What a wisdom circle actually is

Not a class. Not a workshop. Nobody is at the front.

A wisdom circle is a small group of people sitting with the same question, out loud, without anybody being required to solve it. That sounds slight until you have been in one, at which point it tends to be the part of the week people protect.

Three things make it work.

One question, held by everybody. Not a topic and not a debate. A question — what am I avoiding, what have I outgrown, where am I pretending. The question is the centre of the circle and everyone sits an equal distance from it.

Nobody fixes anybody. The most difficult rule and the one that makes the rest possible. When somebody says something hard, the circle does not rush in with advice. It stays. Advice is often how a group avoids the discomfort of simply hearing a thing.

What is said stays. Obvious, and it still has to be said aloud on the first day.

The reason this format has survived for thousands of years across completely unrelated cultures is not mystical. It is that human beings think differently in company than they do alone, and a question asked in a circle comes back with answers you could not have reached in your own head.

In this community the circles run in writing rather than in a room, which loses something and gains something. It loses the silence. It gains the fact that you can be in one at eleven at night, from anywhere, with people who are not in your life and therefore have no stake in your keeping up appearances.