Group as an Elaborative Process

'..the way one wants to change isn't just from one category to another, or from being like some people to being like other people. One wants to change precisely into oneself, into more of oneself than one has been able to be so far...'

Eugene Gendlin

In a group like this, we come together in part to explore a theme that calls to us. But a more fundamental process is also underway - one by which, through interacting, we change each other and support each other's unfolding.

Fundamentally, we are not here to understand a theme, or to think more deeply, but - in a broader sense - to experience being more fully and fluently ourselves; to elaborate and inhabit embryonic possibilities within us.

Our experience here draws us into processes of becoming, it is an invitation to be subject to renewal, to be willing to experience ourselves in fresh ways.

elaborate (verb)

• develop or present (a theory, policy, or system) in further detail:
• (of a natural agency) produce (a substance) from its elements or simpler constituents
  

[video transcript]

I want to say a little bit here about something very close to my heart and very central to this offering.

Being in a Group as Inherently Elaborative

That is to speak to the experience of being in group as what I am going to call an elaborative process. By that, I mean a process which enables us to, in Eugene Gendlin's words, 'become more of ourselves than we have been able to be so far'.

Being More Textured, More Layered, Refreshed

In other words, the group environment and working together enables in each participant little shoots of growth, fresh iterations of who we are. It stretches us into not necessarily more complex, but more textured versions of ourselves, more layering. In my experience, group is really a wonderful counterbalance to the kind of stagnancy and over-familiarity that can so easily form in our lives.

Growing Again...

There is a lovely poem by an author whose name I cannot pronounce, but I will put her name below. She is talking about processes of growth as we unfold, and she writes: to die as much as necessary without overstepping the bounds, to grow again from a salvaged remnant... That may sound a little heavy and somewhat particular to the way parts of our capacity are falling away and we need to renew ourselves in fresh ways as we get older.

Elaboration

My apologies: I know I am kind of slightly over-quoting people here. But I want to come back to this word elaboration, which is a term that the analyst Christopher Ballas writes about a lot.

Playing with Life to Elaborate our Possibilities

Bollas speaks of analysis or therapy as an elaborative and creative process. The way he writes about that, is that as we learn to play with life more skillfully and more freely, we use experience, we use our encounters with others, we use, say, our engagement in a craft or an activity like gardening or even like me 'teaching' now to express ourselves freshly and, in a way, to elaborate the possibilities all of us have as human beings.

The Pleasure of Elaboration

And, of course, we never reach our potential. And of course, not everything can be elaborated. But it is a pleasure (and a resource) to have the opportunity to elaborate ourselves. The experience of being in an environment - like the group - that is designed to support us as adults playing with our possibilities and articulating new edges, textures, layers of ourselves is a very vitalising, enlivening and creative process.

Becoming and Sharing 'More' of Ourselves is What People Value

Regardless of what theme or segment of teaching I form a group around, what people really value is the opportunity to be authentic with each other and to feel their own life force appear in new ways and their own capacities evolve, broaden, play, loosen.

So that's what I would say the underlying task here is: through the lens of our themes of Revelation and Humility, to elaborate ourselves. And to do that in each other's company.