135 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
135 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen
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# Zen and the Art of Circle Maintenance
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+ Dismantling patriarchy and changing the world
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+ Written for women primarily, especially women’s circles, including women’s consciousness-raising and support groups
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“It depends upon a simple hypothesis, whose mechanism has been proposed and observed, and is one that can be intuitively and immediately grasped: When a critical number of people change how they think and behave, the culture does also, and a new era begins.”
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+ Experiences as a member of women’s circles since 1985
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+ One which fell apart and abruptly dissolved due to a failure of trust
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+ A long-running prayer/meditation circle
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+ Women’s wisdom workshops - meeting in large circles, leaderless small groups
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+ Membership in boards and committees
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+ “One form fosters the psyche, trust, authenticity, other facilitates productivity, the effective use of power, and persona"
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“The part of me that appreciates how beauty and truth are linked saw how ritual and ceremony tapped into the imagination and were a medium for creativity and spirituality.”
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Looking at the circle as a personal, egalitarian archetype which ‘comes more naturally to women’ - the circle emphasizes collaboration, emotional closeness, lessening of hierarchical relationships
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Book makes use of poetry as well- metaphors + analogies + drawing from symbolic level of the psyche, language of the soul.
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# How to Change the World
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“The Millionth Circle”
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“There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come.” — Victor Hugo
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“Feminism *catches fire* when it draws upon its inherent spirituality. When it does not, it is just one more form of politics, and politics never fed our deepest hungers.” — Carol Lee Flinders, *At the Root of This Longing*
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+ “The Hundredth Monkey” and antinuclear activism → critical point for cultural change
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+ Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message”
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+ “a circle is nonhierarchical—this is what equality is like. This is how a culture behaves when it listens and learns from everyone in it.”
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+ “The more circles there are, the easier it is for new circles to form; this is how morphic fields work. Each circle is a regeneration of the archetypal shape and form that draws from every woman’s circle that ever was, and each circle in turn adds to the field of archetypal energy that will make it easier for the next circle. Morphic fields and archetypes behave as if they have an invisible pre-existence outside of space and time, become instantly accessible to us when we align ourselves with that form, and are expressed in our thoughts, feelings, dreams, and actions. The circle is much more than the experience of this generation, a sacred circle especially.”
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“See One, Do One, Teach One” - medical school process and how procedures were learned. Doing a circle would be the same way.
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+ Circles go through all kinds of changes, flourish or flounder, heal or hurt members, can be transient or can be lifetime
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+ Relationship skills carry into circles but circles also affect relationships beyond them
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+ Circles can provide models - be a place to practice honest and caring communication until this is what you do and expect from others in your life → transform the patriarchal structure of your relationships → ripple effect of change/transformation
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+ Place to become aware of how we perpetuate the status quo and how we might change it
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Being in one circle leads to being in others → circles propagate, one circle at a time
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The millionth circle - the one which tips the scales for humanity
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# Casting the Circle
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+ Net, fishing line, magic circle, casting in a movie or play and selecting who will be in it
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+ Deciding how the circle takes form
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+ Begins with the idea or yearning for being in a circle
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+ Joining the image of a circle with the intent to form one — vision meets intention
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+ Think of who might want to be part of it & if you can’t, how could you find them
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+ Is there enough energy to carry it “to term”?
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+ Recount previous experiences/lessons and cultivate your intentions then move forward
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+ Arrange gatherings, then arrange future gatherings
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+ Circles can have other purposes and goals besides just being circles — CR groups, mutual aid networks, learning societies, quilting bees, etc.
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“Whatever it is called, / whatever the agenda may be, / if it is a circle with a center / its members are witnesses, role models, and soul connections / for each other. / Providers of intangible spiritual and psychological support, / validators of reality and possibility. / Mutual aid and learning societies. / Agents of change.”
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+ Find a place which can serve as a sanctuary for the circle
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+ The secret for making a circle is for the women in it to know each other’s personal stories, journeys, “know what is of consequence, where the challenges and difficulties are that matter.”
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+ Time - frequency and duration - can vary, but consider how much time you’re allotting for each person
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# Centering the Circle
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Centered = in the shape of an invisible wheel or mandala. Meets as if around a sacred fire at the center of a round hearth. The invisible center as source of energy, compassion, and wisdom.
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Center makes the circle special, or sacred.
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“Begin the circle / with something that centers it.”
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+ Using some kind of sacred/spiritual ritual to ring in the circle and ‘center’ it.
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+ Sometimes it’s necessary to re-center the circle by whatever means your circle chooses - sometimes circles and people get off-center
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# A Circle of Equals
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+ Idea of circle of equals is common intention
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+ “Each woman is committed to developing and maintaining it”
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+ Consensus decisions
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+ Requires honesty
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+ If one fears being truthful lest feelings be hurt or punishment follows = codependency
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+ Codependency and equality are incompatible
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+ Attentiveness
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+ Speaking for yourself only
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+ Shared responsibility
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+ Hear from everyone
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+ Check in and go around
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+ “Talking stick”
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+ Being comfortable with silences, devoted listening without interruptions
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+ Calling upon the wisdom, honesty, and compassion in the center of the circle and in us
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+ Ask for input from women who haven’t spoken → even if maybe silence is what’s called for from her, but we won’t know if we don’t ask
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+ Comparison to jazz, improvising music, everyone’s playing different instruments or taking different roles in the circle → “Playing together as equals takes practice and presence.”
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# A Circle Needs to be Safe
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+ Maintaining the boundary of the circle
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+ Ability to hold the contents, necessity for trust
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+ What is said in confidence is held in confidence
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+ No ridicule or indifference
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# A Circle in Trouble
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+ Trust can be shaken/betrayed
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+ Personality clashes, negative projections, anger, judgments, hurt feelings
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+ Lack of commitment, i.e., habitual absense, lateness, leaving early, treating it as optional when it’s important for others
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+ Energy leaks out - resentment and withholding step in
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+ Can become stagnant
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+ Can become overwhelmed if for example one has too high expectations for the circle, maybe forgets that the one circle can’t solve all our problems
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+ Avoidance, dysfunction - when we can’t speak up about how uncomfortable/powerless we feel, participants become less present
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+ “Sometimes facing what needs to be said and needs to be done / becomes an unexpected turning point, / not an end.”
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+ Sometimes things have to end also.
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### How to Keep a Circle Healthy
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> 1. Each keeps the intention and image of the circle with a center in mind, especially when there are difficulties.
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> 2. Each seeks her center, in meditation and silence, prays for wisdom, compassion, discernment, and courage for herself, and for the circle.
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> 3. Each examines the state of her own psyche whenever she feels off-center, or the circle does, and considers possibilities that she is part of the problem. Am I projecting my shadow onto someone? Is this a familiar polarized state I get into—is it my complex?
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> 4. When the energy in the circle feels “off,” anyone can ask for silence for each women to check-in with herself: How am I? and inquire into the state of the circle: How does it feel? What is going on? When it’s a minor misalignment, the check-in time usually reconnects the circle to the center. If there is a major problem still to be resolved, this is the time for each and how she is and what the circle might do next.
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> 5. If what was said in the circle was not held in confidence, it is a boundary problem for the circle (and not only a problem between two of its members). If it is not brought up and resolved the circle is not safe for anyone.
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> 6. If one person dominates the circle, it is a problem for everyone. Remember that this is a circle of equals. Each needs to go to the center for wisdom and discernment, for compassion and courage. Each needs to speak up and name the problem that is, for herself. When there is a problem in the circle if one woman speaks her truth there is a strong possibility that she speaks for others who are silent or speaks for a silenced part in others.
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> 7. Once we see how our actions appear and affect others, the problem we may be to others may be solved. A circle of women is a multifaceted mirror in which each sees herself reflected. What she sees of herself in the words and faces around her depends on the capacity of each woman as mirror to be clear and compassionate. What we see depends upon the quality of the mirrors and the lighting, which can be kind to us or not, however true the image. What we see in ourselves, we can work on changing.
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> 8. When the problem is letting a woman go when she is ready to leave the circle, the solution begins with acknowledging feelings, however irrational. Suppose there is anger or guilt, or feelings of abandonment or depression—(that really belong to an unhealed loss from the past) Then this insight is a parting gift. A leave-taking needs to be worked through, and have a ritual to mark its significance for the women and for the circle.
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> 9. When a woman has a problem that is too much for the circle, the separation from the circle is harder. Not just for the women who leaves under such circumstances, but on the circle as well. Both need to “bite the bullet” as the excision is done, and work on healing after. Maybe something will help, maybe nothing will but time.
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> 10. Remember that a women’s circle is not perfect.
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# Ceremonial Circle
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Rituals, altars, celebrations - but also vigilance against obligatory, empty form “we’ve always done it this way” → mindfulness of the intention of our traditions and why we do them, not just doing them just to do them
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# The Millionth Circle
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“There is no “always was, always will be” in human affairs.”
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“You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round… The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours… Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.” —Black Elk, Oglala Sioux Holy Man |