Community Building

Community Building is an experiential group contemplative practice exploring deeper ways of conntecting and relating to one another.

"The next Buddha may be a sangha." - Thich Naht Hanh

Developed by M. Scott Peck MD., renowned psychotherapist and author (The Road Less Traveled, The Different Drum), the method seeks to collapse the time required for groups of people to experience what he called, "true community." He saw the loss of authentic community as the root cause of social problems and global conflict and believed that recovering a sense of collective community could reverse the crisis and bring peace - both on an individual and a global level. Community is seen here as a necessary component in a quest for a more peaceful world.

Buddhist monk, peace activist and teacher, Thich Naht Hanhh, wrote: "It is possible the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and lovingkindness, a community practicing mindful living. And the practice can be carried out as a group, as a city, as a nation."

Peck realized however that in general we have forgotten how to build true community. He conducted his research on this topic using a series of group workshops across the United States over many years. Through this work he identified a set of guidelines for behaviors which could produce states of heightened connection. He called these workshops Community Building Workshops. The workshops were aimed at not only creating space for this unusual experience, but for helping to teach people the skills needed to transform their lives, communities, cities and nations and - ultimately - the world.

The following is an excerpt from Peck's bestselling book, The Different Drum:

"There is no such thing as instant community under ordinary circumstances. It takes a great deal of work for a group of strangers to achieve the safety of true community. Once they succeed, however, it is as if the floodgates were opened. As soon as it is safe to speak one’s heart, as soon as most people in the group know they will be listened to and accepted for themselves, years and years of pent-up frustration and hurt and guilt and grief come pouring out. And pouring out ever faster. Vulnerability in community snowballs. Once its members become vulnerable and find themselves being valued and appreciated, they become more and more vulnerable. The walls come tumbling down. And as they tumble, as the love and acceptance escalates, as the mutual intimacy multiplies, true healing and converting begins. Old wounds are healed, old resentments forgiven, old resistances overcome. Fear is replaced by hope.”
- M Scott Peck

The process can be looked at many different ways - it is at once a kind of mindfulness exercise, a practice of relational contemplation, a deep and intense inner journey into self-discovery, and even a community ritual, rite of passage, a collective ceremony of grieving and renewal, or a transpersonal experience.

During the workshop, the group, under the care of experienced guides (facilitators), learns special communication guidelines and has the chance to move through the 4 phases of the process:

For many groups or organizations the most common initial stage, pseudocommunity, is the only one. It is a stage of pretense. The group pretends it already is a community, that the participants have only superficial individual differences and no cause for conflict. The primary means it uses to maintain this pretense is through a set of unspoken common norms we call manners: you should try your best not to say anything that might antagonize or upset anyone else; if someone else says something that offends you or evokes a painful feeling or memory, you should pretend it hasn't bothered you in the least; and if disagreement or other unpleasantness emerges, you should immediately change the subject.

Over time profound individual differences may gradually emerge so that the group enters the stage of chaos and not infrequently self-destructs. The theme of pseudocommunity is the covering up of individual differences; the predominant theme of the stage of chaos is the attempt to obliterate such differences. This is done as the group members try to convert, heal, or fix each other or else argue for simplistic organizational norms.

If the group can hang in together through this unpleasantness without self-destructing or retreating into pseudocommunity, then it begins to enter "emptiness." This is a stage of hard, hard work, a time when the members work to empty themselves of everything that stands between them and community. And that is a lot. Many of the things that must be relinquished or sacrificed with integrity are virtual human universals: prejudices, snap judgments, fixed expectations, the desire to convert, heal, or fix, the urge to win, the fear of looking like a fool, the need to control. Other things may be exquisitely personal: hidden griefs, hatreds, or terrors that must be confessed, made public, before the individual can be fully "present" to the group. It is a time of risk and courage, and while it often feels relieving, it also often feels like dying.

The transition from chaos to emptiness is seldom dramatic and often agonizingly prolonged. One or two group members may risk baring their souls, only to have another, who cannot bear the pain, suddenly switch the subject to something inane. The group as a whole has still not become empty enough to truly listen. It bounces back into temporary chaos. Eventually, however, it becomes sufficiently empty for a kind of miracle to occur.

At this point a member will speak of something particularly poignant and authentic. Instead of retreating from it, the group now sits in silence, absorbing it. Then a second member will quietly say something equally authentic. She may not even respond to the first member, but one does not get the feeling he has been ignored; rather, it feels as if the second member has gone up and laid herself on the altar alongside the first. The silence returns, and out of it, a third member will speak with eloquent appropriateness. Community has been born.

The shift into community is often quite sudden and dramatic. The change is palpable. A spirit of peace pervades the room. There is "more silence, yet more of worth gets said. It is like music. The people work together with an exquisite sense of timing, as if they were a finely tuned orchestra under the direction of an invisible celestial conductor. [. . .] If the group is a public workshop of previous strangers who soon must part, then there is little for it to do beyond enjoying the gift. If it is an organization, however, now that it is a community it is ready to go to work-making decisions, planning, negotiating, and so on-often with phenomenal efficiency and effectiveness.”

*Excerpt from the book A World Waiting to be Born by Scott Peck (Bantam Books, New York, 1993)

How Community Building can help

Scott Peck's Community Building modality is used in a variety of different spaces and with different groups: land-based communities and other intentional communities, business and non-governmental organizations, religious groups, at-risk youth, law enforcement, prisoners, and more. The process can help teach and develop skills such as:

Authentic communication, deep listening and speaking from being "moved to speak" - building relationships based on honesty and vulnerability.
Taking responsibility for our own emotions and experiences and more intimately understanding their origins and impact on our behavior.
"Graceful fighting" - skillful navigation in moments of conflict & better understanding of the role of chaos.
Deepening insights into our own barriers to authentic relationships, unconscious patterns of behaviour, hidden agendas or intentions and how to release & transform them.
Deepening the experience and understanding of interconnected nature of reality.
Being present, mindful and accepting, letting go of the need to fix anyone or change anything.
Expanding emotional and ethical intelligence; allowing our own and others' feelings to emerge, accepting them with curiosity and understanding.