Reflection Part 4
October 16, 2025
Reflection Part 4
Think of when you have sat around a campfire or on a porch, talking for hours with dear friends. The group may reflect on a common experience or other sides of this wonderful and challenging life. What a gift are those informal times of reflection shared with others. However, group reflection can have an intentionally spiritual focus.
My first experience of a formal spiritual reflection group was as a graduate student at Candler School of Theology. Dr. Walter Lowe, professor of Systematic Theology, led a weekly group of eight students. We served as volunteers at community agencies: drug rehabilitation centers, hospitals, emergency services, and, in my case, the children’s cottage at the Georgia Mental Health Institute.
In preparation for our group, we wrote a “verbatim”—a script-like account of an interaction during the week at our volunteer placement. Each verbatim included what we said and what the other person said in the encounter. We chose an encounter because it had some meaning to us, whether conscious or subconscious. These shared written encounters became the substance of our shared reflection. They were accounts of conversations that touched us, confused us, unsettled us, enlightened us, or opened a door we did not expect. After reading them aloud, we invited the group to reflect with us.
What I remember most is the care and support the group gave to whoever presented their verbatim. The purpose was not critique but to help us see how we present ourselves, how we interact, how we feel, and how we either support or, unintentionally, hinder others or our own growth. When people reflect on the same encounter, each brings a unique perspective. The combined insights are invaluable.
Irving Yalom, authority on the group process, wrote about the key factors that make a group helpful to its members. Though he focused on group therapy, many of the factors work for reflection groups. Some are: the group offers hope, expresses the universality of life’s issues, makes space for interpersonal learning, provides cohesiveness and support, and asserts the existential and ultimate givens of life.
In my experience in groups, something happens that is greater than the sum of its members. It has the power to work miracles. Each person carries a gift for seeing into a situation. Each offers a glimpse of truth. The more truth we receive, the more conscious we become. Reflecting together is one of the most powerful ways to grow. In The Institute for Conscious Being we reflect as a group in the process called The Living Enneagram. In this process, a person asks a burning question of their own, to the nine people who represent each of the nine points on the Enneagram. Each person on the Living Enneagram answers the question from the perspective of their Holy Idea and their Virtue. The Questioner is invariably amazed at the depth and breadth of the answers they receive.
Spiritual practice: If you have a group, write a verbatim of a meaningful interaction and share it with them. Notice what insights arise that you may never have discovered on your own.
If you practice alone, write your verbatim as if you were preparing to share it. Then, step into the role of the group yourself: read it back slowly, and imagine how eight other “inner companions” might respond, according to their Enneagram Soul type. Listen to each of these voices as though they were truly present.
Self-inquiry: Why might you think you can see yourself fully without the reflections of others—whether those others are outward companions or inner voices of wisdom?
Prayer: Dear God, I give thanks for those who share one another’s burdens and vulnerabilities. Without them, I would thirst for them. Amen.
