Why I Work With the Poisons 4: Where We Separate Is Also Where We Meet

Where We Separate Is Also Where We Meet, part four of four. September 2026

I believe we are here to wake up through our conditioning, through our karma. What else is there? And consciously doing this together has a powerful effect.

When we commit to showing up together, we inevitably stir the depths of our being. What is unconscious begins to surface. Our wounds, our reactivity, our fears and unresolved pain, these too are part of the field. The clarity of practice shines a light on all of it.

This is why doing this together, and not only alone, can have such a transformative effect.

What it looks like in the room

Someone gets hooked in front of the group, and rather than discuss it, we stay with it while it is still hot. We let the reaction speak in its own voice. And when it has said what it needs to say, what it was protecting becomes visible: a contraction older than anything happening in the room. Nobody is being fixed. We are simply looking at it together. The story falls away as the energy itself, say resentment, is recognized and owned. It turns into clarity and deep relaxation. The contraction is released, and insight emerges.

When we listen to one another this way, something impersonal begins to show through. You hear someone describe their reaction and recognize it as your own experience, being spoken by someone else. You realize this is your own structure too. That is where it is no longer shameful, and becomes simply a process of awakening.

In seeing our shared conditioning together, we recognize its impersonal nature; as the stories fall away, its emptiness is revealed, the energy self-liberates, and the heart opens as we recognize ourselves in one another.

Compassion grows here. Compassion for our shared humanity. It becomes so clear that we are all doing our best.

The sangha becomes not only a mirror for awakening, but a field for transformation and integration of our shadows.

The sangha waking up to itself

What emerges is unity in differentiation. One awareness, no separation, and everyone still entirely themselves.

As the group becomes aware of this happening, it becomes aware together. Presence amplifies. The stillness thickens. And you feel more yourself than ever: relaxed, awake, completely here.

Then people begin to see through patterns they have never seen before. My insight becomes yours, and yours becomes someone else’s, and it keeps going.

I don’t really know what to call this. I call it the sangha waking up to itself.

Much of my work is simply to notice when it is happening. As the shared space of listening amplifies, and the experience of Oneness as the Many starts to emerge, that is the moment to turn the group’s awareness toward itself. It does not have to be mine to do. It can be anyone who suddenly notices.

This is not an idealized community. It is awakening in the middle of things.
Where we separate is also where we meet.
Because every relationship grows out of one relationship: Our relationship to our own mind.

This is the work I do with people, in silence and in conversation. If you would like to sit with it rather than only read about it, Silence by the Sea meets Fridays 8 to 9 AM and Tuesdays 5 to 6 PM at Fire Rock Ocean Sky in Seal Rock, and I work with people one to one, in person and online.

If you would like to hear about future Deep Sangha Work groups and workshops on the poisons, send me an email and I’ll add you to my list. You can read more about Deep Sangha Work here.

Previous: Part 3, The Love Affair With Emptiness and Form