The closest thing that our community has to dogma or a hard and fast belief is that LOVE IS. In our graphic, the 6 Principles of Transformation rest upon a yellow circle. That yellow circle represents Love. We hold that Love is the ground of our Being and in some sense, the very fabric of the Universe.
This is not an emotional love or the sense of falling in love. Rather it is a trust or belief that Love pervades or is the background to all that is. One could also call it energy, flow, consciousness,the universe, or God. We call it Love.
We begin each Transformational Listening Circle and co-Listening session with the affirmation that we are gathered in Love. We have a moment of connecting with the Love that is already present in our space, and then we not only offer our own love to one another and into the circle, but we also receive love from one another. We have found that this is one of the most important pieces of our process, not only to give our love, but to learn to receive love from one another. This is the beginning of vulnerability. We believe that it is only our trust in Love that makes our spaces safe enough to risk the vulnerability required to create a space of connection. It is only our recurrent experience of love that will ever allow us to relax and to let go of all that keeps us separated from the true love of self and others.
Session after session we show up in love with and for one another. Again, this is absolutely foundational to our practice. Transformation does not happen outside of Love, especially Love in the forms of grace and non-judgmental compassion. We learn to relax our defenses and we begin to actually experience the presence of Love. Not everyone comes into our circle trusting in Love and we do not expect them to. The circle holds that belief for them until they are able to experience it fully for themselves and begin to trust, even just a tiny bit.