Ordinary People, Extraordinary Respect

18— 25 July  —  Mike Roth and Lorna Knowles

We shall seek the mysterious gateway to a rare quality of trust and rapport, within a group of committed participants. We know that in a single moment it is possible to find true connection—both with ourselves, and with the others present. This is more than a spiritual experience because all the levels of our biology are also engaged. And when we are in community we experience what unconditional love is actually like: both to give and to receive.

Yet this experience goes beyond the feeling of joy that we associate with romantic love. With Community Building we do something more than simply enjoy the good stuff. We are also ready to accept the rawness and awkwardness of our true selves - which means we are making a space for the emergence of real people. So we are also learning to sow the seeds for enduring, real relationship.

During our week together we shall build community in diverse ways: meeting in the form of the Circle—the ancient ritual that through the ages has gathered human beings into a space of openness and respect. Also through our shared activities, small-group meetings, and the common work of our everyday living, we shall discover a multiplicity of pathways to community. We trust that - through this journey - we shall be developing a resource for carrying the spirit of community out into our ongoing life.

THE TRADITION WE BRING  Our workshop gives you a direct connection with the living tradition of M. Scott Peck’s original work as described in his best-selling books: The Road Less Travelled, The Different Drum, and A World Waiting to be Born). Our experience of this work comes out of a many-year relationship with the people whom Peck chose and trained personally as Community Building leaders in the 1980s and 90s. It is also the fruit of our struggle to make Community Building real—through a concrete engagement with our personalities, our conflicts, our disappointments and our dreams—in the ongoing commitment to keep the process alive and growing in the United Kingdom.

We have struggled with consensus building, with “speaking when moved”, with creative conflict resolution, and with “sharing from the heart”. We have learned from our failures—deeply as much as from our successes. Community Building in Britain is a network of people from many walks of life, sharing a common belief: that we can find better ways to communicate, can learn to accept and value each one of us in our individuality, and so open ourselves to the spirit of community. What we offer at Kalikalos is the distillation of our many years of experience in the development of this work.

MORE ABOUT THE METHOD  In Community Building we recognize the simple, well-nigh instinctive path to mutual rapport—and we work together to move beyond the old habits, the mistaken assumptions and the unresolved pain and grievances which regularly de-rail or block the process of building relationships. That state of spontaneous rapport is the common element in the love which springs up naturally (when it is not thwarted) between children and their parents, between lovers, between bosom friends, and amongst comrades-in-arms. There can be little doubt that it is part of the human instinctive repertoire.

M. Scott Peck believed that Community Building is the fundamental key to making peace amongst the embattled peoples of the earth. He created a high profile movement in the U.S.A. which flowered for a brief decade—touching the lives of tens of thousands of people, and which subsequently entered into an unexplained decline. We at Community Building in Britain are holding the torch, and with our homegrown innovative spirit and collaborative enquiry the work continues to develop and inspire us.

Please note: Kalikalos offer a 10% discount for booking two successive workshop weeks

Michael Roth was an alumnus at the famed AntiUniversity of London (1968-1969), and pioneer of the alternative psychiatry movement in that era and later. He worked and studied with the existential psycho-analyst R.D.Laing, and was a founder-member of the Arbours Association (London), which provides alternative care for persons diagnosed with severe mental illness.

Michael is also the foremost exponent of Charlotte M. Bach's ground-breaking theories of emergent evolution, described in his A Bolt From the Bleeding Sky (Dielectric Publications, London, 1984). He continues to work as a psychiatrist and as a researcher into holistic methods of facilitating social change. This includes facilitation and training sponsored by the organisation Community Building in Britainwhich continues to develop and disseminate the work of the holistic psychiatrist M. Scott Peck.

Lorna Knowles is an English artist who lives and works in Sheffield. She gained her Fine Art degree at Sheffield Hallam University and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her practice takes on a philosophical approach to the words Nothing disappears. Through her personal experiences and observations she investigates the spoken and unspoken true connections, that interweave in human relationships. Lorna has worked on the front-line of mental health services and patient advocacy in the National Health Service. She has a 10-year experience of Community Building and has infused these principles and sensibilities into her art practice.

Contact Michael or Lorna at: