Speak louder!

5.0.04

what one can't hear in heart-circle guidance

After thirty years, heart-circle was my first experience of escaping the pressure to speak quickly and briefly, before someone jumps in and hijacks my conversation. No more battles for speaking time. The contests to throw in more shocking opinion, in more refined verbiage. "Iiiii… no, Iiiii … wait, Iiiii..." Feeling the interest of the other hearts, not just impatient waiting to insert themselves in a convenient gap in my expression. All the attentive silence – faeries listening to me, witnessing me as I want to present myself – still resonates with the echo of the outside world’s usual pattern. I acknowledge the anxious haste, wary discomfort, slowly learn to enjoy the excessive pauses between my thoughts where no one else claims that time. This seems a life-long journey.

Despite its unique nature, despite the known benefits, despite the vague awareness of its core standing in faerie culture, it takes a determination to join the heart circle. So many more "fun" things to do. It takes a patience not only to speak ones truth (use the circle, the other ears) and then disappear (physically, or in one’s own thoughts), but to reciprocate the witnessing service. Last but not the least - it takes a tremendous courage to decide to trust and share matters of heart. And now imagine, in this fragile state, someone interrupting you in the middle of the sentence or though with his: "Speak louder please!"

In a parallel it reminds me of the more basic minds that can’t appreciate delicate play of light and darkness in paintings (or other visual art), the artist’s intention to conceal some elements of the scene and focus on others, to grasp the beauty of the perfect balance. They just want to see everything – every object - in equal white light. There’s a table, a person, a lamp, another person looking from behind, a biscuit in the jar. Though that might not be the point. Similarly, some people tend to push the brightness of the screen to unnatural maximum, because their minds work in the objects-relations scheme, rather than "oh this is magical as it is", they can’t deal with obscurity, mystery, spot left to imagination.

But that’s not the point of the game of heart circle. You might not hear everything they say, nor understand all of it, you won’t be able to analyze the whole situation. But you are not here for your soap-opera plot, your are here to witness the person. It’s not about you at all. It’s their sharing, their presence, their bliss of being witnessed. Your role is not to hear, your service is the listening. To their silence, to their pauses, to their timid voice, to their finding courage and words, to their expression through singing or dancing or movement – that you might not comprehend on the rational terms. "Speak louder" is what it is – a very rough invasion of someone else’s intimate moment where he holds his heart in hands for everyone to see/hear - it is an interruption, hijacking of speech, the denial of the unique revolutionary blessing of a heart circle: the experience of speaking as long as one wants and in a away one desires.