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On closeness. Openness and third persons
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On closeness
Not everybody wants to be close to everybody - why force everyone to the same thing? We don't. Some of our hardest telephone-covering workers haven’t been coming to our training sessions (given by experienced therapists for ten weeks on Sundays), nor to our sometime encounter group sessions. It doesn't make sense to make everybody do the same thing, that's again being in roles in the manner in which people had to be in the old ones.
I have tried to make clear that we don’t want close relations with everyone, because that would get sticky. I have tried to emphasize that carrying forward life is what matters.
In our Changes community too, it's like that. Not everyone is intimate, not at all. What matters is that for most, who are there, what they do in Changes has something to do with where their life is needing to move, or moving, or still stuck. There are people to learn to get close to, because that is one dimension along which the lives of many are needing to move. But other things too, not only this.
Relating closely, in something like the way we outlined earlier, is a vital need and not much met, most places.
For instance, in many communes, people give everything up to the group, all money, exclusive relations, the bathroom door, everything. And yet - when it comes to getting into each other so that a closeness can be real, they shy away from that. But why commit to that life, if you can't then really live there? That's being in a new pattern, but the way of being in it is like the old marriage pattern - you give up everything, and then you're still alone, unmet, unheard, and without even the privacy at least to hear yourself.
Sometimes nobody comes to our big meetings for help. But many of the people in the room, “our group, " are people who came for help not very long ago, and never needed to say so. We have a loose community, and inside it there are sub-groups that really have a very deep and life-involving community. That’s help, but it doesn't fit to call it help, and it isn't clear who is helping whom.
In other places in this book we tell about other more specific patterns we developed for handling the differences in skill and attitude among us - we mention some of them now only to illustrate that the sort of new roles we are talking about can look like any other roles, and yet, inside, be specific and adapted to living, to a process of sensing and then modifying forms, so life can proceed in them.
Openness and third persons
We develop the principle in Changes (not always followed, of course…) that we discuss our troubles with someone we are working with while that person is present. Of course, it is harder to express oneself honestly about someone when that person is there, but it's also more rewarding. The person can talk back, and also, we can watch others relate differently than we do with that same person. Then we get to see how that person can also behave and be different than with us. In such meetings, some of us have been most able to communicate our attitudes to new members, something that can't always be done by general talk. Therefore, also, when we don't like the way someone is acting, we can get with that person. We try to have someone present who makes it a specific task to listen to that person and make sure that person’s side is fully heard and brought out and understood and validated too. This makes it much more possible to give the person honest feedback. It's better to do it that way, than not to let that person work - who knows, that person may be right and we may be wrong, or that person may be contributing something valuable as well as us.
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In this way, we can let everyone do whatever they will do. We don’t need unanimity. We don't have to agree before-hand. When we have had that kind of structure, the " democratic" kind, so-called, we were all tied up in decision-making meetings about things which only one knew all about, and which only some were going to do anyway.
Of course, if everyone must do what the majority decide, then it's very important not to let anybody into your group whose attitude and spirit differs from yours. But, if people are let to do what they will do, then you can do as you value even if you come to be in the minority - so you can let anyone in who comes, and you can let all be full members as soon as they come. If you practice and show your ways they may want to learn yours if they find them better.
Again, if you forbid some people to meet separately with only those they like, if you can only have your whole group meeting, then letting new people in all the time keeps the group at some kind of beginning level. But if any who like can meet by themselves without that insulting others, then they can go in depth with each other, and still also be part - at other times - of a completely open group. Because in depth they developed closeness, therefore now in the open group they still relate closely - and since others are not excluded from that they come to be part of closer relating. In this way, some of our sub-groups have very much aided the larger group. For example, the warmth and acceptance developed in the women’s group made for gentle and mutually supportive close relations which the women have also in the big group. In the small one they came to support and invite and receive whatever each of them offered, and then in the large group they still do that. And that's the kind of climate we would want a new person to walk into, and take part in.
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