You are in the Circle, moving along with what is arising when your flow stops.

You don't know where you are. You don’t know what to do.

Shock. Surprise. That jolt in your body that signal something new is happening.

It is the same moment when, on a trail in the wilderness, you look up and find before you a vista expanding out into the distance. Where have you come? And what magnificent beauty still awaits you before sundown?

These moments are where real change happens, where you make a choice to move in some way you’ve never moved before. Suddenly, anything is possible. And if anything is possible in that one moment, it means that maybe anything is possible all of the time. From that point on, maybe your entire life could be an adventure. And maybe it always has been, you only needed to be reminded.

These moments not only bring in the new. They also return to us what we lost long ago. They allow us to rediscover forgotten modes of engaging others, the ways of effortless joy and love that we were taught to suppress somewhere along our way through this wilderness.

The Circle pulls us back into the clear, open air of adventure. We aren’t trudging through an endless, meaningless scramble. We are making our way through an Eden utterly overwhelmed by miracles to be treasured. Put another way, the Circle reclaims our birthright of profound and loving connection to self and other.

But how? How does the Circle do this? And how can we, if we’ve struggled to reach these moments in our own practice (or if it’s been a while), cultivate these kinds of experiences?

What is it about Circling that gets us to these moments of agency over what happens next and who we start to become?

In large part, it comes from the discipline of following our shared agreements. These guide us (sometimes gently and sometimes not so gently) into places where our reflexes are no longer on the table.

And they reveal to us just how much of our lives unfold according to patterns we learned long ago.

These patterns might do very important things for us. At some point, they may have literally saved our lives. But when we live out of pattern, our realities are set and we are trapped to live as this person in this life forever, never experiencing open connection to the present moment.

So, in short, these patterns (no matter what they do or where you learned them) prevent the possibility of awakening.

Patterns can be simple. When you hear a compliment, you find yourself instantly in a program of refusal—“Oh no, you’re too kind." When you feel someone is being insulted, you find yourself in a program of proud defender or soothing caretaker.

In the Circle, our agreements interrupt the pattern. Rather than refusing the pattern, we are asked to be in touch with the direct experience, the stimulus that once launched us unthinkingly into the pattern.

The agreements, then, liberate us not by adding options to the table but taking away the vast number of options we once had.

For many of us, the Circle is the first place we’ve experimented with this kind of relating. For others, it is just the reminder we’ve been waiting for.

This works only if we commit to agreements. Commitment means trust and openness. If we don’t have trust to open ourselves up to be surprised, we’ll never be surprised—no matter how effective a set of agreements may be.

But this can be easier said than done.

The most common hurdle is rebellion. That rebellion often wakes up when we realize that the agreements greatly limit our options in the given moment, only leaving choices that seem bizarre, besides the point, and not particularly helpful. We find ourselves feeling like the whole Circling thing is rather odd and not for us.

"This is arbitrary.” “This is robotic.” “This is self-indulgent and pointless.”

Or we might disagree with the worldview or philosophy or set of definitions we are inferring by the agreements. Does Welcome Everything mean I have to think everything is fine and dandy? Does Own My Experience mean I have to make everything my fault? Does Commit to Connection mean I have to gaslight myself? Does Honor Impact mean I have to censor myself to make other people comfortable?

But this rebellion and the fear and anger underlying it arise from a mistake about what the agreements mean.

The agreements are not commitments we make to follow anywhere but inside the Circle. They are not statements about what is right or wrong, ethical or unethical. They are an interconnected set of principles that, if followed, lead us to earth-shattering moments of insight and freedom.

They are like a treasure map. It’s up to you if you want the treasure, but it does no good arguing with it.

For instance, the agreement Welcome Everything is not necessarily telling you that the only right way to be ever is in a state of welcome. And agreeing to practice in the Circle from a place of Welcoming Everything isn’t some surrender in you that this is the only acceptable way to be.

Instead, it's a limitation. For example, when we encounter an experience of resistance to what someone says in the Circle, rather than following the logic of this pattern (and trying to make our feelings right and what someone else did wrong), we Welcome Everything. We can simply say, “I’m feeling resistance to this.”

We no longer need to effort toward making the annoyance correct. We no longer have to justify that our annoyance is valid and figure out how someone else is responsible. We are simply with the annoyance, and we can share that in connection.

Now, we are liberated from the resistance itself. We are able to relate about what’s really going on—the resistance. But none of that can happen if we spend our time arguing about whether Welcome Everything is right or wrong.

If you don't trust it. if you think it isn’t a good practice, fair enough. But then you never get to know what’s out there waiting for you on the adventure.

To add a little nuance, it’s time to add a couple notes for the traveler.

First up, the agreements live in an ecosystem, holding, nourishing, and balancing each other. To understand how, let's stick with this annoyance we are Welcoming a little bit longer.

Because of our other agreements, we can bring in our annoyance in ways that are more and more skillful. Through their limitation and containment, they create the full practice. The agreement Own My Experience asks us to own what is ours, which prevents us from losing ourselves in blaming others for our annoyance (which would bring us into age-old patterns of the victim mindset). In a similar way, Honor Impact and Commit to Connection reminds us to offer our annoyance in service to more connection, as a way to foster honest understanding while not simply blowing people out with edgy shares.

Often, when we find ourselves stymied by how to use an agreement in the present moment, the answer lies in one or more of the other agreements. And when we think of points where an agreement would go too far, it's often a different agreement that keeps things balanced.

Being able to do that organically takes time. Getting used to the feel of it won't happen overnight. And usually, it’s best to not hold yourself so strictly to doing it “right” or well. We are called practice the agreements, not suffer them.

For this reason, we want to engage the agreements with a sense of wonder and play. Have something that really wants to come out, but you don't know how to do it inside of the agreements? Maybe try it anyway. Or ask for help. Or be with the present moment experience of having it and feeling locked out by the agreements.

So come, engage these tools, and see what marvelous moments of discovery they can unlock. If we let go of trying to “do” something and simply practice the agreements, we find ourselves turning strange corners and surprising ourselves with what happens next.

Therein lies so much of the medicine and delight the Circle offers.

Come practice with us this Saturday at our next event, hosted by special guest facilitator Hannah Hellsing (check out our interview with her here)! We are continuing our deep dive into the agreements. We've also been cooking up some special changes for our flow that we think you're going to love.

Find the details below or check out our MeetUp page.

We talked to Andrew Venezia about the psychedelic aspects of the Circling practice. (All available without taking any substances!)

Go to our Patreon here to support the work we do. When we hit 100 patrons, we are going to start special video series just for supporters!