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Learn the group conversation practice that will transform all of your relationships and bring you the love, friendship and community that you want

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Enrolling now: online cohorts of Authentic Relating in Community. See also ARC auf Deutsch and AR Live in Berlin

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Join the Crowd Funding Campaign for the Circling Guide, 3rd Edition!

The Circling Guide is going through a major upgrade, due for release in April 2026. Click here to support the project. Contributions of $10 or more get a pdf of the current work, and contributions of $25 get a physical book mailed to them upon release.
If Circling or AR has impacted your life, this is a concrete way to give back and help create a resource the whole movement can point to

PS: you can still get the old Circling Guide here.

Support the Circling Guide

Watch the Circling video

Courtesy of Transformational Connection (previously  Circling Europe)

PREFACE TO THE Circling Guide,3rd Edition: MY AGENDA

Note: the Circling Guide 3rd Edition is currently being crowd-funded for release in April 2026. Click here to support the project.

Below you will find the preface to the 3rd edition. The first 4 chapters ot the Circling Guide are published on the web. 


“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care” – Theodore Roosevelt

The first edition of the Circling Guide was published in  2017 and put into the public domain. A second edition was published in 2021. Since then it has become the most reviewed and downloaded book on Circling, and dozens of people have written to me to share how useful it was to them in understanding the practice, developing their skills or even getting into leadership. I still hear from people who discovered the Circling Guide back in the day, and were inspired to start practicing or even create a local community.

Ten years later, it turns out that everything that I had intuited about the potential of Circling when I wrote the 1st Edition, including the power to heal relationships and create transformational businesses – intuitions which could  have occurred as wishful thinking or inflated – were actually understated. The truth is actually way more interesting and exciting than I had realized at first. I am now married to a woman I met through the movement (a very big deal for me), we are co-leading groups both online and on-the-ground here in Berlin, and we are exploring the formation of an Intentional Community of cultural creatives which would be sourced from the integral we-space. I can hardly believe my good fortune. 

What to expect from this 3rd Edition of the Circling and Authentic Relating Practice Guide?

  1. The first edition covered only the Circling practice, and was intended to be read in one sitting. At the time, there was only one other book about Circling (by Bryan Bayer) and there were no books about Authentic Relating (AR is the larger “umbrella group” for Circling).  Now, there are two very good books about Authentic Relating (by Jason Digges and Ryel Kestano). However, I wanted a book which covered the entire AR movement, including but not limited to Circling. A book which could still be read in one sitting if one’s primary goal was to drop-in to one of the many Authentic Relating circles happening daily both online and on-the-ground and be effective there.
    This is the topic of Part I: Circling.
  2. Authentic Relating is an emergent, open-source, peer-led global movement for personal and social transformation, guided by a distributed leadership. It may even be one of the most powerful and accessible such movements of the 21st century. As more of us recognize the depth of what we’ve uncovered, I want to invite our current AR leaders to bring their wisdom to the subtler distinctions and the emerging complexities of the work.
    This is the topic of Part II: Authentic Relating.
  3. In my 10 years of practice, I have seen my own life transformed and have met many incredible and beautiful people through the movement. I consider this an excellent beginning, but still only a beginning. The job now  is to take AR into every corner of the world and every sphere of life: business, family, therapy & addiction recovery, community, spirituality, marriage and sexuality, and more.
    This is the topic of Part III: Applied We-Space.

Here is the game that I am proposing: Let’s make AR and related we-space modalities the foundations of a new world operating system.

Will you join us?

With love,
Marco
December 2025
https://CirclingGuide.com

Continue reading My Story and/or Offers & Events…

Donations – any amount appreciated!

Please donate to the Circling Guide (3rd edition) GoFundMe campaign. The book is due for release in March 2026

Note: Circling™ and Circling Method™ are registered trademarks of the Circling Institute. Details here. 

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Latest News

  • February 2026 Newsletter
  • Crowd-funding hits 60%; French AR Games Manual; ARC Program starts in February
  • January 2026 Newsletter

RSS We Space Letters on Substack

  • [Part 1] Authentic Relating, A Map of the Territory
  • A clearer Substack and what’s coming this year
  • Jokes, marriage, and dismantling my tragedy story
  • All-star Joke Collection 2
  • An Invitation into a Story About Love, Obsession and Becoming Yourself

Upcoming Events

Upcoming events below and on our Google Calendar

Communities Map

Authentic Relating Organizations

  • Circling Institute (San Francisco and Global)
  • The Relateful Company  (previously CircleAnywhere). Global
  • Transformational Connection (previously Circling Europe), Europe
  • ART International (Global)
  • Authentic Relating Go (Global)
  • Connection Institute (Boston & Global)
  • The Connection Movement (New York City)
  • Austin Circling Studio (Austin, TX)
  • Evolutionary Relating (Australia)
  • Circling Cornwall (UK)
  • Let’s Be Authentic (Philadelphia, PA)
  • Realness Project (Prison work)
  • The Awkward Leadership School (Toronto)
  • Integral Centered Leadership (Boulder, CO)

Local communities can be found on Meetup.com and on the Authentic Revolution communities map

Recommended Books

Quotes

  • “There is no place to get to but more here” — Decker Cunov, co-founder of Circling
  • “You will always outlive my concept of you. And I will always have a concept for you to outlive” — Guy Sengstock, founder of Circling
  • “Pain is not a punishment, pleasure is not a reward… good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness” — Pema Chodron
  • “If we were all to sit in a circle and confess our sins, we would laugh at each other for lack of originality” — Kahlil Gibran
  • “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care” — Theodore Roosevelt
  • “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply” — Stephen Covey
  • “Trust that people move towards wholeness, and we just have to follow” — Alexis Shepperd, co-founder of the Authentic Woman Experience
  • “Depression is the reward we get for being ‘good’ ” — Marshall Rosenberg
  • When we are angry, killing people is too superficial — Marshall Rosenberg
  • “You don’t need to get what you want if you can express what you want” — Strephon Kaplan-Williams

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Marco’s Books and Blogs

Circling Guide Anthology

 


Broke, Single, Crazy and Old: The Redemption of a Sex and Love Addict

 


As Lovers Do: a Manual for Men

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