Circling asks us to follow curiosity into the depths of the human heart. This curiosity might be about our own reactions to what people say or do. It might be about someone else’s words or emotional state or persistent memory they just can’t shake.

If we let ourselves be captivated by this curiosity, we enter into a process of discovery. And the eternal story of the Hunt might be our best map to understand how this process unfolds.

In a Circle, the Hunt often begins with a spark, a pinprick, an inkling; call this spotting the rabbit.

Inside you, in your very bones, there is a sense that you need to follow your prey wherever it goes. It’s this need that gives you access to the Hunter in you.

Donning the hide and bearing the weapons of the Hunter, we unlock wells of endless energy. We can stalk the woods through the night in tireless search. We summon exquisite attunement to our senses. We sniff the air and read the drops of blood in the snow.

In this way, the Hunt taps into our fullest capacities, the stores of that most ancient knowledge of how to live in the untamed garden of Earth.

The Hunt does this through desire. Not the frigid clutch of neediness. Not the panicked race of desperation. But desire—fierce and filled with sacred urgency.

It’s said that hunters once avoided stepping on animal tracks for fear that this would alert the animal. In a similar way, many modern-day hunters follow the rule of thumb, “Don’t step on anything you can step over.” That keeps us from tripping, stirring up a hidden snake, or otherwise slipping into calamity.

It is this kind of thinking that we Circlers use to follow that rabbit into the forest.

We do not go stomping into someone’s being, hollering and carrying on. We are slow and quiet, taking more time to listen and simply let things unfold.

In a Circle, engaging into depth calls us to discipline around impacting the other. So, we don’t mindlessly open up any content that comes up. We stay on the scent. If we are following an anger response to its origin point, we don’t need to take a detour into extraneous details that don’t feel deeply alive to the anger.

This doesn’t mean we stop ourselves from being surprised. If something feels brilliantly alive, but we are unsure about its connection, we keep it with us. When tracking, you never quite know what information will prove useful.

And when we hunt with others, we all must stay true to these shared needs. The hunting party is only as quiet as its loudest member, only as focused as its most distracted member.

It may seem like a lot to master, but a great Hunter already lives inside of you. You come from a long line of ancestors whose perilous lives relied on the heat and certainty of the Hunt inside them. And so, mastery is a matter of letting yourself be the master you already are.

Come stalk the wild animal at our next in-person Circling event. Check out the details below or go to our MeetUp page.

Just a heads up, we’ve made major changes to the format, so we really recommend joining us at 5 PM.

Also, this will be on Valentine’s Day. Feel free to bring your lover!

We talked with Ben Hodgson of Transformational Connection about Circling with an Occult worldview informed by the Kabbalah. A very juicy conversation, indeed.