Creating Fields of Belonging
The group is always in process, changing, moving, transforming in
the ocean of awareness. Individuals certainly influence a group’s
consciousness, but in turn, the larger group fields that we participate
in influence us all. If the group is in peril, or thinks it is,
it will act in certain predictable, mostly defensive ways. If the
group operates within a certain range of safety and challenge,
it will act with a greater instinct for innovation, from curiosity,
and even with a willingness to risk its identity. How can we find
ways, or amplify existing ways, to aid a group’s health and rejuvenative
powers? What more important question is there? Indeed, it is through
healthy groups, families, communities, and organizations that we
cultivate healthy individuals, who in return contribute their best
selves to the group. Healing environments free us from the destructive
emotions that can fester in groups and direct our attention to
a positive future. Bringing this possibility to group consciousness
is an invitation for being, to paraphrase the words of poet David
Whyte, the ancestors of our future happiness.
Healing derives from the Old English word haelan, the root word
for heal, whole, and holy. These interrelated words provide us a
clue to positive growth in groups. Healing is a process that aims
to make us whole, to unify the discordant chords of life into a larger
harmony. It is a sacred process. At its simplest, it is an attempt
to do more of those things that bring joy and fewer things that cause
pain—to make, in the English novelist George Eliot’s words, “life
less difficult to each other.”
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