Jeff Carreira: Thank you for talking with us. Today, I want to speak with you in your capacity as someone who facilitates transformational groups. I am seeing an increase in interest in working in these types of groups, and I know you have been involved in work for years. To start, I would love to hear you speak a little bit about what transformational groups are and why they’re so valuable to be a part of.

Diane Musho Hamilton: In groups like these, individuals evolve, and the group as a whole evolves as well. The foundation of any transformational group is our ability to sustain attention, our willingness to grow, and participate in a set of shared values. I want to mention that one area where I differ from other transformational work is that I place a strong emphasis on how to include our differences. We're certainly held together by our love of one another and our relationships, but if we don't learn how to work with our differences properly, we cannot grow, evolve, or transform individually or collectively.

When we learn to function together, we may experience a group flow. This means we enter a space of effortlessness and timelessness. In other words, we feel we could remain there for hours. In that state, self-identity is naturally deemphasized. The preoccupations that the self is so often concerned with, like whether you're seen and heard, how much you're valued, and how much attention you receive, all drop away. In that flow, we can have a very powerful experience of oneness. But what happens when differences arise? I like to remind people that anything we've ever learned, we've learned because of an encounter with something different, with something we didn't already know, with something that was essentially foreign. By coming into a relationship with that new thing, we gradually bring it into ourselves; it becomes part of us.

The challenge is that while difference is exciting and absolutely essential to our growth and transformation, in the context of groups, it very easily becomes threatening. For example, in many of the circles we're in now, there's an emphasis on racial justice, gender relations, and other topics regarding power and social relationships. And even if everyone shares similar values, when we start talking about them, many old traumas and struggles come up. We might be able to stay present cognitively, but there's another part of us, embodied and preconscious, that is literally formulating ways to escape. So when difference becomes a threat, learning and transformation stop. So learning how to work with a body that has been triggered is crucial. How can we continue to communicate and cultivate sameness when the amygdala is signaling the brain to drip stress hormones into our system? I’ve discovered that often it's the sensations we feel, more than the ideas we hold, that keep us from having the generative conversations that we want to have.

Jeff Carreira: Most of my spiritual work has been done in groups. I know that I experienced a powerful, positive effect from working together with others. I also know that it's important to have some overarching context for the spiritual work we do. In group work, it sometimes seems like the context becomes the group, and we lose track of the bigger picture. I would love to hear you talk about the bigger picture of working in groups.

Diane Musho Hamilton: I facilitate a seven-month program called the Real Life Facilitator program. Ostensibly, what I'm teaching people is facilitation skills, but it's based on the assumption that we become better facilitators by becoming more attuned to ourselves and to others. In other words, we can't know what to do with a group of people unless we're really open to the information that's coming to us. And a lot of that is coming through our bodies.

What I have noticed in the broader context is that people come in wanting to be more effective and more daring in the work they're doing. They want to feel that they have more freedom to be who they really are moving forward. So there is an individual motive. But when we're in the room together, we often talk about the broader context for our work. In other words, in our common interest in the evolution of culture. My participants may come with personal motives, but because of what we talk about and how we engage, we're always relating to a larger context, whether at the scale of local communities, the state of the country, or our global crises. Today, the Internet connects us all, and what we find is that no matter where we come from, we all hold the same value for moving toward greater depth of relationship, sustainability, and a better future for human beings.

As anybody reading this knows, there are existential threats all around us. We feel them in relation to climate change, in terms of how our politics have become destabilizing and divisive, and in the perniciousness of arms deals. There are so many potential threats, another pandemic, for example. We need to be able to move from an “I” centered point of view, to a “we” centered view, and ultimately to a view that includes all of “us”. Beyond that, we need to include all of “it” because our survival depends on our relationship to the planet itself.

Jeff Carreira: You just beautifully stated that the overarching context for collective work is deeper relationships, sustainability, and a better future. And hearing that reminds me that one of the great benefits of collective spiritual work is that it fosters cultural development because we do it together, automatically focusing us on how we can be better together.

Diane Musho Hamilton: Yes, many of our problems stem from not knowing how to work together at scale. We’re still very dominated by habits of rivalry, domination, submission, scarcity and zero-sum thinking. That's where our struggle is. There's almost nothing that couldn’t be solved if we could work together better.

That's the heart of the matter. All of us do well on the meditation cushion, even when we are sitting in groups. But when we get off the cushion, we have to interact together and make decisions together, and start to experience the reality of one-up, one-down dynamics, rivalries, competition, and feelings of being devalued, not seen or heard fully. How do we liberate ourselves when those deeply ingrained patterns arise?

Jeff Carreira: You talked about increasing scale. I think when we talk about increasing scale, we're talking about expanding consciousness. If we want to expand our scale of operation, we have to expand the consciousness we're working with. One of the great values of transformational groups is the emergence of an expanded field of collective intelligence. I saw in one of your recent interviews that you defined collective intelligence beautifully as the capacity of a group to function optimally, holistically, and compassionately for the well-being of the whole. What are some of the most profound experiences of collective intelligence that you’ve seen arising in groups?

Diane Musho Hamilton: This is such an important question. I've seen polarity shifts where people suddenly start to argue the point for the other side. I've seen groups switch roles. For example, conversations in which the victim can see ways they have oppressed others, or oppressors are allowed to express vulnerability. I've seen groups be able to shift so that compassion arise for someone in a room where you wouldn’t imagine it could. I’ve seen all the one-up, one-down dynamics of gender just go out the window. I've seen conversations where issues of blackness and white supremacy arise, and because of the trust in the room, people of color reverse course and really want to hear more from the people who are white. When these shifts happen, everyone comes alive because they recognize that the familiar narratives give way to something new, emergent, or very fresh.

I've seen so many moments when everything suddenly changes. There's a freedom in the room, and there's just a natural leaning in and a natural wakefulness. Nobody's bored. Everybody participates fully in the moment, and there is shared consciousness and learning. In my personal experience, this oneness becomes even more available when we can start to glimpse our shadow, or own our self-centeredness when it comes up. I believe it is better to integrate the difficult parts of ourselves rather than trying to get rid of them. There is no getting rid of them. We can practice letting these patterns inform us and transform us, rather than blocking out parts of who we are.

Jeff Carreira: We both have some background in integral theory, and from that perspective, the flip into collective intelligence is related to an increased ability to take perspectives. I would love to hear you talk about that because I know it's something you do talk about and support in people.

Diane Musho Hamilton: According to theories of adult development, our capacity to take perspectives does grow and change. We start with our own first-person perspective. The “I” perspective. Some people cannot take that point of view. Maybe they've been abused or raised in a context in which they’ve never been valued, and so they can't speak from the first-person position. Beyond the first-person perspective is the ability to take another's position. The second-person or “you” perspective. Some people can’t take that point of view. They can only see from their own perspective.

Then you have people who can speak from the first-person “I” position, but can't include the point of view of “you”. Next are the people who can take the “I” and “you” perspectives, and also include a third-person, objective perspective. In my work as a mediator, this allows me to make use of an appraisal, for example, or contemplate the risks of going to court, imagining how the facts and law would play to a judge. Integral philosopher Ken Wilber talks about people taking even more complex perspectives. People can take 4, 5, 6, 7, even 8 perspectives, but as the number of perspectives grows, the number of people who can take them decreases.

What is important to consider is that there is a bright line in developmental theory that marks the transition to a pluralistic wave of development. At that point, taking multiple perspectives comes naturally. We naturally become interested in the perspectives of other groups because differences now interest us, rather than threaten us as they do at earlier stages of development. Social justice work aims for diversity and inclusion, both values of pluralism. There is a capacity to begin to include other points of view, but these groups often fail because it takes tremendous skill to genuinely build diverse coalitions.

Ken Wilber uses the terms “second tier” or “integral” to describe a stable, multiperspectival consciousness. That is when people are able to actually manage the tension of multiple perspectives, because diverse perspectives generate stress in the body and mind. We all tend to collapse into fewer and fewer points of view under stress. So to genuinely take multiple viewpoints, we need to tolerate the tension it naturally creates.

We also must understand that once we let in multiple points of view, we must learn to prioritize them so that moral relativism does not result. To take multiple perspectives, we have to create room for all these views, but then we can drown in them. So we have to learn how to prioritize perspectives, which requires creating a hierarchy again. But the final and most important developmental task related to perspective-taking is the ability to take a perspective on your own perspective. This is a breakthrough because we begin to ask what is taking a perspective on my perspective. This leads to identification with open, unconditioned awareness. Now you can rest in that open field of awareness, watching perspectives, including your own, arise.

Jeff Carreira: That is very powerful. The ability to have perspective on your own perspective is the ability to step out of yourself and see the perspective you're in at any given moment, and assess its validity and value. That's a very profound state.

Diane Musho Hamilton: That is also when a trustworthy community becomes important, because we’re now truly in the territory where transformation happens in groups. When we step out of our own perspective, we often become confused. Even if we have become proficient at including multiple perspectives, stepping away from our own perspective can destabilize us. To grow, we need to relinquish our deeply held beliefs and treasured points of view, as least for a time. This requires trust in the other group members. You can't do that in a room full of people with whom you don't share a real bond. It is tremendously supportive when others in the group can encourage you when you are confused or destabilized, by something as simple as touching your shoulder to let you know it's okay to experience disorientation. That's one of the most important aspects of working in groups. When we get destabilized, confused, or disoriented, which always happens when we're growing, we need to be able to look around the room and see people who know what's happening and communicate calm and patience.

Jeff Carreira: This is beautiful. In a transformational group, there is a dynamic that occurs over time. At different points, different people will be the ones letting go. We come to the edge beyond which our perspective no longer serves us, and we need to let it go. Other group members provide the energetic field that holds and creates safety for others to let go.

I have also heard you speak about the emergence of one mind in groups. This is a central focus of much of the collective work I’ve done and see being done around me. Can you speak to that emergence in groups and offer advice to people working in groups with that focus, and to those who might be facilitating groups like that?

Diane Musho Hamilton: The experience of oneness is recognizable by every human being at every wave of development across cultures. Seeing oneness as inherent to the human experience shows us we are not separate from reality, nor are we separate from each other. This recognition oneness occurs in all kinds of settings with all kinds of groups of people. And it doesn’t matter whether it's in a traditional setting like a church, or in a football stadium during a game, or in a moment when a world event brings us together. We all have these fleeting moments of recognition, and our job as transformative facilitators is to deepen that experience so that it is dependable. I have hope because we can all have that experience.

My training in this comes through meditation, specifically through the recognition of one heart and one mind in the Zen tradition. And when we recognize it together, it's more powerful than when we recognize it alone.

When you and I are identified as Diane and Jeff, we have a very dynamic back and forth. When we both identify as open awareness, suddenly we are the same because there is no boundary to awareness. Everything you and me and in between us is included. Nothing is left out in that boundless field. The experience of non-separation is awakening to our utter sameness. And so the discipline in the group is to look for that emergence and to deepen it so that it doesn't drop away.

In Zen, we would say we function from a mind that is not one, not two. We're always able to feel and experience oneness. Even if we're engaged with particulars, we don't get hijacked by the self. Well, let's just say we don't get hijacked too often by self-identity, because it's self-identity that interferes with our experience of oneness. My Zen teacher, Gempo Roshi, used a process called the Big Mind Process, in which he facilitated people in experiencing open awareness together, bringing them into the experience of Big Mind or Big Heart, and helping participants swim in deeper water. Those of us who've practiced for a long time are familiar with that experience of openness, of non-separation, of non-defensiveness, of boundlessness, along with the sensations of deep calm and peace. We know the compassion that naturally arises when all things are as they are without separation, but this experience can be threatening to the beginner’s individual identity.

The challenge for facilitators is to become so used to that experience themselves that they can feel it in the room, and they can invite others into it. And when any individual’s egoic nature is threatened by that expansiveness, they can help calm that person’s nervous system until they, too, can relax. Relaxation is key to this experience. And we're so habituated to guarding and protecting the individual identity that we literally block the obviousness of the experience of oneness all the time.

Now let me ask you, what's been your experience of what facilitators need to learn to be able to bring a room into that wholeness and freedom?

Jeff Carreira: For me, the grounding in love is so important. Having a sense of care and concern for the group's well-being and genuinely wanting the experience to benefit everyone. I participated in a weekend workshop years ago, and the facilitator defined an adult as the person in any given situation who's committed to making it work. Then they said that we need to be a workshop of adults so we're all committed to making this work. That's what I think is so important in any group work. Everyone has to be coming from a place where they want this to work, not just work for themselves. They want the group to become everything it can be. If that happens, everyone commits.

Diane Musho Hamilton: I appreciate that you brought the word love in. It was enlivening to hear that. You are describing building a container of care in which an adult is defined as someone committed to making it work, but then you add that we need all adults in the room to be similarly committed. There is a norm in postmodern America that the one with the offense or the conflict gets the attention. This is an attempt to include what’s is usually left out, so it is a healthy impulse. But very few facilitators can work effectively with the challenges this brings. As I said, I'm completely in favor of working with conflict and shadow or calling out hypocrisy. But without goodwill, a facilitator will have a difficult time helping a group transmute those experiences into deeper goodwill, trust, and healthy relationships. Groups very easily become stuck in negative patterns, so establishing up front the commitment to the group’s well being is essential to a group’s success. We have all had experiences in groups that get stuck in a ditch and no one can find a way to move. They essentially become dysfunctional.

One of the things I try to help people with is what to do in situations when a group becomes mired in subjectivity and conflict. I learned a ground rule from a colleague years ago – “Be For Each Other.” And I adopted that ground rule because at any moment, if I'm stressed or in conflict, I will lose the capacity to remember that I love you. I'm going to lose that because that's the nature of our physiology. Stress hormones interrupt memory, clear thinking, and decision-making. When there is perceived danger, we are wired to escape, seek cover, or fight for who we are. But we can train ourselves to be for each other, even when we don’t remember that we like each other. And when we remain “for each other,” we can build depth, trust, and relaxation with our challenges. When the energy flows freely, generosity is abundant, and people enjoy learning together, it is easy to love each other. What an awesome experience! We should be devoted to giving people more of that experience in life. We all need to feel more love.