Principles for a Deeper Container

So many of us these days are working to create helpful containers. In facilitation, I think of these as containers for learning, as containers for connection, and as containers to nourish a deeply inner clarity that can then grow and inhabit outer being and doing.

For some of us, however, the work isn’t just facilitation. It has a deeper quality. For me wise and soulful point in the right direction. Deep and initiatory experience point in the right direction.

I’m appreciating a friend’s description, Meg, of some of the principles that go into this. She writes,

• being as fully present as possible and coming back quickly when distracted 
• taking responsibility for your own reactions and not pushing the blame on others 
• honoring one another’s process and not rushing in to fix or ‘help’ anyone 
• when upset, staying and not withdrawing.  No feeling is final–it will pass, if you let it, if you don’t attach a story line to it.

Principles for a deeper container. Connection. Learning. Wisdom. Soulfulness.

Quanita Roberson and I have been experimenting with and living some of these principles too. It’s in all of our work, but particularly in our 16-month Leadership Journey and Rite of Passage. To help encourage depth, and to encourage staying in the trouble long enough to harvest some of the medicine that is available.

• just because you are not feeling well, doesn’t mean you are not doing well (stay as present as you can to what is arising)
• it’s true except when it isn’t; it’s not true except when it is (feelings and awareness’ are part of a whole; not the whole path)
• practice kindness, consciousness, flow (these can help guide when it gets messy)
• self-full isn’t the same as selfish

Principles for a deeper container. Connection. Learning. Contribution. Wisdom. Soulfulness.

Here’s to any of us doing such work. Here’s to the encouragement that any of us need to keep going, to keep trusting, to keep open, to finding the next steps, to trusting the unknowns.

For the deeper container, and the alchemy that might just arise from living outside the ordinary.