[post_thumbnail size=”550”]
This spiritual practice opens a ritual space in which your community or your family can enter a deeper energy than our normal conversations or “debate of positions,” to achieve or at least approach “one mind, one heart” energy.
This practice is also simple. First, select an object that can easily and comfortably be held in someone’s hand—a special rock, a special piece of wood or art object--anything that is “charged” to some extent with positive spiritual energy or meaning for the people involved or for the person facilitating the practice. Or you can create an object with this meaning.
Outline for How to Use the Talking Stick
- Start with opening sacred space in some way, and stating what the intention is for the group or community in using this ritual practice—to arrive at a decision, to resolve a group conflict, to see a “one mind” wisdom that is deeper than the individual viewpoints, etc.
- Briefly identify what the talking stick is, and why it has meaning.
- State that the only person who can speak is the person who holds the talking stick, and that the person who is speaking is requested to do the best they can to speak from their heart, not their head. Deeply speaking from the heart is a spiritual practice.
- While the person with the stick is speaking, the others listen with their full hearts, not their minds, and do the best they can to not “rehearse” what they are going to say in their mind. Deeply listening from the heart is also a spiritual practice.
- One of the guidelines is to avoid cross-talking, which means using their time to argue with someone else. Instead, they are invited to talk from their own experience. Admittedly, this guideline is a bit of a gray area, since some addressing of others is often unavoidable and helpful.
- The facilitator can gently and lovingly remind anyone of a guideline if they seem to need the reminder . . .
- The group can either pass the talking stick around the circle (clockwise is the traditional direction), or the facilitator places the stick in the center and the group waits until someone is moved to go to the center of the circle and retrieve it and speak––perhaps from the center, or perhaps by returning to their place in the circle.
- Everyone speaking continues to speak until they have said everything they have to say on the subject (and the stick will probably come around again to them).
- When that person is complete, they then return the stick to the center of the circle, and the next person who is moved to do so retrieves it—or the facilitator can instruct at the beginning that whoever first retrieves the stick starts the “pass around the circle” spot, moving clockwise.
- If the stick is being passed around the circle, a person can choose to simply state their name and pass the stick on to the next person, or the circle can agree ahead of time that everyone will do their best to make some contribution when the stick comes to them.
- The stick keeps going around the circle until the group has spoken to a sense of conclusion, and no one wants to say anything more on the subject.
- The facilitator leads some closing of the circle—a prayer or any acknowledgment of spirit.
What the group is focusing on is their intention to reach a space of “one mind, one heart.” Nearly all the time, this process results in the group going to a very much more unified place than a normal “debate of positions” would have produced. The result that the group arrives at will often be something different than any of the “positions” that were previously taken. And the process usually generates a much deeper understanding of each other and the different viewpoints.
