Lynnaea Lumbard, 2003
My first memory of “council” was at summer camp. I was seven. We were told that Sunday night was to be Council Fire. It was my favorite part of camp. We filed into the circle around the fire to the beat of a tom-tom, two lines of girls from the tallest to the shortest. We prayed to Great Spirit as the fire was lit and three older girls uttered creeds (which to this day guide my life) as they lit red, white and blue candles to love, health and happiness. The director gave a talk, many girls received awards and we sang together into the night sky.
Those moments in circle were magical for me and set the course of my life to work with groups. The kind of community that develops when people sit together in a circle over a period of time has become essential to my well-being. I now sit in many such circles–praying, singing, listening, uttering creeds of commitment, and striving to find ways of communicating at a soul level. For years I have pursued the question of what enables a community to develop soul connections with each other and keep those relationships flowing, loving, and clean? And further, when things get rough or people get hurt, how do you heal the wounds, the slights, the misunderstandings, and the differences of opinion that inevitably arise in any group or relationship over time? In short, by what means do we fulfill that dream we all feel is possible of living together well?
My life energy has been directed towards finding or creating the answers to these questions. I have been on many journeys with many groups exploring many different tools, techniques, and trainings. Today, almost a half-century later, I come back to the simplest of these: sitting together in council. I am continually awe-struck by the power and magic that happens when people listen and speak with each other using the simplest of guidelines as a structure.
Council is a very ancient tool, arguably as old as the first human forms of communication. Indigenous cultures from every corner of the earth, religious, social and government institutions of all kinds, kids on the playground and even dogs in the backyard use various forms of council. Every one of you reading this has been in some type of council. It seems so simple that we often take it for granted and miss its power. We don’t recognize its magic. We all know how to sit in a circle and hear every one else. Or do we?
When I first learned Council as a formal practice, from Gigi Coyle and Jack Zimmerman from the Ojai Foundation, I didn’t initially appreciate the subtle magic that would arise out of making the agreements and boundaries around council more conscious. I was intimately familiar with going around a circle and having everyone share. I knew those mysteries. But why does lighting a candle and offering an intention before initiating a council change the nature of the conversation? And why does a talking piece make such a difference from just going around a room and sharing? What is the result of limiting speaking to only the person holding the talking piece, allowing no comment or interruption from others? What I have discovered is that these simple structures make an incredible, if sometimes subtle difference. They allow the speaking to come from a different, deeper place. They create a temenos, a sacred space in which the soul feels safe to come forward. Something magical happens, a mystery that continues to reveal itself to me as I continue to practice council.
A council begins when someone recognizes a need to deepen, clarify, or resolve relationships between individuals or in a group and calls for a council. Sometimes council is called as part of a larger process within a group structure. Everyone involved agrees to participate at a specific time and place. The topic can be chosen by the caller of the council or agreed upon by the participants. It helps to have a central altar or focus, which can be as simple as a flower or a candle. A dedication for the council, spoken out loud, with or without lighting a candle, sets the intention that orients the direction of the council’s unfolding. A talking piece is chosen which can also be as simple as a rock, a stick, a shell or a flower or some more elaborate sacred object that has meaning to the group. All participants agree only to speak when they hold the talking piece and not to make comments when others are speaking.
There are four basic instructions for participating in council:
Listen from the heart.
Speak from the heart.
Be spontaneous.
Be lean.
I put Listen from the Heart first, for most of council and most of any real communication is about listening. The point is to listen fully to each person, staying present for what he or she is saying and not rehearsing what you are going to say. This has its own magic, for when you listen from your heart, it is like opening your arms and receiving the other person. They know it and feel it and something comes forward from them that wouldn’t otherwise. They unfold as deeper, more thoughtful, and more concerned people in front of your eyes. When you listen from your heart, you hear what’s going on below the surface of their behavior and it becomes increasingly difficult to judge them.
Speaking from the Heart could be a guideline for any utterance, at any time, anywhere. I use it as a mantra, continually reminding myself that my intention is to speak from my heart. Speaking from the Heart requires us to pause, slow down, breathe, and tune into our deeper self. It asks that we let our soul do the talking and not just our heads or our reactions. If we could but remember to come from our hearts in our interactions, much pain and confusion in our communication would be alleviated.
Being spontaneous is another way of saying, “you don’t have to rehearse to be yourself”. People are infinitely more interested in hearing our real, authentic feelings and thoughts than what we think we should say or have planned to say. Letting go of our “performers” and just being direct and honest with whatever comes up takes us into soul relationship with our listeners. We all long for places where we can just tell the truth without having to look good.
Being lean means saying only what needs to be said. Sometimes we need to say a lot, but we all have been in situations where someone in a circle loses consciousness of the others and rambles on and on. Less is often more. Lean is something that works, especially in a relationship council where a couple is trying to work through difficulties. Better to say a little and get a response back, say a little more and get a dialogue going, than to try to dump everything at once on one’s partners. And for any of us who spend a lot of time in circle, lean is a relief. It implies that you have listened to what else has been said and only need to say what has not been said. Your piece adds to a whole that emerges from everyone. One of the great mysteries of council is that the whole, when everyone has said their small piece, is infinitely more magical and beautiful than the sum of its parts would predict.
These four guidelines, coupled with offering a dedication to the council and insisting that only the person who has the talking piece can talk, create a sacred structure that transforms ordinary conversation into very different kind of dialogue which carries the quality of a soul communion. Suddenly one feels safe to speak the deeper truths. Everything is changed by these simple adjustments to our speaking with each other, yet it often doesn’t occur to me that something so simple could work so well.
Yet it does. I so trust the process of council that whenever I want to deepen the connection or open into a soul dialogue with someone or a group, I call for a council. This has taken me into some interesting situations and through some difficult territories, yet always the result is more understanding, more compassion, more love, and more connection with others who I have experienced as different from me. Ultimately, I come away from any council in awe of what fabulous, intricate, delicate beings we are and the power we have to learn and grow with and from each other.
I now open and close all workshops with a council. An opening council is almost always about where each individual is in their lives at the moment. I have come to learn that wherever it is, if you speak it, it will move and you will become more present and attuned to the whole. What unfolds through every one’s participation is always richer, truer, and more beautiful than I could have imagined. Even when someone brings up very difficult material and I wonder how the group will deal with it, someone later in the group will offer a completely different perspective that resolves it. Everyone gets heard and knowing that you will have a chance to speak lets everyone relax and be present. Even when you yourself are carrying the difficult material, just getting to speak your few words moves your energy and you can get on with what’s next.
An ending council helps integrate any group experience by allowing the learnings to be named. There is a satisfaction that comes from this naming that completes the energy of a group and lets it be released. In our Vision Fast work, where we take people out into the desert for 11-day wilderness quests, council is an essential part of incorporating the experience of the quest into daily life. Our being able to speak our experiences makes them more real to us. Deep listening to another’s experience helps us to understand our own experiences in a larger context. The most moving experience I had of this was a council in a wooded clearing near a Hill Tribe village in Northern Thailand, after a 24-hour solo in the forest. Buddhist monks, American seekers, activists from all over the world spoke their experiences in council at the end of a ten-day bearing witness walk. Whatever the depth and beauty of our own experience, it was magnified exponentially with every other person’s experience. A solidarity occurred across racial, ethnic, religious, national, and gender lines that remains to this day one of my most inspiring examples of hope for the human race.
Another inspiration of hope is happening out of an LA pilot project that introduced council in a middle school several years ago. Council has proved so effective in creating respectful and honoring communication amongst kids from diverse and often hostile backgrounds, that there are now well over 3000 students experiencing council on a weekly basis throughout LA and Boulder, with new programs starting all the time. Imagine what it would have been like when you were in the seventh grade to learn to hear from and speak to your peers about what was really concerning you in your lives?
I so long for the kind of soul connections that come through council that I call a council even when I’m already in deep relationship with people. The results always astound me. For Christmas one year, we did a council with my husband’s family and anyone else who was there. The ages ranged from 85 to 5, with a chunk of mid-lifers and a smattering of teenagers. I never would have imagined the thoughtfulness and perception of the teenagers nor the five-year-old’s immediate grasp of what we were doing. She let the stick pass her several times, then when it was her turn again, held it strongly and uttered the most profound sentence of the evening: “I think we should all just love each other and be nice.” To bring in this New Year’s we invited our friends over for a party that ended with a council. This has been a challenging year for all of us and to speak of that along with our hopes and intentions for the New Year brought our whole community together.
With friends, I’ve found council to be the tool that course corrects our relationships and clears up all the niggly stuff that over times separates people. When we had a couple live with us for several months, council was what helped us remember that we loved each other and what our greater purpose was for being together. We also got to hear where the other person was actually coming from, which immediately evaporated the unexpressed hurts and secret judgment. After a recent vacation with another couple, I called a council for us just to acknowledge what impacted us on our very rich journey together. Something essential is incomplete without this pause to reflect, to listen and speak from the heart.
By far the most important use of council for me has been in my personal relationship with my husband. We are together a lot. We live, work and travel together. We have a lot of long deep conversations in the car. But nothing touches sitting opposite each other, lighting a candle and passing the talking stick back and forth. It changes what we talk about, what we can talk about and certainly how we talk about it. If I am listening and speaking from the heart, I have to treat him with respect and care. I simply can’t look him in the eye, open my heart, and then be mean. I have to say whatever I say, however difficult it is to say it, in a way that honors him. I find that I am quickened into my best self, the one who can be angry and still be compassionate, the one who can see what is going on without bludgeoning him with it, the one who can take a breath, let go a little of the control and trust in the power of speaking the truth. Council practice between couples or close relationships invokes a kind of active ongoing Loving-Kindness meditation that is transforming to relationship. I feel it is an essential practice for any couple dedicated to conscious loving relationship.
The most personally challenging councils have been those I’ve called when I am having difficulty with another person. If I know that the issues are particularly complex and/or I have a lot of emotion around the issues and know that I am not clear, I will call a Witness Council, asking one or more other people whom we each respect, trust, and love to witness the exchange. While obviously more powerful to do face-to-face, I’ve done these councils with breakthrough results over the phone and even on e-mail. The council is still dedicated, either spoken or in writing, and I still light a candle when I write or we all light our own candle when we talk over the phone.
The purpose of the council is to come to truth and resolution. I don’t know what the resolution will be, but I trust that there is one if we all agree to the rules of council. Agreement is key. Calling for the council itself is the beginning of naming that there is a conflict and that there is an intention to resolve it in a sacred way. Half of the work is already done. Having an agreed upon witness who will then hold the council, witness the conversation and make observation comments where appropriate does most of the rest. It is impossible to lie, steal, cheat, exaggerate, project, or blame when someone you respect is witnessing your conversation with someone you love whom you are in conflict with. The very structure insures that you to hear the other side and have compassion for it.
The results of these Witness Councils in our groups have been phenomenal. Through them, individuals have healed old wounds, come into new fruitful relationships with people they previously have had difficulty with, and cleared those unexpressed feelings and missing conversations that so stultify a group energy field. It has become our main tool for keeping our groups in good relationship with each other. In addition, the individuals involved have worked through negative relationship patterns that have plagued them their whole lives.
This happens just by sitting opposite each other, lighting a candle and dedicating the council, looking in each other’s eyes, and passing the talking stick back and forth or to the witness. Listen from the heart. Speak from the heart. Be spontaneous. Be lean. Watch and feel what happens as you speak and listen. Cry, yell, tell the truth, but always treat the other with respect and honor. If you have someone in your life willing to sit in council with you, you have a friend with whom you can work through anything.
And is that not the point? Aren’t we searching for ways to keep our communications and communities clean and strong and thriving? Our relationships are not ever going to be perfect. We are not static beings. Stuff will come up. The world is changing rapidly around us and we are all struggling to find our authentic response. Other people will always push the buttons of our own unresolved internal material. Council provides an ongoing sacred structure to talk through what we are experiencing in a way that allows us to remain loving, kind and truthful companions on the journey. I encourage you to call your own council.
See The Way of Council by Jack Zimmerman and Virginia Coyle, Bramble Books, 1996.
Temenos is a Greek work that means the boundary line of the temple. The wall around ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian temples was called the temenos wall. When you passed its gates, you were inside the sacred precinct. It is a term also used in depth psychology to describe the safe setting a therapist creates by establishing a regular place and time for appointments, which allows the deeper psyche to express itself.
For more information about this work contact the Naos Foundation,www.naosfoundation.org and click on Vision Fast.
Contact the Center for Council Training at the Ojai Foundation
For a deeper exploration of how to use council in a couple’s relationship see Flesh and Spirit by Jack Zimmerman and Jaquelyn McCandless, Bramble Books 1998.