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July 2002 e-Newsletter

Healing Our Communities

by Brian Berman

Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real.
  -  Eckhart Tolle

Entering this new millennium, I had been praying for more peace in the world. The celebrations held around the world heralding this new age gave me hope for healing our global community. And yet, here in the Seattle area, we were feeling the threat of terrorism, as our border patrol arrested someone entering our country with explosives.

Around the same time a number of my friends in partnership were breaking up. I had been attempting to stay supportive of each person and found that I was lacking the skills to bring peace to their disputes. It became difficult to go to any community activity without their sore feelings showing up. Who shall I invite for a community or holiday dinner, and who shall I exclude because of their anger? I saw that the seeds of global conflict were present in my dearest friends. I saw that somekind of healing modality was wanted and needed that didn't yet exist. I felt inspired to create a community based council to support healing these conflicts.

The old bumpersticker "Think Globally, Act Locally" kept coming to mind and so I began to share my vision (spring of 2001) with some good friends about starting a Listening Council. Many were enthusiastic, feeling the great need in our community for a safe council of peers. So I further investigated what skills we would need to bring to this new work. Having Leah Green in my community helped a great deal, for I knew of her work and asked for her support which she generously gave. Wanting to have leadership of both genders, I invited a close woman friend, Therese Charvet, who had years of leadership experience in women's groups, to co-facilitate this work with me. 

Therese and I drafted a letter (November 2001), citing the ruptures in our community and the tragedy of 9/11 as good reasons to come together for some healing.  We invited friends to come learn the helpful skills of Compassionate Listening and begin to heal our own conflicts as a path toward making the world a safer place to live. I then took the Compassionate Listening training and invited those in the training to also partake in this group. From this weekly practice group, I envisioned that we would hone our skills and hold special Listening Councils  for when it would be needed by community members.

We started with twenty participants and currently average 14 at each weekly meeting. The participants range in age from 18 to 64 and there is usually an equal number of men and women. At first we thought it best to close the group to create a safe container for dealing with our conflicts. However, it became clear to us that to have a closed group would create more separation within the community, so the group welcomes all those that are interested in learning and practicing Compassionate Listening. The group primarily consists of "regulars" who participate weekly with newcomers showing up once or twice a month.

• Meditation to clear our minds and become more present in the moment.
• A non-verbal exercise designed to help everyone feel more connected to the others in the group.
• A verbal check-in from each person without cross talk. This begins our practice of listening to each other with our hearts.
• A monthly teaching exercise to advance our skill in Compassionate Listening.
• Each participant indicates whether they want to be a speaker or listener; we break into large or small groups to do our Compassionate Listening practice.
• To close we gather together as one group, and wrap up by doing some debriefing about what was experienced and learned in the practice sessions.

• Stay Present
• Don't try to "Fix It"
• Watch your Judgements
• Allow Silence
• Don't ask Why
• Avoid "yes" and "no" type questions
• Listen with your heart and not your head

A few hours after I completed the Compassionate Listening training, I got a call from one of my friends in conflict. She had heard me speak my intention about creating Listening Council and said, "I need a Council now!" So it began, just like that. I called Therese and went over what might work as a model for listening, drawing from what I had learned in the training. We then met with this friend and gave her the listening support she needed. She became clear about what some of her underlying concerns were and what she needed next. She wanted a face to face Council with her former partner. We then asked him if he would be willing to meet with us, and he did. After listening to him and hearing what his unmet needs were about, we asked if he understood her suffering. He felt ready to meet with her in Council, so we set a date.  We added one more person to the Listening Council so that we felt that we could contain them safely. This Listening Council went well, and they have been able to continue a friendship.

This conflict actually involved three people: the woman, her former partner and her current partner. The two men were also in conflict with each other. Bringing both men to Council was more involved and demanded rapid growth on our part. One of the men feared the anger of the other; he requested 4-6 more listeners. We asked our weekly practice group for listeners; there was more than enough interest. We then had to learn how to work a large council, i.e. defining who facilitates, who observes, who watches time, how to keep balance between the parties.

We have learned much from each Council, and I am pleased to report that the Listening Council is working well in our community. We have had many Councils for individuals in crisis, Councils for divorcing couples and Councils to support and assist people with personal and relationship issues. When a Council is requested a call or email will go out with a request to meet in support of someone in conflict and a Listening Council gathers.

We envision a world where communities provide love, support and compassionate listening to those in conflict and/or personal crisis.  We envision a community where everyone feels like an "insider" and everyone's gifts are seen, valued and contribute to the wholeness and health of the community.

When called by someone in conflict or in personal crisis, we create a circle of peers who gather in Council to listen, and create an opportunity for that person to be seen, acknowledged and heard.  When the situation involves a conflict with others who are interested in Listening Council as a tool for resolution, we meet with all involved parties separately and then together. The Councils provide a forum for the resolution of conflicts, both inner and outer. Listening Councils offer a safe place to express emotion, an opportunity for the depth of the difficulty to be revealed and accepted, and a way through the suffering into a new freedom where the gifts of the situation can be identified and appreciated.

Councils consist of anywhere from 2-10 people, including at least one person trained in Compassionate Listening techniques who acts as facilitator.  Sometimes specific listeners are specially invited by the person requesting the Council; other times the call for listeners goes out to our practice group and the Council consists of whoever can show up at the designated time. Peer listeners are motivated because of their personal connection to those in crisis and their desire to give back the support and love they have received during their own challenges and conflicts.  Councils may meet only once, or in the case of conflicts with others, several times. Each Council generally lasts 1 to 2 hours.

• To create a new approach to conflict resolution
• To create a healing environment, a safe space where transformation can occur
• To listen fully, with a quiet mind without judgement
• To offer love and support rather than advice and problem-solving
• To help each person discover his/her own inner wisdom
• To dig deeply into what is underneath conflicts and challenges
• To identify and release blame and judgement toward oneself and others
• To see what there is to learn in challenges and conflicts, to "find the pearl"
• To help identify and articulate unmet needs
• To catalyze growth, spiritual and emotional evolution
• To heal the isolation of modern communities
• To offer perspective

Listening Council is not aligned with any particular religion or brand of spirituality; it is not therapy.  It is built on the following universal truths:

• Full hearted listening generates healing, transformative energy
• Challenges and conflicts provide an opportunity for self-discovery
• The outer life is a reflection of the inner life
• A common cause of suffering is personal thought patterns that hold us as "victim"
• Humility, acknowledging how much we do not know, is a key to conflict resolution
• Personal freedom comes from forgiveness and reconciliation
• The heart, not the head, is the place for healing to happen
• Mindfulness is an essential pathway to healing
• Nonjudgemental  peer listening models how to be compassionate with ourselves
• Acceptance of "What is" is the key to healing
• We are all both students and teachers in the lessons of life

• Bringing more facilitation into each session: we recognize that without good facilitators the person who is speaking can remain stuck in their story. We are developing a preparatory information sheet, which will help prepare the speaker for their Listening Council. We are gathering feedback from each Council to help improve our skills.

• Listeners have varying degrees of Compassionate Listening skills, so we have been occasionally sidetracked by questions or advice-giving that have not helped the speaker. We are developing ways to cultivate better listening such as including a mindfulness bell that the facilitator will ring when someone gets off track or there is need for silence.  We are refining our understandings and awareness in our written "Tips for our listeners."

• We recognize that Listening Council is not therapy and that those in conflict may need professional help in addition. On the other hand, we see the healing value of peers supporting those who they care about within the context of community.  We have seen some amazing results from this model.

• The amount of time it takes to bring each relationship conflict into a state of reconciliation.  When people are in conflict, it requires meeting with each person individually at least once, until such time as we sense they are ready to walk in the shoes of the other(s), and then to meet with them together once or twice. On the other hand, we experienced a sense of great success with a woman who had been marginalized by the community because of her anger, judgements and blame and needed 5 Councils to work through it all.  In the end she came to a place of love and acceptance and reconnection in community.  This kind of success rewards all our time and effort.

In the future, when our skills are strong and the time feels right, we will offer Listening Council  to a broader community and will request financial compensation for our time and effort. We envision that we will provide skilled leadership and facilitation, requesting volunteer listeners to join us in Listening Council from among the person-in-need's network of friends and family.  This will serve the dual function of providing the service as well as spreading the skills and benefits of "Compassionate Listening" to a broader audience.

We are working on a workshop/training so we can share this model and create a network of Listening Councils.

Therese Charvet, 9333 Holly Farm Ln, Bainbridge Island WA 98110, 206/842-7141

Brian Berman, PO Box 975, Suquamish, WA 98392, 360/779-1223 
Brian  therese@sacredgroves.net

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