos, meaning a “statement that is contrary to appearances”. Our conscious mind is stuck contemplating two things and is incapable of allowing both to be true. But of course they are. What we need is the ability to hold multiple perspectives. It’s an essential skill for any 21st century person to develop. ([Location 623](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=623)) - When we participate in transformational group work, and begin to increase the amount of complexity we are exposed to, the world often starts to present itself to us as a paradox. ([Location 627](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=627)) - Learning to hold the tension of paradox in a group is a bit like being children playing on a merry-go-round, as the ride gets faster the centrifugal force builds up. What started out as fun, becomes exciting, then scary, and then we fall off and find ourselves back on the cold hard concrete of right and wrong. ([Location 642](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=642)) - Paradox requires us to be tough but (paradoxically) it is also deeply loving. I experience this way of being as a powerful maternal energy. Paradox doesn’t choose between her children, no matter how much they might fight or hate each other. Paradox is the art of staying with what is emerging. It enables us to be present and to make and remake the meaning of that experience in real time, without choosing to absent ourselves through internal debates about what’s right or wrong. ([Location 680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=680)) - when a group realises that it cares about itself and is committed to healing itself and that it has the skills needed to care for its members, the container of that group strengthens incredibly. The group knows that it can trust itself to fix itself. ([Location 1220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=1220)) - Play works by suspending the need for rightness. In the metaphysical space of make-believe, reality has to be negotiated in real time. I’m a truck! Now I’m a butterfly! You be the Sun and I’ll be the Moon! Ordinary space relies on things being ‘real’ and on someone being ‘right’. When rightness is at stake and when reality must be defended, play is impossible. When we play a game, we embrace the heterogeneity of space and use it to step into an extra-ordinary experience of the imaginary and the symbolic. ([Location 1260](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=1260)) - Play allows for different perspectives not only between people, but also within a person. When I play I am free to express diverse, even contradictory aspects of my personality, because we are ‘just playing’. The cultural imperative for consistency and credibility that defines ordinary space doesn’t apply in the playful world of extraordinary space. ([Location 1294](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=1294)) - Rupture and repair is a phrase from psychotherapy that describes how the relationship between the client and therapist breaks down and is remade during the therapeutic process. Rather than seeing these breakdowns as a failure on the part of the client or therapist, relational practitioners understand that this process is not only unavoidable but necessary to the healing journey. As Stephen A. Mitchell puts it, “only by becoming part of the problem can we become part of the solution.” ([Location 1347](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=1347)) - Most groups tend to focus on their external boundary. Who is in, and who is out? How do we attract the resources we need from ‘out there’ to support what we are doing ‘in here’? When a group is able to shift their attention and intention from that external boundary and reorient towards the centre of their experience, they can go ‘within together’. When we open up the potential of connecting with our internal resources, we not only have to be willing to contend with our internal challenges, we have to be willing to contend with the potential for transformation ([Location 1757](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=1757)) - The gift of time in nature is that it seems to be able to overcome our fear-based culture of separation so that we can recognise and inquire into our authentic personal identity. Surrendering the self to the greater whole can be both terrifying and a huge relief. I can stop pretending to be that person who I was. In surrendering to the natural world, I can make space for a new, more mature self. Nature is the ultimate evolutionary ‘holding environment’. ([Location 1836](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=1836)) - The social field of the group is a profound teacher. When I sit in a group it’s like sitting with someone who is 800 years old. Assuming there are 20 people in the group whose average age is 40, that’s how much experience and knowledge and wisdom are in the room. A strong container and good process allow us to participate in the consciousness of that 800-year-old being. ([Location 1956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=1956)) - When we acknowledge a failure of humanity we enact a form of meta-communication that gets us out of unconsciousness and hypocrisy, and helps make sure that our group doesn’t perpetuate ways of relating to other people that we would not consciously choose. Assuming we have a choice, acknowledgement is what gives us that choice. ([Location 2783](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=2783)) - In Māori culture the word whakapapa describes a person’s ancestry, genealogy, and lineage. More than connecting just people, in the Māori worldview everything has a lineage. Whakapapa links everything - animate and inanimate, known and unknown, terrestrial and spiritual. As the concept was taught to me, whakapapa literally means to make (whaka) layers (papa). When we acknowledge place and people and history, we create or recreate layers of meaning and identity and belonging through story. We should be sensitive to this work and remember who is speaking and who is listening. ([Location 2809](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=2809)) - A hallmark of the old transactional model of group work is a charismatic individual leader offering an instrumental process and selling ‘professional services’ to private companies. My hope is that the new system will be collective, relational, amateur, and focused on investing knowledge in the cultural commons. This is my truth, and it need not be your truth. I’m not against people earning a living from group work. But I think it’s worth questioning how transformational any commercial practice can be when it’s based on an economic system and cultural assumptions that are inherently extractive, exploitative, and exclusive. If we are serious about exploring the potential of group work and collective transformation, then I think we still have some ‘walking out and walking on’ we need to do. ([Location 3015](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=3015)) - In a stable, resilient, and coherent relational field, the conversation is smarter, stronger, and more compassionate than any of the individual people involved. A sufficiently skillful group can use the practice of ritual to ‘metabolise’ the historical or contemporary trauma that exists in the social field. In doing so the group transforms their situation from one defined by the twoness of self/other, and reestablishes a generative space of we/us. In doing this the group restores the ‘sacred hoop’ of relationship and connection. The source of this transformation is the group’s ability to tell a new story that incorporates everyone’s individual experiences into a new and collective narrative. ([Location 3373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=3373)) - For me these transformative conversations represent the essential purpose of transformational group work. The way I imagine it, these powerful conversations are already in the collective social field. They are circling the Earth, waiting to happen. They are flowing through our ordinary lives and leaking into our dreams and our relationships and our workplaces, infusing everything we do. This is because there are so few contained, skillful, mature, conversational fields where these conversations are even possible. They’re there, trying to get our attention. They want to be had, they are a force for growth. But we’re not having them. We’re not hosting them. ([Location 3379](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=3379)) - For those of us who are interested in creating positive change, the idea that I might transform a situation simply by paying attention might seem a bit ‘passive’. But there is nothing passive about the practice of witnessing. Active listening, self reflection, suspending assumptions, extending compassion, and holding space all take practice and skill and energy. The more we are able to bring our presence and our attention to the world the more we are able to experience and understand. ([Location 3594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=3594)) - The central obstacle to having a conversation about the future is understanding that most conversations about the future are actually about the past. It is remarkably difficult to let go of our concerns and our history and apply our creative imagination to the possibility space of the future. ([Location 3747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=3747)) - Western civilization places so much emphasis on the idea of hope that we sacrifice the present moment. Hope is for the future. It cannot help us discover joy, peace, or enlightenment in the present moment.” Thich Nhat Hanh (1992) ([Location 3798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=3798)) - Burke’s advice is to keep a light heart and understand that we are all responsible for everything. We need to talk to each other, and talk about the words we use to talk to each other, and make new and better words, and find new and better ways of using the words we have. ([Location 4129](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4129)) - When we discover or remember that there is the potential of radical inclusivity, we open ourselves to the possibility of deep rest. Like floating on your back in the middle of a vast ocean, there is no point in swimming in any particular direction (although you could), and there is no need to panic (although you could), so you may as well surrender to the moment and enjoy resting in the endless sea of potential. ([Location 4190](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4190)) - You can see the whole scope of this question of dialogue giving attention to thought may look rather elementary or simple in the beginning, but it actually gets to the root of our problems and opens the way to creative transformation. We come back to the realization that the thing that has gone wrong with thought is basically, as I have said before, that it does things and then says or implies that it didn’t do them – that they took place independently, and that they constitute ‘problems.’ Whereas all you really have to do is stop thinking in that way so that you stop creating the problem. The ‘problem’ is insoluble as long as you keep producing it all the time by your thought. David Bohm (1996) ([Location 4235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4235)) - Some conversational processes display the dynamics of stability when patterned by habitual, highly repetitive themes. In this dynamic people are ‘stuck’ and their conversation loses the potential for transformation. Identity arising in ‘stuck’ conversation is continuity with little variation. One might characterise such conversational dynamics as neurotic. The quality is lifeless, depressive, even obsessive and compulsive. Other conversational processes display the dynamics of instability in which the coherent pattern is lost as fragments of conversation trigger off other fragments with little thematic structure. One might characterise such conversation as disintegrative, approaching the psychotic. The quality is manic confusion and distress with a fragmentation of identity. Yet other conversational processes display the dynamics analogous with the ‘edge of chaos’, where patterning themes have the paradoxical characteristics of continuity and spontaneity at the same time. The felt qualities of such conversations are liveliness, fluidity and energy but also a feeling of grasping at meaning and coherence. There is excitement but also at the same time tension and anxiety. Ralph Stacey (2003) ([Location 4259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4259)) - If we could just stay with the ambiguity of the world a little bit longer, then we could ‘refuse to categorise ourselves’, or each other for that matter. We might not need names, or selves, or stories. If we could do that, then we could gather at ‘the edge of chaos’ and see what lies beyond. ([Location 4315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4315)) - It is not revolutions and upheavals That clear the road to new and better days, But revelations, lavishness and torments Of someone’s soul, inspired and ablaze. Boris Pasternak (1958) ([Location 4321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4321)) - I think that most of our experience is in the implicate order, but we have been learning through society not to value it; we have learned to put the main value on the explicate, outward order, which is useful for the purposes we generally have in mind – making a living and doing this and that. So we need to establish a place somewhere, where we can have leisure, as it were, to go into this. The word leisure has a root meaning “emptiness” – an empty space of some sort – an empty space of time or place, where there is nothing to occupy you. David Bohm (1996) ([Location 4327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4327)) - There is always a price to be paid for collaborating and working together. It involves becoming more visible and accountable to each other, both personally and professionally. I don’t think we can do the work of deep inquiry together without being open – and therefore vulnerable – with ourselves and each other. ([Location 4373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4373)) - Group work is not just a ‘theory of change’. Group work is also a theory of action. This action is based on the skills of convening and facilitation and participation. It is also based on a way of being that comes when a group of people are committed to being of service and stewardship to the whole. It comes from a practice called gathering. ([Location 4381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4381)) - The task of hosting marine reserves for the soul is not a trivial one. ([Location 4403](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4403)) - Perhaps the biggest barrier to creating these spaces of personal and collective regeneration is our tendency to fill the container of our gatherings up with predetermined content and process and structure. ([Location 4404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4404)) - My sense is that a new form of social process is seeking to emerge and to be experienced and practiced at this time. There are new rituals that need to be enacted and there are so many big transitions that need to be acknowledged. Watching the film Arrival, I was struck by how this impulse was expressed through the metaphor of an advanced alien civilisation coming to teach humanity a new language. A visual language based on circles within circles, and a lesson that we all must work together to understand what it means. Rather than something literally alien, perhaps this new language may simply be a disowned part of our evolutionary intelligence offering itself back to us, inviting us to remember our ability to communicate and interact in near-forgotten ways. Can you remember the song? Wasn’t there a story we used to know? Isn’t there a gift of some kind? A ritual we used to perform? ([Location 4409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4409)) - Whenever I spend time in nature I am reminded that this Earth is already paradise. We just have to stop colonising it with our cultural narratives of fear and control and production and consumption. We need to find some peace within ourselves, and with each other. And perhaps most of all with the experience of being alive, and then not being alive. ([Location 4478](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4478)) - The peace we are looking for is not the peace that crumbles as soon as there is difficulty or chaos. Whether we are seeking inner peace, or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises. Peace is not an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it is an experience that is expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened. ([Location 4489](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BF3MV153&location=4489))