Community as a more complex mode of being
I was on the recent ‘creating conscious community’ residency in Bergerac, because I wanted to experience building a community from scratch. This doesn’t just mean learning the tools, implementing the right structure, or merely experiencing what community is like, but to actually experience the process as it happens. How can fourteen strangers move into a house together, learn how to be together, and come into community together?
Coming into community, is not merely a change in circumstance, but can change our way of living, relating and being. It can create a change within ourselves; one that can be healing and transformative. Community can be a place of leaning and also growth. It is this that I wanted to experience, to be part of, to help shape, and bare witness to; To observe the subtle changes in our individual ways of being and see community emerging.
In the initial workshop, we learned a set of tools to help us better relate; both to ourselves and improve our interactions, and better understand each other. In the residency, we got to practice it. Yet, my interest in community is more than practicing skills and be better at relating; my interest is in the potential of community for transformative growth, and the potential co-creative outputs that can come from conscious community.
We learn so many habits and strategies to survive the modern world; we rarely get an opportunity to experiment with them, test them and get honest feedback, and better adapt them; we rarely experience someone willing to support us in our attempts at change or growth. Within community, we can start to learn something different; a new way of relating. In many ways, community is a microcosm of society, yet we get to witness the effects of our ways of relating upon others, and experience the feedback of those effects. We each provide mirrors for each other; with the right set of tools, we learn how to use the feedback in order to better see ourselves, and with dialogue, we learn to better see each other. Yet, this process isn’t merely revealing; it brings us closer together. This is coming into community.
Yet, community can also be much more; it can also change our way of being, and can change our understanding of ourselves. We learn so many strategies from childhood on how to stay safe, how to get our needs met, how to survive and rules to succeed at modern life. Within community, and when trust starts to form, we can learn a different way to be; we can challenge our own ways of relating and of staying safe, receive feedback that defy our expectations, and develop new inter-relational tools. We have space to test them out; what happens when we share ourselves, or show our anger or our pain. We get to make mistakes and then make amends, and come closer in the process.
In the space of this short residency, I witnessed habits of interacting, and strategies developed to navigate and stay safe in the modern world, start to change over time. With a hug and simply breathing together, I saw someone’s heart open, smile and become radiant as a result. With encouragement, I saw someone ashamed of her feelings and thoughts, refusing to share them for fear of rejection, then share them and experience that it was fine and was welcomed. With support, I witnessed one woman who, because of trauma in the past, had a fear of social contact, embrace me with a hug. I witnessed someone start to share his feelings rather than facts and demands, and start to win collective support for his proposals rather than provoke disagreements. With a small piece of chocolate, and the big smiles in return, let those in covid self-isolation, know that they were being cared for, rather than a burden and us merely taking care of their needs. I saw how when I share my own process, that helps others come closer; that meaning is intersubjective, and I help others understand my point of view.
This is the potential of community; with a shared commitment to come closer together, and the intentional practice, and the underlying care for each other that starts to form, we can then start to transform and grow. Through this process, we gain an understanding of ourselves and each other through the actual experience of relating, testing behaviour and expectations, using feedback and dialogue, making mistakes and making amends. When supported by those who understand the process, who can help facilitate the experience, and help it make sense after the fact, the effects can be transformative. This is process that can happen in community.
Ultimately, community is a more complex way of living, and it requires a commitment to learning and growth; It requires a sensitivity to one’s way of being, and the effect one has on others, and the effects that they have on us. It requires introspection to understand the cause of our feelings, and self-reflection to look at ourselves. It require compassion for oneself, and the hurts that come to light, and empathy for others, and the ways they have been hurt. It requires courage to present feedback to others, and to recognise the impact of one’s own behaviours, to own up and make it right. It requires humility to question our own preconceptions and interpretations, and recognise when feedback shows us something new. It requires a curiosity about oneself; what comes of it, is a growing curiosity about others; and what results, is a growing understanding of ourselves, and a growing love for those around us.
These are the tools that are increasingly necessary in the wider world; the skills to navigate inter-personal dynamics, the healing trauma of the past, the practice of new skills in community, and the understanding of others that one gains; one learns a more complex way of being, necessary for a more complex world.
These are necessary skills that everyone should be taught at school. In the meantime, community provides the best opportunity to learn and practice, in order to create a change in our way of being in the world. For when we stop reacting, we can create change in those we meet.
In summary, community is an experience that everyone should try.