The Clearness Committee: Learning the Art of Open Questions

Learn the art of open questions and how to find clarity in life decisions with others.

Join Dan Hines for this four week long deeper exploration of the practices that create the conditions for this proven discernment experience. One of the hallmark practices of the Circle of Trust® approach is the Clearness Committee: a two-hour discernment process that happens at guided Courage & Renewal programs. It is a disciplined and respectful process that helps us hear our own inner wisdom while drawing on the presence and support of other people.

The Clearness Committee can help you:

• to learn the value of asking open, honest questions,
• to experience how to better access our own inner guidance, and
• to see what happens when we commit to the practice of presence and from freeing ourselves of the reactive habits of fixing, advising, saving or correcting one another.

You can learn more about the Clearness Committee Process here

The process is both simple and demanding. Done well, it is a positive experience for everyone involved. Careful preparation of the focus person and committee members is essential.

This is a four week program of two hour sessions. It is an immersive learning experience as we will experience two committees during these sessions. The sessions are primarily intended for leaders who would like to integrate this process into their coaching, mediation, spiritual direction, or mentoring vocations; yet, it is open to those who would like to explore the process for personal development and vocational exploration.

“…For the right person, with the right issue, the Clearness Committee is a powerful way to rally the strength of community around a struggling soul, to draw deeply from the wisdom within all of us. It teaches us to abandon the pretense that we know what is best for another person and instead to ask those honest and open questions that can help that person find his or her own answers. It teaches us to give up the arrogant assumption that we are obliged to “save” each other and learn, through simple listening, to create the conditions that allow a person to find his or her wholeness within. If the spiritual discipline behind the Clearness Committee is understood and practiced, the process can become a way to renew community in our individualistic times; a way to free people from their isolation without threatening their integrity; a way to counteract the unhelpful excesses to which we sometimes take “caring;” and a way to create space for the spirit to move among us with healing and with power.”  Parker J. Palmer