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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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Circling vs. “Authentic Relating”

Update Dec/2022: There is now a whole chapter in Relational Power about this, Practical Relational Leadership through the Authentic Relating practice – the 30,000 foot view

(Extract from the Circling Guide)

There is an important distinction to be made between the formal practice of Circling and Authentic Relating. There is a great deal of overlap between the two, with some differences that are covered in the next chapter. The main difference is that in the formal practice of Circling, we come together in a group with an assumption (or “shared context”) of “welcome everything”: that people will be interested, or at minimum attempt to respond non-reactively, to whatever shows up. Outside of a formal circle, however, and especially with people who have no training in any relational modality, you cannot assume that if you show up in anger, blame, or deep pain, that people will attempt to be receptive to you.

It is a natural human reaction to push away strong emotion of any kind, especially negative or blameful thoughts and emotions, and to respond with judgment and distancing. This is considered normal. As a result, many of us walk around with a lot of anxiety, loneliness and pain that has nowhere to go and which then feeds on itself, creating an even greater feeling of separation from other human beings. Hardly anyone, really, gets the quality of attention that would enable them to shift the painful sense of separation that we all feel sometimes, and that some of us feel all the time. Our interactions with people tend to be quite functional, sometimes even the people closest to us. We tend to put a lot of effort into deeply cloaking our humanity. We are taught that this is the way things are and that we just have to get used to it, and we do our best to put a happy face on it (because we fear that if we didn’t, we would be even more isolated). And our effort to pretend that everything is okay when it really isn’t, obviously compounds the problem.

But there is good news here, which is that we don’t have to cloak our humanity. We can strive for all of our interactions with people to have truth and care in them, which also, ironically, makes us much more effective in all spheres of life. This is the practice of Authentic Relating, which I am also covering in this book.

The idea of Authentic Relating is to respond to people from an assumption that everyone desires, at some level, to love and be loved, to know and be known, to belong. The need to belong is deeply embedded in the context of being human, for the obvious reason that in the tribal culture from which we came, belonging is life-and-death. The need to belong continues to underlie much of our behavior but is rarely something that people talk about or even admit. The practice of Authentic Relating is to interact with people with the assumption that they want to belong, to be valued and cared of, and to be acknowledged for their contributions. It is a fairly simple and extraordinarily powerful practice that consists, fundamentally, in leading with vulnerability, which is further described below, and providing quality attention and compassion to people. It is an exercise that can be done with no prior agreement and which is virtually guaranteed to transform all of your relationships.

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Upcoming Events

Upcoming events below and on our Google Calendar

Circling Reflections

  • How to be authentic and loving in an emotionally illiterate culture
  • Circling Evangelist hits the streets in Guatemala: successes and humblings

Clickable Communities map

authentic-revolution-communities-map

Authentic Relating Organizations

  • Circling Institute (San Francisco and Global)
  • Circle Anywhere (Global)
  • Circling Europe (Europe and North America)
  • 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

Free Circling Video Course

Signup to the new free Circling course at CircleAnywhere!

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


Relational Power: Win Friends, Influence Others, and End Loneliness Through the Practice of Authentic Relating

RSS Marc "Marco" Beneteau's Author Blog

  • Relational Power: Call for engagement
  • Quick check-in from “the land of enchanment”
  • Moving to New Mexico; two new books!
  • Investigation of Dakota Kaiser and Starseeds Exchange – possible crypto fraud / scam in San Marcos, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

RSS Manifesting Community Blog

  • Moved to Albuquerque, NM. New book!
  • Winter has arrived at Solidarity Collective! Plus exciting plans
  • New digs, new book, new life
  • New groups forming now; and other news
  • Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (Rutledge, Missouri) — Visitor Program Review
  • On the road, in search of utopia

 


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

RSS Healthy Bipolar

  • Happy all the time with a low-grade CFS — is it possible?
  • Moving to New Mexico! New book!
  • Final days at Hridaya Yoga, Mazunte, Mexico
  • My Social Security disability hearing; a visit to the doctor and the dentist; and life in the communist commune in Wyoming

 


As Lovers Do: a Manual for Men

RSS The Man/Woman Game Archives – Authentic Singles

  • Online Dating and the Man/Woman Game: My Story
  • What Women Want: Towards a New Psychology of Love, Sex and Gender Relations
  • I have a Dream: the social-political context of love and sex

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