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April 19, 2004 By Uncategorized

I was truly honoured yesterday to sit with 15,000 other people and listen to the Dalai Lame give a talk on Universal Responsibility yesterday in Vancouver. (You can view the video of the talk online) The Dalai Lama was introduced by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a way that made it feel as if he was introducing a good friend to an audience of good friends. It was a wonderful afternoon.

There were many parts of the teaching that resonated, and it will take me a while to process the entire experience. Just being in the presence of these two great men, and 15,000 people who care enough about peace to have gathered to hear them, was an overwhelming experience in itself. At times, it simply made me hum being in the same physical space as the current manifestation of Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion.

There were some things that did stand out for me, especially in light of the other teachings that are flowing into my life at the moment.

The Dalai Lama had some very interesting comments about opening and closing energies. In speaking about emotional energy he said that positive energy is opening while negative energy is closing (see his comments starting at about the 45 minute point in the video). “Hatred must find an independent target. Positive emotions are helpful to see a holistic perspective; negative emotions are the opposite,” he said. The lesson here is that in order to exhibit negative emotions, you must collapse your world onto a specific target. It is a closing energy that inhibits compassion, inhibits a holistic view of the world, and inhibits the ability to transcend personal issues and problems in order to express compassion.

Compassion is about understanding that our personal interests and the interests of others are essentially the same. If we are able to do this, then we see that, as the Dalai Lama says “war is out of date…the destruction of your neighbour is the destruction of yourself.” The Dalai Lama advocates genuine dialogue to explore interests in a way which holds open the truth of all perspectives and refuses to collapse one in favour of another. In today’s world, where we are more and more connected in the concrete world through economics, communications and environment, it follows that a more transcendent acknowledgement of this connection is required for our collective well-being. Narrowing one’s focus of the world increases the potential of negative emotional energy because it ignores the reality that we are increasingly and deeply connected. Simplifying things gives rise to the simple, one dimensional targets that hate requires. Keeping the world open and complex allows for less opportunities for negative emotions to arise, and therefore preserves our field of practice for compassion and dealing with the world in real terms.

Sonny Diabo and the path of life

April 16, 2004 By First Nations 3 Comments

Elder Sonny Diabo, (Mohawk, Kahnawake)The group I was working with in Montreal this week is assisted by the man pictured above, Sonny Diabo, an Elder from Kahnewake, a First Nation across the river from Montreal. Sonny is a marvelous and generous teacher, and is invaluable to the group.

In the contemporary world, we don’t always get time to spend with Elders and so when I have the opportunity, I try to take advantage of it by asking about teachings in certain areas of my life that I am currently thinking about. Recently as evidenced here at the Parking Lot weblog, you will have noticed that I am preoccupied with how we know our truths, how we discover those things and what practices and teachings are out there that serve to instruct us in this subtle art of introspection.

I had a chance to speak with Sonny for about an hour on this and he related a teaching about wayfinding based on this diagram:

This represents how people move through their lives. The path is straight and true, and several Elders have related that there is an ideal life path that we attempt to follow. For those familiar with Eastern philosophy, think of the Tao.

One of the ways we know if we are on the path is by our rites of passage. Through rites of passage we engage in introspection on our lives and we also get community confirmation of our true path. In traditional communities, this might include things like naming, whereby an Elder confers on us a name that helps to set our path.

Sonny talked to me about two ways we deviate from this true path, and he described them as right side and left side paths, although he didn’t know why these specific terms are used. Evidently, this teaching is based on the patterns on a turtle shell (as is the I Ching by the way – more Taoist parallels), so the shape might be explained that way. Right side diversions are those, like addictions, which are so easy to take that one hardly knows one is out there until one’s life intersects with one’s true path again in an experience which can be as traumatic as it is healing. It is traumatic because it makes one realize how far one has strayed from the path, but it can be healing to finally “come home” to one’s true nature. Sonny used the example of a long time alcoholic who sobers up and who suddenly realizes how far he has strayed. This experience sometimes coincides with a rite of passage, such as becoming a parent or a grandparent, or perhaps grieving the death of one’s father. All of these situations throw one’s true nature into the light.

The left side diversions are, unlike addictions, full of obstacles that we are forced to struggle against. Sometimes we know we are off our path when we hit a wall and it seems impossible to move without introspection and retreat to find our path again. Shifting jobs from something you hate, with no prospects to something you love and is full of possibility is an example of these struggles and how they can return us to something truer if we take time to reflect on what they mean.

Sonny therefore advocates an approach to life that he calls “two steps forward and one step back.” There is an implicit distrust of easy progress, requiring one to ensure that one hasn’t strayed into a right hand side diversion. Building in periods of reflection serves to confirm progress and also make retreat easier, should that need to happen. It’s a prudent approach.

Sonny alludes to this in his openings to meetings, and also frequently during the meetings themselves. He invites people to work slowly and carefully and not to rush things. “Whatever we don’t finish today,” he says, “we can finish tomorrow or do another time.” This has the duel effect of focusing people on what is really important while at the same time seeming to expand the time available for completing tasks. This is even true in a situation like the one we are working together in, where there is a short deadline for the work to be completed. Especially in a situation like this, it pays to be sure that what you are doing is the right work, because there is no time to correct wildly divergent mistakes.

The approach is all about conserving energy, which of course is the secret to working with spirit. Elders and others who help us on the spirit and energy level are there to ensure that we spend our energy wisely, that we don’t burn out and that we stay focused on what really matters.

It’s a great teaching.

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April 15, 2004 By Uncategorized

Montreal, Quebec

Lucky me, blogging from downton Montreal, where I have been working with a joint working group of First Nations and Inuit organizations and government.

I love this city, which is not something you hear every native born Torontonian say. This place is a treasure, a unique incubator of culture and difference that adds heaps of energy to this otherwise homogenous continent. It allows North America to hang around with Europe and African and Asia at all the parties for the cool continents. Without Montreal (and Quebec), NA is the neighbourhood geek with too much money and too much time on its hands.

As I type I am listening to the afternoon CBC show, and someone is talking about a major art event and assuring people that all Montreal Canadiens goals will be announced so people don’t miss all the action of tonight’s important playoff game. When the Habs are in the playoffs, everything seems to revolve around them.

In fact it is a work hazard, being a facilitator in Canada during the hockey playoffs. One year, back home in BC, I was working with a group in deep conflict, and they decided to go for dinner together and watch the Vancouver Canucks playoff game. Luckily, the Canucks won, putting everyone in a good mood the next day. I shudder to think what would have happened if there had been a loss that night. It kind of puts one’s role in a humbling perspective – to think that a bunch of hard process work can be undone by an overtime goal!

And that’s the mood here right now as the Habs lost an important game in overtime on Tuesday night, in a most bizarre fashion. Tonight, they must win to stay alive in the playoffs.

Luckily my meeting is done, and my flight home leaves early in the morning.

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April 13, 2004 By Uncategorized

Reading about Leon Fleischer in the New Yorker:

“There are so few notes,� the pianist Leon Fleisher said, �but so many implications.� The setting was a recent master class at Carnegie Hall. Fleisher, the master in question, was leading four young musicians through the mystical landscapes of the late sonatas of Schubert. He was speaking about the Andante movement of Schubert�s B-Flat-Major Sonata, but he might as well have been describing Bach�s �Well-Tempered Clavier,� or Brahms�s Intermezzos, or any other music in which a smattering of notes conveys a world of feeling. �There are so few notes, but the implications go back billions of years,� Fleisher went on. �You have to be like the Hubble Space Telescope, which sees stars as old as the universe. The stars are dead, but their light is reaching us just now.�

Open Space is like that. Facilitating in general is like that. With Open Space, there are so few rules, the ritual is so similar every time we open space, but the implications are infinite, the possibilities stretching back into the dimmest recesses of possibility. When we get it right, tapping every so gently on the field of process, the light explodes forth, invited into a warm space full of hope.

That becomes a memorable moment of transformation with a group. It doesn’t happen every time, but every gathering is pregnant at the outset with the potential. It’s marvelous when it happens – contrivance falls away, passion envelopes the people and something hard inside suddenly dissolves. Have you felt that flow? The billions of implications that unfold from a moment’s sounding of a simple invitation?

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April 8, 2004 By Uncategorized


Kennetch Charlette

I’m nearly moved to tears after reading Ceremonial Healing Theater by Ae Ran Jeong and published at if… (to whom I am hugely grateful). It was offered up as a response to my posting on decolonization as an opening and it contains a bunch of really powerful quotes that support this notion as well as look at how this opening is supported by healing.

The article is an interview with Kennetch Charlette, a fine actor and the artistic director of the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company. In the article, Charlette explains his work as an extension of the work pioneered in Aboriginal theatre by Thomson Highway. Highway’s writing in both novel form and for the stage is incredibly cathartic and contains hooks for us all to hang our stories on. He writes about the process of decolonization starting from a process of healing:

To heal the “internally directed hatred, internally directed violence” (Highway 158) is a process. A process to break the silence and detach oneself from the vicious cycle. To be free and free in spirit one must face the place of pain and liberate oneself from the sore spot. Highway suggests first to unlock and release the anguish pouring out the poisons in a form of autobiographical or autoportrayal theater.

Charlette learned from Highway and developed his own approach to theatre as ceremony as a response to the transformation he underwent working on Dry Lips Oughta Move To Kapuskasing, a powerful Thomson Highway play about gender relations, colonization and healing:

Charlette knew the healing power of his tool theater. He believed that this lack of cultural identity was at the center of the native youth crisis. For Charlette, culture was the aim and at the same time the push to draw people forward. He knew to respect the ceremonies and the pedagogical force that was at the heart of all ceremonies to point to the question of who we are. He knew that the essence of the ceremonial healing theater must follow this path of traditional rituals and ceremony leaving entertainment behind. When asked what is the difference between theater and ceremony and ritual he answers without hesitation “None!” (Charlette).

The term ceremony/ritual, used by Charlette, is a loose philosophical term. In our materialistic, money centred world we search for a place to belong. According to Charlette each person is a spirit entity. It is ridiculous to be spiritual on this earth because we already are a spirit. What is important is to know that one is a spirit and to learn how to be a human being. Since as a human we are mortal we can never answer all the mysteries that surround us. In this limited time one can learn about oneself: Who one is? Why one is here? What is ones specific gift? To exist as a human is itself about ritual. Ritual is life itself. Free from the idea that ritual is religious, the actor working on the body, the mind and voice is an incredible ritual. A ritual journey towards an understanding of this precious life.

From this premise, Charlette has developed a process for developing scripts, really creating stories, that come out of traditional healing processes:

There are three types of circles; the talking circle, the sharing circle and the healing circle. All circles start with a prayer and the ritual smudging. There is a feather to be held by the one talking and the rest listen. The feather goes around the circle with its own time. No one talks without the feather. They listen. If it is a talking circle the participants talk openly on any kind of subject or issue. Each person will share and voice out. The circle values just speaking the truth from the heart. If it is a sharing circle one person becomes the focus and is allowed to speak on something that has specifically happened. The subject is limitless. One allows oneself to share while the rest listen. When finished the others will speak as a response.

The healing circle is formed when one is ill either physically, mentally or emotionally. A person is placed at the center of the circle and the circle prays for the person. The person asks for healing. Poundmaker and Charlette both believe the grandmothers and grandfathers are present in circles to guide and help the participants. Nobody controls the circle. Charlette asserts that “the circle controls the circle. You get that many people and that many spirits sitting in a circle, depending on the prayers and where everybody is at, they can be incredibly powerful” (Charlette).

From the talking circles Circle Of Voices has developed a working process to create a script. The personal stories are transformed into a theatrical story. After the talking circles are established the professional writer comes in and becomes a part of the circle. The playwright and youth participants get to know each other and slowly open to each other. Then an interview process takes place between them one and one. Taking down all information, they discuss the play, the structure, plot, storyline, characters, and everything. Meantime permission is asked from the story owners to use their story in the final script. Then the playwright goes away for three or four weeks to write and comes back with a working draft. They spend another week in talking circles. Once a final script is drafted, COV has a permission to change it during rehearsals. The rehearsal process, directed by Charlette, breathes life into the script.

Harrison was asking about ways of opening space in our lives. Kennetch Charlette, Thomson Highway and others are great examples of how this notion of opening is the essence of decolonizing ourselves.