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Circle 2 - Videos - Transcripts
August 9, 2013
Empathy Circle 2 -
2013-08-09 - Questions about the Circle: I Wish....
We asked the Question about the Empathy Circles
I Wish...
Jonathan to Alice:
Practical person.... How do you apply it is always my
question. I wish that the
circles will have application. The circles are good but I think we can
do something to make it better.
Circles are super useful for me, and have changed a lot
of practices for me, things I'm doing.
I read the manual that L and E made - a model of how
the circles are designed to be. I feel that
we need to work on structure or something to make it easier to
understand and apply.
Lastly, we are very engaged in the Circles, we don't
need encouragement to participate. We need to consider those who are
interested in empathy and are not yet engaged with circles, less
engaged than we are.
Something to bridge the gap to want to be part of empathy circles.
(I wish
Alice to Sherry
Wishing doesn't get us anywhere. Don't believe in
wishing, in a way. So I get the point that the questions is: what
would I like to see.? I can respond to that easily.
From what J was saying, re the gap for people who are
interested and making the circles more accessible.
I'd like to see something like the Empathy Workshop developed.
AN intro to
empathy and empathy circles, to spread that idea.
I'd like to see that Empathy Workshop piece developed
and to give Empathy Workshop 's. I want to give talks, with empathy as
a core part of my message in the world. And to offer Empathy
Workshop's to people who become interested.
I'm feeling called to speak to people about my work,
which empathy is very central to, with the next step or people who are
interested in empathy that they could take this workshop. With more
about empathy and its value - to build experientially the
understanding that growing your empathy is a really worthwhile thing
to do. The Empathy Workshop as a bridge to ECs as well.
Key point that empathy can be grown and developed, it
makes a huge difference, you can grow more of it, it's not a static
character trait, you can start here with this workshop, and continue
through empathy circles. Show the value of empathy in their lives as
well as to society.
I wish we for us to have tool, the Empathy Workshop,
to help with to demonstrate what's in it for me as well what 's in it
to society.
Your face looks a little puzzled, as if you aren't sure
of what I'm saying.
Sherry to Alice
Noticing a difference with Edwin not here. Maybe that
and may be because I'm about to take a trip.
I feel like I'm seeing circles with a different
perspective today.
I'm also affected by being the one who initiated the
hangout, I have to do different things. Have also had some physical
challenges this week. Still feeling a little drained. In this moment I
feel kind of dry and hot and brittle, not in an angry sense, more a
desert inside. ( Sherry goes to get a glass of water.)
Jonathan - it sounds a little bit exhausted
and distracted...
Sherry:
Not exactly distracted, it's more like an altered state
of attention.
It feels a bit like having taken a drug but I haven't.
Sherry gets a drink of water, Alice putting wood on her
fire.
Sherry:
I'm sharing this because I really want there to be room
for how we are presently in our circles. I find if I take the time to
do that, to first know it, and have room for that, not sure how much I
have to say with words. Sometimes it's more words than I can handle.
Like we're a little a bit heavy on the words. We do the connection
exercise at the beginning - I'd
like to consider doing that
some other ways, to sit in silence maybe, or to sing a song, to give
more space for other ways of being human.
Sometimes I experience what we do here as work. I want
to come to the circles, and there's part of me that says that sees it
as something I’m going to have to push through. Maybe that's all it
is. In terms of balance, maybe there's something there, about how we
express all that it is as humans. Not sure we can do that in a
hangout, but....
Not so much too much talking, more about wanting to
have space for other things. That said, I appreciated the connection
with the senses today.
being a person living in the socioeconomic world I live
in, being white, come from that cultural blindness, I don't know you
well enough, but we all look like people who might identify as white,
though we’re in different countries, are we diverse enough, if we’re
talking about human beings and all of life, are we considering what
other...I'm trying to describe something I don’t' know what it is. I
want to name that. That I'm likely to not be aware of things I can't
see.
Wanting to know as much as possible and be as inclusive
as possible.
Not about wanting to share what we have with everyone,
but rather to acknowledge that it might not work for everyone. To
acknowledge that we're in a certain kind of environment and that we
may be creating something that we're looking at through a certain
cultural frame.
Coming off the years that I spent in a certain yoga
school, where it was pretty dysfunctional, and this person is back out
teaching again, and it just looks toxic to me, and I look at the whole
yoga world and how much resource is spent on, feeling good, being
enlightened, meanwhile our air quality and water supply is failing,
there are people who don’t have enough to eat. We are seriously out of
balance including in our socioeconomics, the military industrial
complex, and I don't want
to be sitting here navel gazing.
It really relates to what J
said about it being applicable
- (I wish for meaning?)
I want to put my energy into something that is medicine
for the world, not to put my energy into toxic things. I want to know
that what I’m doing is serving life. Not helping, but serving, as
it doesn't have that power differential about it.
Jonathan to Sherry:
Listening to both is us, asks are we talking about
online or offline? Sounds like Alice is talking 'offline" ( AA note
later: I react against the word offline for really being in the
presence of each other). We are five highly committed people and we
can't all meet every week. I think we need to distinguish the two
platforms and that each one has its strengths, they are different to
consider our purpose in relation to that.
I acknowledge about diversity and culture. Edwin's
frustration with engaging people into the online empathy circles, even
with people culturally closer to each other. Will be even more
difficult with more diverse people. Acknowledging that we are kind of
similar in some very key ways. culturally close to each other.
What is the empathy circle - are we empathizing with
people close to us, or opening it to empathise with and be influenced
by other cultures.
Jonathan thinks that we need a way to engage that is
sustainable - maybe online and offline and how they support each
other.
Where are we going with ECs? As well as personal gains,
modeling and demonstrating empathy and how difficult its practice is,
and developing it, and that other cultures and voices should be heard
and involved.
Sherry to Alice:
The word commitment..... have a resistance to being
committed to empathy per se as that word. I feel it's been so
understood differently from the way that I work with it that I almost
don't tell people.... I'm here because it's a circle. I'm looking to
indigenous people as having a more unbroken line of success prior to
colonialisation, more success than I think my culture has had with
living well, among ourselves as well as with other forms of life. What
I’ve said is so dramatic.... I'm looking for how to live well and
trying to train myself, discipline myself to do better with that,
which includes listening, and so it's the circle process that is
really what draws me here.
Not that I don't think empathy is important but that
there may be other things that are also important and I also really
want to
understand what empathy means. It terms of going forward that's
what I'm about and wanting to support, and I want to say that because
maybe I haven't been as clear about that. I don't feel like I'm at
odds with what people are doing in this group, but also not completely
centering my focus on empathy. Looking for something more, and there's
something about its being a circle that's a important to me.
Alice to Sherry:
Realised something from quite a long way back in the
circle, I don’t feel fully heard, I said about you frowning, that I
felt not heard and I didn't say so. It's affected me ever since. I've
been really listening and I'm glad you spoke about how you were
thinking and feeling, I found it interesting, but because I didn't
feel heard earlier it was affecting my ability to really engage.
Because I realise that I didn't feel heard and didn't speak up about
that, an important learning for me. It was important to me what I was
sharing about the empathy workshop which is very important to me, and
I didn’t feel like that was heard.
I feel a bit like I'm in a different place, like the
primary school child trying to do this. I understand how important the
things you're saying about diversity are, and yet I feel aware that
there are many many people who are nowhere near the level of awareness
that I’ve got and who I’d have much more chance of reaching than
people who are very very different.
I think it's really worthwhile to reach those people,
and also that it's really worthwhile to reach the people I'm thinking
of , and also that is really worthwhile to think about diversity. I
felt like that probably because I didn’t feel heard and didn’t' say
so. that what I'm doing isn't important enough. You know, a whole lot
of middle class people just watching their navels. I know you didn't
intend that, and I'm just wanting to express what's happening.
(Pause while Sherry deals with the dog and someone at
her door)
Sherry to Alice:
I'm hearing that this work that your contemplating
doing is really really important to you and that it's hard to hear me
talking about middle class people navel gazing, that that makes it
seem like what you're doing is not important.
(Alice off line - screen frozen, trying to reconnect, J
and S talking)
Sherry to Jonathan :
Something drawing my attention is that this is still
being recorded. Another piece that I didn't mention before - I have
mixed feelings about recording because we don't know where we're going
to go with things. Makes it a more complex environment as well.
Noticing it as a factor and wondering how Alice is dealing with it. It
impacts the circle, and I don't know that it most serves presence and
connection. The sense of it being recorded that that impacts what
people say. Some circles have agreements that what is said in the
circle doesn’t leave the room without permission. And it's impacting
you too I guess as you're in the community of the three of us, though
you were not talking.
Jonathan to Sherry :
I didn't fully understand some of what Alice was saying
and am waiting to ask her.
For me I
came to the circle for the empathy.
And I found that the circle
was really powerful, doing it every week, that it has its own
strength, that people with different agendas will come and it doesn't
matter. The fact that we're practicing it and thinking about how to
apply it is the most important thing.
(Alice is back)
Alice: So glad you're still here, didn't want to
leave at that point.
Sherry
We were talking a little bit about our experiences. Do
you feel heard on what you were saying J before Alice came back in. To
be aware that it's being recorded. I wanted to hear more from you,
didn't exactly understand about you feeling like a child, could you
explain.
(I wish for more
diversity?)
Alice to Jonathan
I hadn't felt fully heard, and had taken responsibility
for that, because wasn't aware. When I realize I discovered a lot of
emotion there.
What I was talking about, my plan for the empathy talks and workshops
and all of that, felt like I was stepping up to being stronger,
feeling supported by the empathy circle and what we're developing here
to do that. And it was really new and exciting for me, though I guess
it sounded fairly ordinary and not new, so when I didn't feel really
(and perhaps I didn’t really express that, I couldn't be heard if I
didn't express it!) heard and I didn't say it, I didn't express it,
all our said was about Sherry having the frown. But then that affected
me, as Sherry went on talking I was really interested in what she was
saying,
Jonathan: Our taking your
workshops and so on for granted, felt devaluing to you, you realised.
Alice to Jonathan
Yes, and I'm glad that we're talking about being
conscious of the narrowness of our diversity, but it will be a big
step to reach out myself in the way I’m planning and to have the
support of the online and face to face tolls we're developing and to
keep going on the track I’m on, and it is focussed on empathy and the
empathy workshops and I don't want to jump beyond that and say that
it isn't enough, I suppose before we 've even done it.
Jonathan to Alice
That this initial step is still challenging and you
want to acknowledge that and support the stage that we're in and you
also acknowledge the need for diversity, but first of all we need to
tackle the workshop itself and the way that it works, that it's also
challenging to bring it to the people of the same culture.
Alice to Jonathan
The primary school child reference is that it
feels like my faltering steps ... the awareness that even the people
doing the yoga and navel gazing ( not the toxicity and
dysfunctionality) I suppose ...I don't think we're going to appeal to
people by only talking about the effect on the world.
We do need to talk to people about the effect for
themselves, people are very wounded and often closed off from the
bigger picture. I want to reach out to people who are looking for
help and nourishment and in their lives and I think that will lead
them towards the bigger picture of the world.
To me that's very worthwhile to reach out to people and
for them to be nourished by empathy and to help them understand about
empathy and how it can affect the world through the kind of process
we're talking about.
Alice
I feel like the words coming out of my mouth might be
hurtful to you Sherry and I want to say that I don't mean it that way,
because I don't feel there was any intention for you to dismiss what I
was saying or to not to see it as important and I totally see what
you’re talking about as important and I really take responsibility for
the fact that I didn't ask to be heard more at that point and there
were a lot of consequences of that that I’m learning about.
But I have no feeling of there having been any
personal deliberate kind of ... there's nothing for me to criticise, I
meant to say, it's about my wanting to learn about and be able to do
better in the future. I don't mean for Sherry to be offended by what
I'm saying.
Alice : I don't feel good
about having swallowed up all this time.....
Jonathan :
I see two different topics we should talk about, though
aware I won't be here next time, annoying .
I think we should talk about
I suggest that we try in a sentence each one of us to
share more about how we feel. And less talking about the circle and
what should we do, but more kind of giving some kind of reflection
about this challenging EC. It definitely was for me the most
challenging one.
Maybe we could reflect more on how we're feeling than
the topic itself, which we won’t' be able to get into now. And both
of you have shared such deep and important questions. .
Sherry : Share how we're
feeling as kind of a check out.
Jonathan :
how about two sentences:
How we started in ec's and where we are now. Two
sentences. ( All willing to do that)
Sherry :
Breathing pause to check in with ourselves - close our
eyes and breathe........ draw our intention to how each of us is
feeling right now in this present moment. Notice if there's a physical
sensation on your body that goes with that feeling. One more nice deep
inhalation, pause at the top, then let the air out slowly......
I feel very connected with what I would call my animal
self right now, I don't have a lot of words. I think I've been this
way the entire circle.
I feel touched hearing A's expression, how you are, and
I feel appreciative of your presence and support and the different
ways you've been present today. I don't really mind feeling this way
for myself, but I have some concern for how people are receiving me
right now. I'm going to away from home for a couple of weeks, and it's
probably a good thing. I think I just need some time to myself. I feel
grateful that I have that time for myself to step into soon.
Jonathan : Do you want
somebody to reflect?
Sherry : No
Alice:
I started off feeling very surprising energised this
morning and was a bit shocked when it looked like it was going to be
cancelled because I was more awake than I've ever been. I feel a bit
embarrassed really because I didn't expect all this emotion to come up
and it's still coming up and I can't stop it. I don't mind feeling
like this, still it is very public. Anyway...I also feel very safe and
empathized with by you both and see that t is a safe place for things
like this to happen. and I see value in it.
I'm Ok and I'm concerned about its affecting
everybody else that myself. I'm OK J with it. I just feel emotional
and if I talk any closer to the topic it just comes up again, like
this fountain of tears that keeps wanting to erupt. And I'm enjoying
your smiles and empathetic looks and sense of connection about that,
that it's OK that it's happening here. Ok I think I'm done.
Jonathan
OK... So..I came today in the middle of a totally
hectic day. Knowing only 10 minutes before that I can actually do it,
because I really wanted to but I was very distracted and all over the
place. And I started by talking very rationally, with my questions and
my usual things, and then with everything that's going on and the
passion of both of you, I got deeper into my emotion and I feel much
more connected...Oh Edwin! (General laughter)
(Edwin drops in)
Edwin I can’t believe you guys are still at it.
Jonathan:
we're just closing. What I was just saying is I
feel so connected and I think what we experienced here was to me what
I would like to see more. That at any stage that we came in, whether
we were with our daily kind of thing, or waking up, that we were
brought into what were really passionate about, ore what bothering us,
that even if there is a bit of conflict or disagreement that we can
still see these empathic looks and I'm leaving this empathy circle
much more connected with you than I ever was in other circles, and I
feel that this experience was really really meaningful for me. To see
how we went through that, with the tech glitches and with the
different emotional states, so thank you all of you.
Alice & Sherry: thanks J.
Jonathan: lets finish
with a motion...
Edwin:
I came for consolation. My mind is all kind of
scattered and crazy. Just about everything that can go wrong is with
our plumbing, so that's my motion. I think I'm kind of out of sync
with you all.
Alice & Sherry:
I think it's time to close the circle and blow
out the candle.
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