A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life Book

He had me at, "No fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting each other straight," which is the main rule of the "circles of trust" he describes. Most conversation at family gatherings, church coffee hours, break and conference rooms at work, etc. tends to be of the fixing/advising/persuasion variety, with plenty of complexes tossed into the mix. Palmer gives insight into how to instead speak one's truth and engage in "deep speaks to deep" type of listening.

I appreciated his reminder that most of the questions we ask other people are not really questions but advice in disguise (i.e. "Have you thought of seeing a doctor/quitting your job/changing schools?").

Best of all is his insight that the desire to "help" another person is instead often a way to dismiss them: "How can we understand another when instead of listening deeply, we rush to repair that person in order to escape further involvement? The sense of isolation and invisibility that marks so many lives - not least the lives of young people, whom we constantly try to fix - is due in part to a mode of "helping" that allows us to dismiss each other."

Even though much of what he says in the book is specific to circles of trust, and most of us won't ever have the opportunity to attend one of those (although I'll be keeping an eye out for one now), it's easy enough to see how one can apply these principles to everyday situations.