Field Notes from the Between-Us Groups

Earlier this year, Peter Mitchell and I facilitated our first three Between-Us Groups. They run concurrently every week for 12 weeks.

We expected it would take time for the relational field to emerge, and for participants to find the courage and trust to be open, authentic, and willing to risk. Those expectations were completely shattered. Almost as soon as the Zoom room opened there was almost no hesitation, and the power and beauty of “The Between” was immediately felt and recognised.

There is a tremendous longing for realness, true intimacy, and the chance to explore the alchemical potential of shared being. What surprised us most was the immediate recognition: the sense of “oh, this is it”. The attention people brought wasn’t only personal longing, but a recognition that what’s happening here isn’t just meaningful for “me”. It points to something cultural and human that has been painfully absent.

If the first round was spontaneous joy, wonder and recognition of the amplified “field of being” between us, the second round was a deep dive into the reality of the human experience. Peter and I both realised a “facilitator” persona had crept in. Instead of fully trusting the field of distributed intelligence these meetings are designed to engage with, we each felt we had to do something, make something happen. When we shared that with the groups, the atmosphere changed immediately. People stopped orienting around us and stepped much more fully into their own authority and knowing.

People started transforming in real time: not “feeling better” or having a great insight, but watching identity reorganise. Long-held self-concepts dissolving, mutating, falling away. Having that witnessed and acknowledged by the group changed something fundamental. We were once again completely undone.

In such a challenging and exposing environment, resistance and hesitation will inevitably be felt, and so it was at times in the third round of meetings. Naming the resistance, and the fear behind it, and also the impersonal nature of that fear in the face of risk, was its own catalyst for breaking the spell. Different groups and individuals moved through at different speeds and to different degrees, all perfectly natural and to be expected. There was a deep acceptance of where each person found themselves, and collective support and encouragement without sentimentality or coddling.

The degree of trust between all of us in each group is truly moving, and growing each time as facades are put aside and our real faces exposed. Peter and I are very much implicated each step of the way. This crucible of risk, trust and transformation is working on everyone, often to our discomfort but always to our amazement. Genuine love is beginning to arise between us.