[At a Banyan Grove retreat in April, Yaniv shared a beautiful introduction to our circle of sharing that I've often referred back to. I'm sharing it below, in case it's helpful for some of you.]

Thank you, everyone.

Over the next hour we're gonna start with a circle of sharing, which we actually consider one of the most important ways to start this retreat along with an hour of silence and an invocation.

Why is that there's easily a dozen people in this room on whose life's contents and offerings of service we could base the whole retreat on. Why do we start with a circle of sharing?

We started because this retreat is not about someone else's life. It's about you, and it's about us.

It's about you because you are on your journey of becoming. Because each of you has a special gift, many gifts, to offer. Many seeds that could benefit one of us just by interaction. And it's about us because we are learning how to be come together, how to work together, to hold space for one another, and to tease out one another's gifts.

So the circle of sharing is really about us getting to know you, and also you getting to know us.

So I'll share a few logistics and then a seed thought that we can use as inspiration.

So just a few logistics: I like to think of the circle of sharing as a mindfulness practice - as an individual and a collective mindfulness practice. Individually, it's a practice for me to really listen to whoever is sharing. To be present to notice when my mind is wandering, and when my body's noises take precedence, and to work with that.

When I'm sharing, it's a mindfulness practice because it's an opportunity to really speak from the heart in a safe space. It’s okay to stumble. It's okay to forget my train of thought. No one's here to judge you. It's really about getting to know one another.

So as we share just a few things that we can we can hold in our minds for our mindfulness practice.

The first one is that we we generally we're trying to have this circle take about an hour's time.

Why is that? It's because we have a really really packed program. It's not so much that we want to rush into that program, but just to be real, our next our next session is with Alan Dada - a really rare opportunity. I think collectively it's up to us dynamically how much time we want to spend on the rest of the program, and how much time we want to spend in this circle.

That said, we're gonna try a little experiment today. There's 40 people here roughly. It was about an hour. That gives 1 to 2 minutes per share per person, but actually there's no hard and fast rules. If you're taking 4 or 5 minutes, it's just what's real for you in this moment, and that's okay.

So the experiment we're gonna try is if your share crosses the 2-minute line I'm going to gently ring the bell. That is not at all an indication that you need to stop sharing in that moment. It really isn’t. It's a marker for you, because we do sometimes lose track of how long we're taking.

It's just a marker to keep in mind. For the rest of us it could be used as an opportunity to really just come back to our breath, and check in. Are we listening or we present still? So it's a mindfulness practice.

Another practice we can consider is maybe taking just a brief moment in between shares - a breath, a second maybe. A way of thanking the speaker before you, to just offer us a little bit of reflection - an integration of what we just heard. And also [it is] to set the table for your share.

I will not count that against to your two minutes. [Laughter]

Oh! Also, when you open, please share your name, and if inspired, your place of origin from which you traveled to get here today or yesterday.

My name is Yaniv. I came here from Burlingame, which is a small town just south of San Francisco.

I'll repeat some of these at the end, but let's get to the seed question.

The seed question actually relates to an idea that Gandhi’s often quoted as sharing that really struck me. It's an idea I'm trying to digest. What he often said is, “If you're faced with the challenge of imminent danger, a threat that could actually bring you harm, it's better to respond in self-defense with violence than to take inaction out of fear, and call it non-violence.” In fact, he was saying inaction out of fear is more himsa, or violence, than it is to respond in self-defense with violence. So to practice non-violence requires a courage of heart to face that fear, and still find that compassion and forgiveness to say “I will not defend myself in violence. I am not afraid. Well, maybe I am afraid, but I will meet you with courage, and with my heart.”

So a seed question to contemplate, “What is an incident in your life, or a story you experienced, where you were faced with exactly this intersection of the kind of fear that really required the courage to practice non-violence? Were you able to find that courage? How did you? What happened? How did it go? Did fear win that day, and if so, what did you learn? What would you do differently, or is there perhaps a fear you're holding these days where you really want to find the courage to face with non-violence inaction?”

Maybe you'd consider requesting our support in shoring up that courage for you, in whatever way we can? Also you can share anything that's real for you. You don't have to respond to the seed question. Anything that comes up from someone else's share what's real for you in this moment. Or you can pass, and there'll be plenty of opportunity for us to get to know you in the coming two days.

So consider starting with just a moment of silence or so in between shares. Consider what it's like to speak from your heart. Listen from your heart, and with that I'm going to pass [the mic] to Ann.

She’ll start us off, and since we generously gave her the task of starting the circle, I'll give her three.