Cutting Through the Fog

We so often communicate with one another on top of layers of unspoken assumptions and agendas, often without realizing it. The "not realizing it" piece is the killer. Unconscious assumptions present huge barriers to clear communication and understanding. One of the most powerful things we can do is to act as detectives in search of assumptions, rout them out, expose them, and reveal them for what they are. Once those evil little assumption nazis are discovered and labeled, deeper relationships can be cultivated based on mutual respect, understanding, and even love.

But when we react to our own assumptions, we are reacting to the unreal, and most often, to our own projections of our worst fears. Carl Rogers, one of the 20th century's leading pioneers in psychology and human potential worked extensively with groups of hundreds of people in a room (warring factions in Brazil and Ireland, for example) with radically opposing views. He found that if as facilitators, his staff simply held a compassionate space, only speaking to make sure everyone and everything is actually heard, allowing the group to seek its own direction like a living organism, the wisdom of these groups would eventually rise to the surface and all members would bond in mutual respect and understanding.

How do we detect assumptions? David Bohm, quoted by Peter Senge in the "Fifth Discipline," identifies three types of incoherence in our thinking that lead to assumptions:
1) Denial that you are a participant (It's not my fault!... Look at what they did!)
2) You stop tracking with reality and start running your program (look for people preaching and stuck on one point of view).
3) You establish your own standard of reference for fixing problems, problems this frame contributed to creating in the first place. (When someone attacks us, we have to attack them).

Senge goes on to suggest three conditions necessary for "dialogue":
1) All participants must "suspend" their assumptions, literally to hold them "as if suspended before us."
2) All participants must regard one another as colleagues.
3) There must be a "facilitator" (that's you!) who "holds the context" of dialogue (i.e. attends to group process).

Here's my own real-life example. I once sat in a circle of 15 strangers for 8 hours with the intention of allowing true community to emerge. During this time, we couldn't help but let go of our pretense...our playing the nice game...and we got real.

I must say that the path to real wasn't real pretty. There was yelling, accusations, crying, blaming, fear, hiding, and general misery. But we stuck to it until we all reached a point of emptiness, where there just wasn't much left to be said, and yet there weren't any "answers" either. At some point, an older lady shared her pain from deep in her heart, others in the group gathered around her either physically or emotionally to comfort her...in that moment we were one--we were a community. The next day we bounced in and out of this sense of community but while in it, we created wonderful things together. There was a feeling that in this state, we could solve any problem put before us as a wise, interconnected, group mind.

During this process, the facilitators didn't say or do much. But they listened intently to every word spoken, and the energy of their intention to hang in there and "stand by our intention" to reach community was tangible.

Getting through assumptions can be messy but not nearly as messy as the fruits of our hatred, distrust, and disconnectedness.