Chandra Luzi Edwards: You're the author of a book called The Space Between Us: Awakening Together in a Fractured World. It’s a very natural fit to interview you and find out more about your experiences in this fascinating experiment of collective awakening that is being done around the world in different ways.

Peter Mitchell: We're definitely not the only ones, something quite significant is happening. We’ve discovered that we’re part of that emergence, but it's a much bigger picture than just what we're doing. And it’s also good to feel connected to that, that we're not working in isolation. There is something that really feels like it wants to come through at this challenging time for humanity. It's going to be an important resource for the future. For now, actually – not just the future. The global situation is very hot now. I think someone described it in one of our recent meetings as a hot potato. I’ve started to write about it as “the Future-Now”.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: How do you see collective awakening, or awakening together, as being something new or emergent that's different from what's happened before?

Peter Mitchell: What I wrote about in the book started to emerge about three and a half years ago with four friends meeting together quite informally, certainly with no agenda to spark something bigger other than getting together. In that meeting, something extraordinary happened between us. We had a lot of shared history, but that fell away. There was an immediacy, a deep intimacy, a curiosity, something very alive between the four of us. We didn’t even recognize its significance to begin with. It was one of those moments I found myself afterwards thinking, “What happened? That was extraordinary.“ From that moment, the group seems to have rolled forward, and grown and expanded over time.

My experience is that the meetings are always fresh, always new, that we're not rehashing old stuff. There's a living edge that we inhabit in the meeting as much as we possibly can. Every meeting is different. The more we get out of the way in terms of who we think we are and all the stuff we carry, the more something new and fresh arises between us. From that point of view, it always feels like it's happening for the first time.

And yet at the same time, there is a recognition that this is a deep human facility. We're not creating something brand new. This is an aspect and a depth of our humanity that's always been present. I'm sure it has emerged at different times in the past. If you look at the spiritual literature, you can see evidence of it in different times. The whole emphasis on Sangha going back to the Buddha. You get the sense that it's always been a human capacity.

But I think there's something about this moment in time with our digital connections and the way the world is wired together now and the speed with which those connections happen. There's an enormous potential for this deep capacity which is starting to become evident again, for it to replicate. There's a wonderful potential in this moment for that brand-newness that's also ancient and inherently part of human beings.

This actually has the potential to have a big impact. That's what excites me, is that “always-on-the-edge of discovering something new” that you know is also this living potential.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: I was part of a group that Jeff started in 2024 experimenting with collective awakening. And when you say learning how to get out of your own way, that was really a large part of the groundwork for having this emerging experience of something completely new to me in my lifetime. And this realization became stronger and stronger, to the point of experiencing some very painful parts of letting go who I thought I was. It wasn't something that happened in the meetings. It wasn't even something that the group talked about much. There were some personal issues that came up. But there was also this sense of an enormous energetic support that was happening, that enabled the difficult parts of really looking back on yourself to be supported.

This idea that you've been living as a certain idea of yourself your whole lifetime, and that's very difficult to change. But then suddenly being given glimpses of, “Oh, there's a completely different way of being in the world.” And it is this interesting experience that has to do with not being so individualized, and that there is some collective essence that arises or was always there, and you're being called into, being drawn into it. That transformative aspect of it is fascinating and something that I want to keep exploring.

Peter Mitchell: Two things strike me in what you're saying.

One is that there's an invitational quality. We talk about “the field”, which is really a form of shorthand. The field feels like our deepest sense of self when it's unlimited. It's something we all share. That's why there's a sense of meeting in something common, that's universal. For me, there is this invitational quality to just lean in, to let what's going on in my conceptual mind just fade to the background and listen and be together on the page. That, for me, is the dynamic.

The way I wrote the book was very similar, because in a weird way, I didn't write the book. The meetings came through me and wanted to be put down on the page, and that was my experience of writing it. Then reading it back I realized it's actually written as an invitation to dive in and experience this different level of being.

The second thing I wanted to respond to is that there's quite a paradox because it is about leaving all your ideas of who you are behind, but at the same time being fully who you actually are.

There is an individual quality to how people speak in a meeting. It's not 10 people all saying exactly the same thing with the same voice and the same mannerisms. It's not that at all. It's ten unique individuals speaking in their own voice from their own experience, but into a context where it's not about them. There's a chapter in the book called, “Your Path is the Portal”. There's the recognition that we carry the sum-total of our life experience as we are. Everything that's impacted us, everything that we've done is integrated somehow into our being in the bigger context of that infinite potential. Our whole embodied lived experience is also part of who we already are. We don't need to carry a narrative in our head. We don't need to have a story. When you let go of the narrative, it allows that to emerge naturally, because the narrative constrains you into some prison of self-identity, which limits you unconsciously. When you let go of the narrative, the lived embodied experience somehow is contextualized within something vaster and unlimited.

For me, it is about speaking from my own real experience, not personal, just real and open. Being vulnerable and transparent gives other people the space to do the same. It's the “real” meeting the “real”. In that, the universal aspects of our humanity start to reveal themselves. For example, sometimes in a meeting when someone's speaking you almost feel you're saying the same words. It's as if it's coming from somewhere that's also part of you. But at the same time, I'm very clear that it's not about the dissolving of your unique identity. You're not merging into some greater whole where you lose yourself. My experience is that you actually become more authentically who you are, yet not limited by that. You start to plug into the bigger picture as yourself because that's the context of the way we meet. It's a paradox. The individual is of paramount importance, but not in a personal way. It's the doorway we each must walk through to discover a perspective that is greater than any one of us can hold.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: How would you define personal? Because we both have used that word.

Peter Mitchell: It's important to get clear because there's a quality of focused attention when we meet. You watch people, and when someone's really speaking from their authentic self they really don't quite know what they're going to say. They're on this edge. You're pulled onto that edge with them because you don't know what they're going to say either. There's this point of alive, vivid attention that energizes the space.

The opposite happens if someone brings something as an issue or as a problem. They dump it in the room, almost like “deal with that, guys”. You feel the energy go down. You feel everybody start to lean back. There is a contraction. It's that quality. You can bring the personal into the space, but it's almost as an offering. In this way, the space can hold what has been brought and work with it. Because of the situation in America at the moment, someone might share that they were dealing with fear and anger. You could imagine that as being something we could all constrict around and fight and lose that quality of attention. You can almost feel the boundaries and barriers come up. But there's also a way of bringing it in. That it's an aspect of the human condition, and the field has the space to hold it and investigate it and to get inside it. Not to resolve it, but just to explore. It's an aspect of the human condition. I feel that is some of the important work that can be done with this field of being.

It's not about transcending the human condition and going, “Oh, everything's wonderful and perfect as it is — look, we're all together in this beautiful blissful place of unity and oneness”. It's about how to bring that back down into our embodied reality in a way that allows us to transform, see through our conditioning, and see through those unconscious biases and all the ways we take positions. To do it with your peers is to be seen. You reveal yourself to both yourself and to your peer group. They see you for who you really are. In that seeing, that's where the transformation happens because you see yourself, and you build confidence in that aspect of your being that goes beyond all those ideas we're holding. You start to feel more comfortable in that aspect of yourself rather than the place where you tend to hide out. It builds confidence that way. But there's also a risk because you have put yourself out there to other people and say, “This is who I am”. They're going to hold you to who they've seen you to be. I think that's how the transformation aspect really works. For me, it is about the transformation of the individual as the primary starting point.

In that, the group itself is transformed. You start to feel the group become more sensitive. People track the quality of attention, not just their own process. It isn’t just individuals sharing a deeply intimate space in which they recognise a commonality, but that the space itself carries a “relational intelligence” that is greater than any one individual can access themselves. And the potential for that to ripple out is awesome. And it comes down to the individual being willing to risk and discover the universal.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: And going back to the personal and bringing this problem and dumping it into the room, it's at that moment the individual is not actually alive and present in what's happening. Like you said earlier, it’s this narrative or this construction that's being carried around. And so it is like being in this space together allows that to soften and to dissolve. Once that trust is built in, what's happening right now is the way. It's the way to be not just in this group, but in the world. It softens us.

Peter Mitchell: You take it out into the world with you because you've drawn a line in the sand for yourself. There's a deeper recognition. Obligation is a strong word, but there's a certain responsibility to live from that center that you've discovered, because then you make it available to others as well. I wrote a poem that ended up in the book called “Hold This Space”. It's about when you have discovered who you are, this limitless, boundless, inherent potential that is coming through you as a body, sensing that everybody else is that as well. In recognizing it as yourself, and that you're not special. You realize that every other human being is also that, even if they have absolutely no idea that that's the case.

In fact, most people are completely convinced it's not the case. But if you hold the space for them and relate to them as if that is who they are, you give them a different way of responding. Our normal way of responding is that we butt up against each other as separate individuals and negotiate.

But this is different to that. This is allowing them the space to be the same as you are at the deepest level. And somewhere I'm sure it's recognized, even if they're not conscious of it. You find the world responds differently to you when you go out from that place.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: I think it speaks to another thing that you mentioned in the book about this being different from the guru and disciple model that's been around for so many centuries, where there's this inherent hierarchy that can create the boundaries instead of equality. Can you speak more to how these groups function? Because you have people who start the group, and there's a natural sense for others to want to look to them, perhaps as being the leader. How does that get resolved?

Peter Mitchell: It's a very delicate line. First of all, the book arose out of this original group. It happened very spontaneously. From the very beginning there was no inherent hierarchy in the structure. It was just the four original people, and after a while we invited more people in. We were curating the group, and meeting outside of the group to support it. At the beginning it all felt very fragile and it needed support. At a certain point we realized we didn't need to keep doing that. It was starting to build its own momentum, its own energy. People within the group were also starting to take responsibility for being sensitive to the space. It happened slowly. But in the early days, there was one of us in the original four who was certainly much more awake to potential and risks and felt responsible to hold a line within the group.

We found that one of the biggest risks was that it's a wonderful space to meet in, and that intimacy is so beautiful and so unusual that you can relax back into it. And although relaxing is part of the picture, you can relax off the edge and start to say, “Wow, this is just a wonderful place to hang out. This is really nice”. Transformation isn't happening then, because you're just going, “Oh, this is really nice to be together, isn't it? This is wonderful”. It did require someone to bring that edge back into focus. She was saying, “This is great, but I think there's more we can do and there's further we can go.” But as the group has unfolded with more people, it's not just ended up being one person. More and more people have stepped up to take on that role. Someone recently said to us, “You're more like hosts than facilitators”. What we're finding is that it’s a very delicate line. We've set up the space and we are responsible for it. We've invited the people in.

I wrote and read a piece out at the first meeting of each group called a “Willingness to be Changed”. The point I made was that there isn't a vantage point outside of the meeting. We're not standing anywhere different to all the other participants. We're standing in the same space, offering ourselves up to be changed by the process in the same way, as are all the participants. We're not outside directing actions. We don't know where it's going to go. There is an agenda, and the agenda is transformation. But we don't have a plan for every meeting in advance. We just allow what wants to unfold. The question is how can you be hands-on and hands-off at the same time. It's a very delicate line to walk. We're finding ourselves stretched by that. I think our responsibility is more to the quality of the space than the individuals. We're not trying to direct everyone's experience. We've invited them in to take responsibility for their own way to interact and the degree they want to open themselves up to the possibility of change. It's more about being sensitive to the container and stepping in when needed, not trying to direct where it's going to go. You can see the delicacy of the situation. We're checking in almost all the time to make sure that we are letting it unfold in the way it wants to unfold while making sure it’s a safe space. I think it's about making it both a safe space and a challenging space at the same time.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: Yes, because sometimes people can say or do things that make it unsafe for other people that are there. It happens. Then you have to ask how to maintain a safe space for everybody, yet also allow things to come up that are not necessarily comfortable.

Peter Mitchell: You've got to be sensitive to the dynamic and where it's going. We realized right at the very beginning of the groups that we had subtly taken on an unconscious identity as the facilitators. That got exposed pretty quickly. For me, it's a process. I feel I'm being peeled away with every meeting. Different layers, unconscious biases, and ways of taking positions are being highlighted to me, and I'm sure to others. It's transformation, not just for the individuals in the group, but for us as well. That's what makes it really exciting, because I have no idea where we are going to be at the end of our time together.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: It's almost like a quality of self that is developed can then be taken into different contexts. It doesn't stay in this collective awakening group. It can then go into a group where people are asking questions, or it can go into interacting with the cashier at the supermarket.

That gets back to another question that I had about these groups that are being formed. There’s a hunger for these groups from the people participating. Some have done a lot of meditation, active listening, or self-transformation “work”. I guess the question is how to know when the field can invite people in, and when it can't.

Peter Mitchell: I think the question is how much experience do you need to have had to participate. I think the people that are longing for this are people who've already done some inner work. They've started to listen to teachings, engage in spiritual practice, or do meditation because they're aware that there's an aspect of their being they need to develop. I think you have to have to be aware of that longing, and what might satisfy that longing. If I look back at the way I got onto this spiritual path, it was just like a little thread. Something came in, and I didn't know what it was, but it was like, “This is important and I have to follow it, see where it's going to go.” From a very limited perspective, the picture just got bigger and bigger and bigger. But I think you've got to have that initial recognition in yourself that there's a doorway that's opening, and you have the choice to go through it or not.

If you start to walk that path, it reveals itself one step at a time. I think it would be very unlikely if someone hasn't done that initial work, that they would even recognize what the groups are about. We've invited people in who don't have a huge amount of spiritual experience, people who've gotten stuck, or long-term seekers who are jaded and cynical and gave up. When they come back into the space and something has woken up in them again, you can see the light go on.

You know how hard it can be to join a new group and risk putting yourself out there. You haven't tested the waters, you don't know how safe the space is. It's deeply joyous to be a witness and a part of someone’s transformative process. There’s enormous potential for anyone who recognizes that longing in themselves, and also recognizes the importance of following it. If you've done that and you make yourself available, I think there’s an ease with which people are able to give themselves to that process.

It's not my job to put preconditions on who this is for. It's all about personal autonomy. You were talking about the teacher-guru, the teacher-student relationship. For us, the agent of transformation is the individual themselves. It's not someone handing something down from above. It's actually the individual being willing to step into that space and go, “I'm open to this.” The transmission isn't coming from anybody. It's coming from the whole group. It's the field that arises between us that is nothing other than us. It's not some external God-force outside of us that's descending on the group. It's the totality of us in that space, allowing our inherent potential to show through. That inherent potential is not separate.

But it's completely us and not us at the same time. It's the individual having the autonomy to step into the space and saying, “I'm available.” That's the agent of transformation, and that's where it all happens.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: That's something that I've been struggling with because I'm wanting to start a new collective awakening group. Part of the process is questioning who it should be open to, and how it should work. To try and put limits on it just doesn’t seem right. But I think there will need to be an awareness of the transformational potential from whoever joins. There has to be a willingness to really know that although the shared space can be extremely blissful, it might require some sacrifice of who they think they are. As you say, that extends to everybody that's participating. There's nobody outside the circle.

Peter Mitchell: I agree. With our groups, I think we need to be upfront about the risk they’re taking. Just so people are completely clear about the nature of the chamber they're going to step into, willingly, so they're not taken by surprise when it starts to happen.

I think that as hosts or facilitators, part of our responsibility is to be sure that the people we're inviting in are prepared. At the same time, it's not like a university application where these boxes have to be ticked, and if they haven't ticked that one, you're not in. It's being able to connect in a way that's authentic in terms of where they want to go with it. That becomes clear very quickly in a group as people start to reveal themselves.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: It’s been wonderful to have been able to speak with you.

Peter Mitchell: I love having conversations about this, where we talk about transformation. Three years ago, before we started the group, this wasn't even an aspect of my life. This wasn’t a glimmer of an idea. Now it's the center of my life, it’s why I get up in the morning, it's what excites me and I love to talk about it — Intelligence between sentient beings, that each of us is a node in a network and we're connected to every other node and every other node is reflected in us. I also have this sense of groups like ours also being a node.

In a way, our meetings, our groups are containers of the field in a sense. It's where with all the individuals coming together, there's a concentrated energy of the field in those spaces. If we start to link up with other connections between the groups, you just get the sense of this field being supported by a bigger and bigger network, which then really has the potential to catalyze real change. There's a quote I use in the book by Ilya Prigogine about an island of coherence in a sea of chaos having the capacity to produce radical change. It might only be a small percentage of the whole, but if the whole is chaos, and there's an island of coherence, it can catalyze. It can shift the structure.

We're not trying to fix the old. It's not about trying to reassemble something that's falling apart. It's falling apart because it's no longer fit for purpose. I see the future calling us, not predetermined, but as a potential sitting out there, acting as a magnet on this moment. Our role, our responsibility is to protect that moment as carefully as we can, and allow it to be what it wants to be. You're trusting in something that you don't know what it's going to look like. Which is quite extraordinary for a human being.

Chandra Luzi Edwards: To be a caretaker of that potential.

Peter Mitchell: Yes, that's a lovely way of expressing it. I feel we're right on that edge, right now, together.