Full Circle Associates

Chris Corrigan (one of the deepest facilitators I know) posted on Dealing with anger and aggression earlier this week. It was what I needed to read today as I reflect on how to bring the generative side of disagreement to our communities. He quotes Pema Chodron, a Buddhist teacher. The quote is so wonderful, I'm copying it here. But do read all of Chris' post if you are interested in facilitating with anger and agression, rather than fighting against it. Chris writes:

In this article, “The Answer to Anger and Agression is Patience” she writes about her own struggle to cultivate a practice of patience as the antidote to anger and aggression:

Patience has a quality of enormous honesty in it, but it also has a quality of not escalating things, allowing a lot of space for the other person to speak, for the other person to express themselves, while you don’t react, even though inside you are reacting. You let the words go and just be there.

This suggests the fearlessness that goes with patience. If you practice the kind of patience that leads to the de-escalation of aggression and the cessation of suffering, you will be cultivating enormous courage. You will really get to know anger and how it breeds violent words and actions. You will see the whole thing without acting it out. When you practice patience, you’re not repressing anger, you’re just sitting there with it—going cold turkey with the aggression. As a result, you really get to know the energy of anger and you also get to know where it leads, even without going there. You’ve expressed your anger so many times, you know where it will lead. The desire to say something mean, to gossip or slander, to complain—to just somehow get rid of that aggression—is like a tidal wave. But you realize that such actions don’t get rid of the aggression; they escalate it. So instead you’re patient, patient with yourself.

This echoes some of the comments the speakers make last Saturday during the Blogher closing round. Not overreacting is a fiercely brave thing to do and it opens the possibility of deeper understanding. I need to practice this.

As usual, stepping into Chris' blog is never about reading just one post, but getting lost in a lovely sea of facilitation possibility. I was also drawn to this link Flowering Awareness, which reminded me that our practices of blogging ABOUT things must always be taken in context of the THINGS we blog about. Also, a link to Consensus Polling, which is a really great resource for facilitators. I have always been uneasy about the ease of electronic polling as a decision making process, rather than as a tool towards decision making. This page gives some great, practical ideas.

As always, thanks, Chris.