The Way of Council in Windhorse
“There appears to be a universal longing for genuine community. Relaxing one’s personal territory and being able to open up to the experience of others is a fruition of true community.”
In council we aspire to be:
◈ heartfelt with giving voice to what is true in this moment
◈ open in listening to the other person with body, speech, mind
◈ clear and concise with expression
◈ non-rehearsed in spontaneous experience
◈ brave with authentic engagement that serves dialogue.
May this aspiration dawn.
Introduction
The way of council has been practiced in the Windhorse community for 20 years with various expressions across the international Windhorse community. The Way of Council by Jack Zimmerman and Virginia Coyle (Bramble Books, 1996) is the handbook that explains our particular legacy and form of council. This approach is drawn from indigenous (Native American) and contemplative wisdom traditions (notably Thich Nhat Hanh). “We believe that the many forms of council belong to all people who gather in the circle to embrace the challenge of listening and speaking from the heart” (The Way of Council, p. 5). Since time immemorial, groups of people have sat on the earth, or in the earth in the “kivas” of the ancient American southwest. Nourished by fire, food, and land, they engaged in storytelling, education, decision-making, and ceremony (see Note 1 on kivas). Since we are their direct descendants, we can invoke their ancestral spirit and recognize council for what it is. We can remember our heritage this way.
Council was given to Windhorse by Virgina Coyle (Ojai Foundation) and Marlowe Hotchkiss (Living Systems) in the early 90’s, during an organizational development retreat. Some of us went on to make the commitment to become “council carriers” to practice and share council with others. We continue to evolve this way of community dialogue in our distinctive Windhorse expression of contemplative psychotherapy (see Note 2 on evolving ceremonies). Our council approach is being influenced by the Shambhala tradition as a path of warriorship toward creating enlightened society. In my experience, Windhorse council is a Shambhala-style discipline that strives to bring out our inherent goodness and dignity to benefit society. Further, council can be a bridge from any worthy contemplative practice to Windhorse work and therapy in general (see Note 3 on contemplative practice).
Chogyam Trungpa writes in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior:
“From the Shambhala point of view, honesty is the best policy … You begin to understand the importance of communicating openly with others. If you tell the truth to others, then they can be open with you—maybe not immediately, but you are giving them the opportunity to express themselves honestly as well. When you do not say what you feel, you generate confusion for yourself and confusion for others. Avoiding the truth defeats the purpose of communication … If you are telling the truth, then you can speak gently, and your words will have power … [and you will be] without deception. Deception here does not refer to deliberately misleading others. Rather, your self-deception, your own hesitation and self-doubt, may confuse other people or actually deceive them … Being without deception is actually a further extension of telling the truth: it is based on being truthful with yourself. When you have a sense of trusting in your own existence, then what you communicate to other people is genuine and trustworthy.”
Council Ceremony and Practice
Heed the call to council. Create a ceremonial environment. Gather to sit in a circle. The circle sets the boundary of confidentiality and containment, which can be stated. Arrange a “beauty way,” with candle, flowers, and special objects in the center, as the focal point for the sacredness of this time and place (see Note 4 on beautyways). Place a talking piece there, which carries its own story. A ceremonial social space is being invoked which is both highly structured (precision) and freely open (awareness). Bow or share a moment of silence together to mark the beginning of the meeting (see Note 5 on “the bow”). Sit in mindfulness for a few minutes to gather group presence and breathe life into the council circle. Avoid the extremes of somberness and casualness and be. As Chogyam Trungpa advised, “Don’t wear a long face … smile and cheer up.” Acknowledge the two council co-leaders. Invite a volunteer to light the central candle and offer a dedication. “The dedication can be offered in silence or in the form of a prayer for a meaningful council, for the healing of an ill member of the circle, for the group’s shared vision, or simply in appreciation for being able to meet in a sacred way” (The Way of Council, p. 17).
The basic ground rule: only the person holding the talking piece is empowered to speak. The only exception is the use of a chosen word, sound, or gesture of acknowledgement such as “HO” by others present. The simplest form of council is to pass the talking piece around in a clockwise direction, the “sun” direction. Or the talking piece can remain in the center and members can spontaneously pick it up and speak in a “weaving the web.” Or there can be a smaller inner council witnessed by the larger council. Or a meeting can be opened with council and then conducted in a less structured way, with the talking piece remaining in the center to be picked up by anyone at anytime to return to council protocol. This is conducting a meeting under the “halo effect” of council. There are other council forms for specific types of situations outlined in The Way of Council.
The four intentions of council:
Speak from the heart: speak in an authentic way with simplicity and passion; focus on personal revelation; avoid psychologizing, philosophical reflection, long rambling stories, or jokes to dispel tension; avoid the pressure to say something profound, hyper-meaningful, or “spiritual” … ordinary is good; speak one’s personal truth (see Note 6 on “strong words”).
Listen from the heart: listen attentively in a full-bodied way to the person speaking; listen with all the senses, depth of feeling, and suddenly clear intuition; hear the words and beyond the words; listen to how oneself is responding to the person as “sympathetic resonance”; this is tonglen in action.
Be of lean expression: be mindful of speech; appreciate the sounds and shapes of one’s words, each with their own syl-la-bles; use just enough words to convey one’s meaning; be clear and concise in describing one’s experience; decisively rein in the windhorse breath-energy of your voice to make plenty of room for others.
Spontaneity: set one’s intention to not rehearse what you will say while the talking piece comes around; freed from the need to prepare, the conceptual mind can step back and a more intuitive voice can speak; continually bring your attention back out from discursive thinking to awareness of what is happening.
If you have doubts or fears, silently ask yourself the following three questions:
◈ Will speaking this serve me?
◈ Will speaking this serve the circle?
◈ Will speaking this serve the greater good?
Decide whether or not to set a theme for the council. The council process will have a life of its own and can circle around the stated theme or wander in a unique direction. Emerging free expression will keep the council fresh and engaging. The council co-leaders can bring the council back to its theme or let go into new territory. Build dialogue by listening to what is being said, honoring one’s internal responses to what others are saying, then offering that. One can hand the talking piece to another person and address her with a question, perhaps leading to a back-and-forth between two or more people. Be vigilant for the gathering intelligence in the open social field of the council. This is “sympathetic insight.”
The source of the strength in council is unrelenting ceremonial discipline, which keeps us upright and awake. The source of the gentleness in council is respect for human freedom, which keeps us kind and open. To join discipline and freedom is to live as that creative tension, like a well-strung bow. This tension is the basis for the creativity of the “therapist-friend dilemma.”
Close the council in a respectful way. Everyone take a quiet moment to compose and settle oneself. Think that the energy of basic goodness aroused today is being shared with those beyond the circle who are suffering in bewilderment. Remember them fondly. This is called “to dedicate the merit.” Bow or share a moment of silence together. End.
Inner Practice of Council
Council practice is like a mirror which shows us our mind-in-relationship. Who and how we are as a social being is how we will show up in council. Like any worthy nowness practice, council is an end in itself as on-going dialogue, and it is also transparent to the social reality beyond itself, beyond its form. Just as we have practices that strengthen our intrinsic mindfulness (breathing meditation), compassion (tonglen), and environmental awareness (maitri space awareness), we have council practice that trains our intrinsic ability to communicate toward true dialogue. Council practice heightens the sanity and neurosis in the intersubjective field of the group. This is a social awareness practice similar to the maitri space awareness practice. The common instruction is:
“So, being present [the first basic attendance skill] does not necessarily mean that you have a placid mind, but that when there is wandering, you notice that, and then come back to the environmental situation. It is like ‘coming back’ in one of the colored space-awareness rooms: You return to your body and its gravity; to the texture and quality of the space around you; and to the mental activity that is in continuous interaction with that environment. The key point is to have that kind of flexibility, to notice when you are ‘off somewhere,’ and to keep coming back, as a kind of dance.”
The space awareness practice (like mindfulness meditation) can be rugged in revealing to oneself the maddening process of projection of thought and daydream that rises and collapses as habitual mental activity. This relentless experience of hope and fear eventually seems to call out for only one response, the sane response of sympathy and loving kindness (“maitri”) to oneself. The council practice can also be rugged in showing the seemingly endless process of social projection … talking, talking, talking … yet are we really communicating? We can reflect on ourselves and see for ourselves. We can rely on our waking zone that is constantly tracking experience (or reflecting experience as a mirror) and continuously shows us what is happening. We can relax and enjoy what is happening in the circle … we may even be surprised. We can let go and be transformed by another’s expression. We can see how we are guided by the constant flow of social feed-back and feed-forward that we are immersed in. We can even wake each other up. “It is, of course, a truism that mind and environment are in a continuous and subtle, even unconscious, interaction” (Recovering Sanity, p. 238). These are some aspects of the inner practice of council. (see Note 7 on the awareness of space in relation to islands of clarity)
Potential Outcomes of Council Training
Bring our training in mindfulness, compassion, environmental awareness into full play in the social realm;
Slow down and appreciate social space that accommodates communication;
Learn to be patient with other people’s changes (Note 8, no. 2 on Edward Podvoll’s final instructions to Windhorse);
Develop fortitude: exaggerated patience in the work (see Note 9 on marks of Windhorse intensive psychotherapy);
Learn to how to learn from relationships (social learning);
Be more mindful in speech;
Speak more truly, without deception or manipulation;
Speak more clearly so others can understand you;
Reduce the psychologizing that overpowers clients and colleagues with conceptual or emotional control (reduce asylum mentality);
Ventilate conflict and stuck points in the community field;
Improve the skills of healing dialogue: sympathetic resonance, sympathetic insight (Recovering Sanity, p. 345);
Create a sacred place to honor significant community occasions;
Get down to deeper community issues, such as exploration by older and younger Windhorse people of cross-generational continuity;
Overall, foster therapeutic community and social integration;
Following the way of council in Windhorse we will make discoveries about ourselves, our working relationships, and the nature of healing and social Windhorse.
Clearly, to realize these outcomes requires perseverance in practice.
Completion
Appreciate the natural carryover of formal council training to our Windhorse work and ordinary life (see Note 10 on natural carryover). We already know how to keep our bodies still and upright in sitting posture and to relax our minds in mindful sitting. We are often present with our client or supervisor. Our teams meet in circles. In Windhorse, we are in constant interpersonal exchange, constant dialogue. We aspire to speak honestly, listen attentively, and avoid rigid hierarchy. We try to respond genuinely to others and to build on what is being said. Speak in a full-bodied way. Continue to be of lean expression so that others may have their full turn. Allow the deliberate slowness of council to ground intensifying team discussions. Council practice can skillfully be used to move a stuck team process along. The fourth council intention of “spontaneity” reflects the third of Edward Podvoll’s “Final Instructions to Windhorse”: to leave time in the team meeting for “spontaneous interchange” beyond the agenda (see Note 8). In Windhorse we work with extreme realms of experience every day. Naturally, our council experience will also bear the marks of encounters with extremes. Still, we can face each other directly and share loving kindness.
Reader-friends, we are at a threshold. Thank you for the gift of your attentive listening through reading. Speaking from the heart, I express my appreciation for your interest in the study, practice, and work of the way of council. We share the intention that our exertion will benefit our Windhorse community and beyond, so that we may provide genuine hospitality for each other and our guests. Now, let me hand you the talking piece … do you have something to say, to offer?
◈ To dedicate the merit ◈
May the ancients (such as Menla, the Medicine Buddha) reveal the living space of nowness.
May the protectors of healing community (such as the lineage of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche) shield us from the internal corruptions of cowardice, self-deception, and greed for money and power.
We emulate the dignity of your head and shoulders.
We walk in your footsteps among the mysteries of health and illness.
Please accept the twigs of our idle chatter as fuel for your awareness fire.
May you be inspired by our heart-felt discipline.
May we forsake the path of power over others and follow the path of peace.
May we council practitioners enjoy long life, prosperity, and good health.
May those who are suffering alone in the myriad of realms of existence find their way home to their loved ones.
May we not wear a long face … smile and cheer up.
Let it be so. HO!
Notes
Note 1:
“All roads of the Anasazi empire lead to Chaco [Chaco Canyon National Monument]. At its most majestic settlement, called Pueblo Bonito, over six hundred rooms have been identified, where people practiced an idea of community in relative peacefulness for four hundred years. What did they know, and what did they transmit about community to their modern pueblo children, the Zuni, Hopi, and Pueblo Indians? Huge, underground ceremonial meeting places (called kivas), some of them capable of holding hundreds of people, are the central feature of each settlement in the canyon. Whatever the secret Anasazi practice of community was (and still closely guarded by Hope Indians), it undoubtedly took place in the kiva. From the number and different sizes of kivas found at Chaco, it is probable that these people held more community meetings than any other people on earth. Community was inseparable from the spiritual life of the people.” (Edward Podvoll, MD, Recovering Sanity, 2003, pp. 307–308)
Note 2:
“‘There are things I have to tell you,’ Betonie began softly. ‘The people nowadays have an idea about the ceremonies. They think the ceremonies must be performed exactly as they always been done, maybe because one slip-up or mistake and the whole ceremony must be stopped and the sand painting destroyed. That much is true. They think that if a singer tampers with any part of the ritual, great harm can be done, great power unleashed.’ He was quiet for a while, looking up at the sky through the smoke hole. ‘That much can be true also. But long ago when the people were given these ceremonies, the changing began, if only in the aging of the yellow gourd rattle or the shrinking of the skin around the eagle claw, if only in the different voices from generation to generation, singing the chants. You see, in many ways, the ceremonies have always been changing.’ Tayo nodded; he looked at the medicine pouches hanging from the ceiling and tried to imagine the objects they contained. ‘At one time, the ceremonies as they had been performed were enough for the way the world was then. But after the white people came, elements in the world began to shift; and it became necessary to create new ceremonies. I have made changes in the rituals. The people mistrust this greatly, but only this growth keeps the ceremonies strong.’ ‘She taught me this above all else: things which don’t shift and grow are dead things. They are the things the witchery people want. Witchery works to scare people, to make them fear growth. But it has always been necessary, and more than ever now, it is. Otherwise we won’t make it. We won’t survive. That’s what the witchery is counting on: that we will cling to the ceremonies the way they were, and their power will triumph, and the people will be no more.’” (Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony, 1977, pp. 116–117). “Witchery” can refer to the Shambhala idea of the forces of the setting sun that promote cowardice and self-indulgence.
Note 3:
Jeffrey Fortuna, “Contemplative Practice in Windhorse,” February 15, 2001, unpublished manuscript. Available from author upon request.
Note 4:
“Among the various sung ceremonies of the Navajo—Enemyway, Coyoteway, Red Antaway, Uglyway—is one called Beautyway. In the Navajo view, the elements of one’s interior life—one’s psychological makeup and moral bearing—are subject to a persistent principle of disarray. Beautyway is, in part, a spiritual invocation of the order of the exterior universe, that irreducible, holy complexity that manifests as all things changing through time (a Navajo definition of beauty, ‘hozhoo’). The purpose of this invocation is to recreate in the individual who is the subject of the Beautyway ceremony that same order, to make the individual again a reflection of the myriad enduring relationships of the landscape.” (Barry Lopez, Crossing Open Ground, 1978, p. 67)
Note 5:
Explanation below of “the bow” at Naropa where Windhorse work originated, adapted from an essay by Frank Berliner, Naropa University faculty www.naropa.edu/about/bow.cfm. There is also an excellent presentation on “the bow” by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, pp. 156-157.
“In many Asian cultures, the bow is a traditional gesture of greeting, which communicates both friendliness and respect. Certainly, the bow we make to each other at Naropa communicates these things, but it also says something more. It has a deeper meaning. This bow is a way of acknowledging and honoring the qualities of warriorship that each of us has the capacity to express and to share with others.
By warriorship in this sense we do not mean warfare or aggression—but actually the opposite. The warrior whom we honor when we bow is someone who is brave enough to be a truly gentle person. Therefore, the emphasis is on bravery, not on warfare, because the warrior understands that aggression is actually the result of cowardice. So, in bowing to each other, we honor the inherent bravery, gentleness and wakeful intelligence that each of us can experience personally. We also honor Naropa as a place where the deepest purpose of our education is to cultivate these qualities and bring them to fuller expression in whatever field of learning we may choose.
Though the bow is a very simple gesture and takes only a few moments to execute, it actually has three distinct stages or aspects. The first is to take the warrior’s posture, with eyes open, back straight and hands resting on thighs. Just assuming this posture in itself can bring a sense of clarity, alertness and strength. It can free one from distraction and depression on the spot. The participant feels the possibilities of wakefulness and vision; the desire to learn more is aroused. So, one begins the process by holding this posture.
The second stage is that, having taken this posture, one relaxes a little within and feels one's heart—which is open, somewhat exposed and vulnerable. It is the source of gentleness, the source of longing to make contact with others and to be helpful to them, to be of service. And so, for a moment, as one holds this posture, these aspects are felt fully. It is almost a kind of positive sadness.
And then, the bow itself, which is the third and final stage. Here, one makes a gift of personal warrior inspiration to all the others who are bowing together. The sense of that gift can also be expanded to encompass all others who are beyond the room. Either way, the basic intention is to make a generous gift of all these wonderful qualities as one prepares to bow. In fact, the willingness to share in this way is part of the warrior's bravery.
So, hold, feel and give. That is the meaning of the warrior’s bow, which we do every day here at Naropa University.”
Note 6:
Gerald Mohatt was a close friend and colleague of Edward Podvoll, and they lived together on the Lakota Rosebud Reservation for a time. He is now an elder practitioner of intensive psychotherapy. We met him in the early days of Windhorse. Here are his comments on healing speech:
“My case discussions with healers in the private setting of their homes or in circle with two or three close associates helped me to dissolve the psychic/spiritual dimension. I came to understand that the patient can bring either reality to the therapist. The medicine men did not tell me that what I do is the same as what they do, only in a different setting. Rather, they said that I must speak strong words. They said that western therapy had light words, and that these words did not speak to signification (to use Lacan’s term), but skirted or avoided it. Therapists must develop strong words. The Lakota word for light is “kapajala,” which has many connotations, including the lack of strength in one’s speech. What the medicine men wanted to point out to me was that the words I used in therapy had to speak directly to the larger context of the patient, to what I call the ‘big history.’ Whereas an individual’s ‘little history’ refers to his or her idiosyncratic or idiopathic history within the family context. The big history, though, also idiosyncratic, includes the global context, the generational history of the person and the community, and the spiritual and transcendental world.” (Gerald Mohatt, Ph.D., “Psychological Method and Spiritual Power in Cross-Cultural Therapy,” 1988, Journal of Contemplative Psychotherapy, vol. 5, p. 107).
Note 7:
“At the most subtle level, this practice [maitri practice] examines the relationship between the element of space and one’s own mind. We generally do not think of space as an element. Even in most traditional medical systems there is earth, water, fire, and air or wind. Here, there is a fifth element, space. It is associated with the ‘Buddha Room.’ You take a posture on your knees and elbows, with your hands supporting your head under the chin, like a lazy washerwoman, and do your best to hold it for forty-five minutes. Your gaze is diffuse but centered on the white wall about a foot in front of you. In this room the various qualities of ‘indifference’ arise—from a feeling of casualness to acute boredom—replete with their mental dramas. In the midst of these dramas, the mental practice here, as with all the rooms, is to simply come back to awareness of the environment—awareness of the color, the texture, the space around you and your special posture in it. This takes advantage of and highlights a natural phenomenon whereby the environment and space spontaneously ‘take us out of ourselves,’ and draw us out of reverie into the here and now, or ‘nowness.’ Here is the real meaning of ‘coming to one’s senses.’ Becoming aware of space has a certain ‘power’ to it. This awareness is a fundamental aspect of our ‘intelligence’—you could call it the wisdom of space—and it is the source of what has been called ‘islands of clarity’ during the experience of recovery.” (Edward Podvoll, Recovering Sanity, pp. 239–240)
Note 8:
Edward Podvoll, “8/94 Edward Podvoll: Four Final Instructions to Windhorse,” unpublished paper available upon request from Jeffrey Fortuna:
“#2. Be patient with peoples’ changes … [Ed has been saying this ever since I can remember. JF] deep impatience may be one of the biggest obstacles to harmony, humor, and ease in our Windhorse experience and the biggest cause of discouragement, frustration, and burnout. It may often be the case that a client may also have to be patient with our changes as we take our time to learn how to be properly helpful. Certainly, it is not only the client’s responsibility to ‘change.’ To be patient does not mean being even-tempered all the time and that nothing anyone does gets under our skin …”
“#3. Keep the meetings as spontaneous as possible … do not become overly dominated by agendas, practicalities, and ‘business’; allow time for spontaneous expressions of any kind from any quarter.” [This has become known as ‘spontaneous interchange’.]
The other two instructions are:
“#1. Please do the psychosis course every year.”
“#4. The basic activity of Windhorse is to give the gift of fearlessness.”
Note 9:
“Daring to extend the traditional form of intensive psychotherapy to highly disturbed people; patience when you’re doing that work; fortitude which seems to be a sort of intensified patience, or exaggerated patience to do it. That we think in terms of years of work. Now we grapple with all the problems of forced intimacy, with the form. And then we do it as much as we can without anesthesia.” (Edward Podvoll, 4/23/1985, transcript of first session of “Intensive Psychotherapy Training Group”)
Note 10:
Jeffrey Fortuna, “Three Moments,” 1999. This paper describes Chogyam Trungpa’s tour of the then-new maitri space awareness practice facility at Naropa University. The following section deals with the notion of “natural carryover”:
“Rinpoche indicated that it was time to go the white Buddha room. He said that one’s ‘head should be 6”-8” from the wall, with the eyes in soft focus … not zeroing in on the crack.’ The lighting was fine. As with the other rooms he indicated precisely where the ventilation fan should be placed. We sort of squared off as I prepared to ask him the question that I had been sitting on for a long time: ‘Sir, how can we present this practice to therapists who are carrying over this practice and their experience into their professional work?’
He responded, ‘There is a natural carryover to the relationship.’
I persisted, ‘Not direct application?’ He paused, looking at me with a slight smile that seemed to edge on a frown.
I said, ‘No strategy?’
‘Yes, no strategy.’