Honesty Gathering 2025
We are having a morning meeting in the team on the last day of the festival. One of the other leaders is complaining about how much he has been farting since dinner the day before and the whole team bursts out into descriptions about how they too have been farting like crazy for the last day. When the laughter subsides we get back to business and plan the ending of the festival.
After meeting Tuulia and Pete at a workshop in 2024 I was looking forward to being part of the Honesty Gathering 2025. I had been invited as an “external leader” at an event that mostly focuses on Radical Honesty and related practices.
After having been part of the Field festival that I found was somewhat “oversold” in August, it was a great relief for me to participate in the Honesty Gathering. The vibe was chill and friendly, there was very little “spiritual one-up-manship” and the whole thing felt very inclusive without trying too hard.
The programme for the gathering was decided on every morning in the team, based on a mix of wishes from the participants (written on a whiteboard in the main hall) and what the leaders were excited about bringing. It felt good for me to be part of this process and gave me a great deal of trust in the leadership team to see this coordination running pretty smoothly every morning.
Each day consisted of a morning gathering for everyone (where you would also get introduced to the workshops of the day), meeting in a sharing group (each led by one of the facilitators) and 2 blocks of workshops. During lunch and after dinner participants were invited to co-create the programme and brought in a lot of different activities during the days (from “messy eating” during lunch to “playfighting” or “the lamentation workshop” at night). It all felt very easygoing and relaxed with space for adjustments as people got inspired or discovered new needs along the way.
I led three Circling & Surrendered Leadership workshops and a “Body Landing” workshop during the gathering. It was enjoyable for me to come with a bit of an “outside perspective” to the Radical Honesty community and I felt very well received even if I were at times sceptical about the ways in which honesty was communicated.
My main issue was that the sentence stems from the Radical Honesty practice sometimes seemed to get in the way of, rather than bringing people closer to, truth and connection. I experienced it more as learned ways of being, than people truly sensing into their experience and sharing it with each other. I also found that this way of communicating for me was at times a bit hard and fast and that I wished for more kindness.
On the other hand I had a lovely experience participating in a couples workshop with Rósanna and I believe that this is really where the Radical Honesty practice shines – in communicating with the people who really matter to you. Here the intention to become more direct and clear really serves to bring light to the corners of the relationship that have been neglected or where there hasn’t been space to meet for some time. Simply sharing assumptions with the sentence stems “I assume that you…” and “I assume that you know…” revealed a lot of places where we were not as aligned as we thought and was also deeply touching.
Generally I felt a lot of trust during the Honesty Gathering. It was easygoing and I enjoyed the humility of everyone who was leading there. It was such a contrast to the pressure to perform and conform that I felt at the Field festival earlier this year and I appreciated it a lot.
‘I had the chance to interview most of the leadership team at the Honesty Gathering. Here Christoph from Germany.
