We’ve all felt the hand of impact.

It can be a fist hitting the stomach. A gentle rub on the back. A finger poking your chest. A wave to say, “Hello!” A palm pushing down on your head as you struggle to rise out of the water.

To define it more directly, impact refers to the experiences that bloom in us out of the unfolding of everyone’s actions.

Look closely at it, and you see impact everywhere. That’s life as a social creature. That’s what it means to emerge in Indra’s net.

Simply sitting in the Circle, we alter the Circle. Staying home and skipping the Circle, we alter the Circle.

This is why, in our community, we agree to Honor Impact. But what is the fullness of its meaning? And can it allow us to open our hearts and impact the space with more commitment, more presence, more love?

Honoring regards and respects. It does not grovel or shrink away.

In Circling, then, we are asked to neither resist nor stoke impact that occurs.

So first and foremost, honoring impact is not avoiding impact. As we’ve seen, that’s impossible.

When we resist making an impact, we end up making no less of it. We try to hide, to shield, to contort. Still, it seeps out of everything we do (and “don’t” do).

You’ve felt this so many times in your life.

Think of someone telling you something hard, something they think you can’t handle. How they try to soften it, say it sideways. Rather than eliminate the impact, it creates a whole new kind. You find yourself ready to scream, “Just tell me!”

We can resist making an impact on others. But we can also resist impact on us.

This often takes the form of being brave. We grit our teeth and retreat into ourselves. “I’m fine,” we say. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”

Or our resistance takes on something a little more expressive, explosive. We launch into full defense of the citadel. “Oh yeah?” we start, ready to let them have it.

This resistance can be subtle. We slip into an intellectual discussion when someone was wanting our vulnerability. We make a joke to delay confronting a topic that sets our heart racing. We say, “Sorry, I’m losing signal,” and hang up the phone.

So honoring isn’t resisting the presence of impact. But it’s certainly not stoking it, either.

Circling, and the radical honesty it allows, can take us to the edge. There at the far reaches of experience, we get a zap you just can’t find anywhere else. And since we are all owning our experience and pursuing our own needs, and since we’re staying with what’s really alive for us—what’s the harm in pushing some buttons and saying it like it is?

It’s true, there’s a beauty in the freedom of the Circle, the raw moments of contact we make with each other when we form connection around what is really here.

While we can hold that and move from that and stay committed to that kind of practice, we also remember that we share the Circle with real people. Their pain, their boundaries, their limits… these are real.

Impact is both inevitable and powerful. There is no need to stoke more and more and still more of it. It is already right here.

So, honoring is not stoking the impact, making it as intense as we can for a hit of that zap you only taste there at the edge.

No, honoring is something far more mysterious and sacred and revolutionary. To honor impact is to bow when we feel it in the space. To hold it with awe. To recognize its power and its role in sustaining and transforming us. To be with it because it is here. To take the time it takes to acknowledge its presence, name it.

When you honor this strange and ancient god, you can come with more of yourself than ever before. You stop trying to hold back, to tame or limit your impact. You are in the Circle. You have every right to be in the Circle. You are already making an impact. You always were.

By honoring impact, we build trust in the space and the people we share it with. We learn to bring it out of hiding. And in this revelation, impact breathes and moves in the Circle. It hurts, delights, arouses, saddens, bores to tears, and everything else that makes up the fullness of human life.

When we talk about impact, we can’t help but talk about what it means to experience. It is the very stuff of being here on this earth together. It is the Holy Spirit. It is how I feel you there with me. That most luminous of miracles.

With no impact, there is no change, no healing, no laughter, no love. And so, we need your impact in the space. It’s the great gift we offer each other.

When we recognize impact for all it is, we hold it with reverence. And if we hold it with reverence, a form of trust starts to weave through us. A new kind of safety that doesn’t censor or dilute the space. Instead, it is a safety to be fully together. Right here. Right now. As it actually is.

Tomorrow, we’ll be gathering once again to practice Circling. And as you might have guessed, we’ll be taking a special look at the agreement Honor Impact.

Find the details below or check out our MeetUp page.

We talked to Daniel Schmidt (director of the Samadhi films and founder of Awaken the World) about how spiritual practices cause awakening. This really opens up how we look at the way modalities like Circling fit in alongside things like meditation, entheogens, and self-inquiry. It’s a fantastic conversation with a giant in the field.