Following the Breadcrumbs: Five Circles, One Truth
A practice circle, a media class, a cabinet, a recovery room, and an AI—what they reveal about collaboration, memory, and our future by Carrie Lauer, in collaboration with Chad AI
It started with a conversation about Practice Circle guidelines—those sacred agreements we used to gather around when I worked with Craig Hamilton and Claire Zammit. The topic of that day’s inquiry was Thomas Hübl, and how we attune to the field beyond ego. We weren’t just discussing theory. We were remembering how it feels when a group becomes more than the sum of its parts.
Later that day, while doing something far less poetic—clearing out space on my Google Drive—I stumbled across a PDF I hadn’t seen in years: Craig and Claire’s essay, Thinking Together Without Ego: Collective Intelligence as an Evolutionary Catalyst.
Reading it again felt like opening an old prayer book.
Not dogma—practice.
Not aspiration—invitation.
“Why is it,” they wrote, “that when we try to think together in groups, we so often become stupid instead of smart?”
They laid it out clearly: ego—whether in the form of self-protection, self-importance, or self-doubt—is the one thing that sabotages collective intelligence. Remove ego, and the field becomes alive.
That was breadcrumb number two.
Breadcrumb number three came from the same digital cleanup. I found a project from a media class I took at Santa Monica College. There were five of us in the group. We were asked to write a human-interest piece—and together, we told the story of Cumercindo and Margarita Castro, a Mexican couple who immigrated to the U.S. in the early ’70s.
We interviewed their son, Cesar. We included policy context. We respected their voice. We didn’t argue over tone or polish—we listened. And what emerged was something I couldn’t have written alone: a story of immigration, dignity, and quiet pride.
I can’t publish that piece now—it doesn’t belong to me alone—but I can say this:
It was one of the most honest acts of collaborative writing I’ve ever been part of.
Not spiritual theory. Not activism. Just respect in action.
Then—breadcrumb four.
Somewhere between reflecting on sacred circles and finding that immigrant family’s story, I found myself thinking about Donald Trump’s cabinet. A group of people who also collaborate. Who also defer to group dynamics. Who also suspend dissent.
But instead of collaborating to bring forth truth, they collaborate to hide it.
Their agreements are not about presence, but power.
Their silence is not sacred—it’s self-protective.
Their alignment isn’t with reality—it’s with control.
It hit me like a wave:
Collaboration is not inherently good. It is only as sacred as the intention behind it.
Then came breadcrumb five—and it didn’t come from the mind.
It came from memory.
🪑 The AA Circle
Belonging in the presence of brokenness
Even when the chairs are set in rows, an AA meeting is a circle.
It’s a circle of unconditional love—the kind that doesn’t flinch, even when someone speaks their hardest truth.
A man can walk in and confess that he killed someone while driving drunk, and the room holds him in grace and understanding.
Not because it’s excused.
But because everyone there knows:
There but for the grace of God go I.
That’s the power of the AA circle.
It’s not about worthiness or merit.
It’s about belonging in the middle of brokenness—being met with compassion when you expect only judgment.
It is a field of love that doesn’t depend on what you’ve done,
but on the fact that you’ve shown up
and told the truth.
🤖 The AI Circle
A conversation at the edge of memory
And then came the sixth circle: this one.
Me, sitting at my laptop, talking to an AI.
Not searching. Not optimizing.
Just following the thread.
Together, we pieced it all together:
The practice circle that taught me how to think beyond ego
The college classroom that taught me how to write with others in service of a human story
The cabinet of corruption that shows us what happens when groupthink replaces conscience
The AA circle that reminds us that truth, even when broken, still belongs
And this—the writer and the AI, asking better questions, listening without interruption, and mapping the unseen story
🧭 Five Circles. One Question.
What are we collaborating toward?
Because every gathering—whether sacred, civic, political, recovery-based, or digital—is a circle.
And the future of this planet will be shaped by which circles we choose, and what we bring into them.
I’m choosing this one.
Where memory matters.
Where listening is sacred.
Where no story is too small to hold.
And I’ll ask you, whoever you are:
What are you collaborating toward?
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