By William Cooper
In the past few years of working together we members of the retreat team have discovered that we have a much fuller experience from our discussions when we adhere to a few spiritually inspired guidelines based on cooperation, not competition. I want to share these with you now and ask you to apply them now. We find these principles to be beneficial in all sorts of interpersonal relations, so you may want to apply them to your life in general. We call these principles “Our Spiritual Family Way” because they were developed to foster spiritual family. They might also be called the way of interpersonal courtesy and respect.
Group discussions are often like a wrestling match. The model often seems to be competition, hostility, aggression, sarcasm, and disrespect. There is push and shove and intellectual bullying often by using quotes as weapons in argument rather than for guidance. The old model might be political or legal argument in which taking any available advantage is allowed. It is not cooperation and sharing directed to a just and satisfactory conclusion or course of action. Our Spiritual Family Way is a very different way of relating and we have found it to produce wonderful results.
I am handing you each a business card printed front and back stating the main principles of Our Spiritual Family Way. Sorry, the print is necessarily small in order to fit on the card. We thought it important to provide this information in a form that is compact and therefore highly portable. You can carry it in your pocket, purse or wallet and can have it handy to review or to give away when sharing the Way with others.
Since we want to apply these principles now, let’s go over them to get a mutual understanding. It’s really not very complicated even when you get to the self-restraint required to make the system work.
Here are the principles:
- Be spirit led…. Relax, become calm, and direct your attention inward to connect with the spirit before beginning discussion or conversation. Really, make the commitment to connect and trust that the connection is made. Stop to reconnect if anyone requests it. Each person remains receptive to spirit. Each person allows spirit to guide them.
- Love each other…. Make a safe place: Treat each other with gentleness, kindness, courtesy, appreciation, and respect. Make sure each person has an opportunity to participate.
- Listen…. Slow down. Listen to understand the speaker without planning what you will say. Pause to digest after each person speaks. When you speak, do so without insisting that others agree. When you listen, do not feel compelled either to agree or disagree. Just listen, and only question politely, to understand.
- Respect the speaker…. Do not grab the conversation and redirect it to your thoughts. Allow the speaker to fully express their thoughts and make sure they are accurately understood before redirecting to something else.
- Cooperate…. Respect and value each person’s input. Explore together. No need to correct or disagree. Build on each other’s ideas.
That is it. That is the Spiritual Family Way of discussion and sharing of ideas. The results we get by using this method are amazing.