My contribution of Circle-Making was a small piece of the history of the mass movement of our awakening from individuality to re-discover the deeper consciousness of 'US.'.
If you were a participant in any of these early Circles and festivals with me, then you may like this little trip down memory lane. If you were not – if you were elsewhere in your life or too young to have known of such things, I invite you to read this short account so that you will understand that these things called Circles – and my own involvement with them – have a long history even in our current times. As the basic – eternal – Circle is re-packaged and redistributed under different trademarked names, all circles still come from the same source – the earth, the beginning, the process, spirit. And we enter its gentle realm by only through our willingness to surrender.
If this history section feels irrelevant to you, you can click here to move on to an exploration of the Function of the 'Circle-Maker' or Facilitator
I first came to Oz in ’76 directly from living a continual flow of Healing Circles and the ‘All One Family’ Healing Festivals that had been happening for several years in California and throughout the US West Coast and Southwest states (CA, OR, AZ, NM, TX). The first Healing Circles that I offered in Australia included a daily Circle at Tuntable Falls Community (Nimbin); Healing Circles for a few hundred people daily at the first DTE Confest at Bredbo (1976); then Circles and a beautiful triple-wedding at our Kangaroo Valley Healing Festival – and later, others at our Festivals at Dharmananda (at The Channon, ’76-‘77).
My Healing Circle Satsangs, seminars, workshops, lectures and intensive training programs followed at festivals and in more professionally oriented contexts in Sydney and Melbourne – including the founding of the Seed Centre for Wholistic Therapies and two, six-week Intensive Training Programs in Melbourne. At the culmination of the first of these Training Programs, the Australian ‘All One Family Network’ was created, which became a contributing presence in itself at subsequent DTE Confests and other gatherings.
From ’77-’81 I was based both in Oz and the US, and offered Circle Satsangs at an ashram in New York (at which we lived for a time), with members of the West Coast ‘All One Family’ coming to New York from various places to help the ashram create an East Coast Healing Festival. During this period, I was the guest of two of the very large Nambassa Festivals in New Zealand (in ’79 and ’81) during which Ram Das and I once offered a Peace Circle for 5-10,000 people on the main stage, linked with Stephen Gaskin doing the same on the second stage – and the quieting of a multi-stage gathering of more than 60,000 people to experience silence, circle, communion, touch and Peace. During the same years in the US, we were doing continuous Circle Satsangs, some running non-stop for several weeks – living the process from mornings until late at night (notably at Healing Waters, an AZ hotsprings and at ‘Rainbow’s End’ – a Sonoma County retreat facility that I co-founded in 1971).
From the time of my return to Australia for a very comprehensive workshop program and the second Intensive Training Group in Melbourne in ’81, our Circles became a regular part of the DTE Confests and at the annual festivals held by the community at Homeland (in Thora), where the first Father Circles and the first spontaneous mass-marriage (that I had experienced) occurred. From the Homeland gatherings, I was invited to do a weekend Circle for the community in Nymboida (NSW) – which I recently heard has been running (in different forms) ever since and is now into its second generation of Circle-Makers. Beautiful news indeed!
My last Australian Circles were offered at the Homeland Festival in 1994 and were focused (for the second year) on creating a Father Circle of experienced fathers and grandfathers who could use their collective wisdom and experience to provide a stable, male presence which could then be of service to women and children (and younger men) who were seeking trust in the safety and power of men who committed to each other to hold safe space for anyone who came into the Father Circle. As the Father Circle we committed to 'being there' in the lives of several unfathered girls; we provided a powerful support for a few women who needed to heal past experiences of male violence; we acted to intervene in a matter of sexual impropriety in the local community; and I felt privileged to make a promise to Woman that male violence against women and children would end as Man rose up in such Circles to make it stop. And more, the men who joined together as The Father Circle discovered the beautiful sureness that comes when men make commitment to each other and then act as a single Circle to ensure that the commitment was fulfilled. Unfortunately, my follow-up attempts to found a Father Circle as an ongoing resource in Byron Bay were less successful than what we had experienced at the gatherings. Then, years later I heard of the ‘Uncle’ project in Byron which seemed to have been more successful at opening the powers of Man to true community service.
And, of course, over the past four decades, many kinds of Circles (and even Circle Satsangs!) have grown in Australian communities. What they – what we – all hold in common is simply this: There is only One Circle. And however it is called, marketed or arises spontaneously from any gathering of people, it is one entity that awakens ‘whenever three or more are gathered.’ All we have to do is notice and surrender into the magic of The Circle – and then get out of the way and allow its natural life to unfold.
Next... let's explore the function of the 'Circle-Maker' or facilitator here
