The Shadow of Transformation

By Miriam Joy Jones

We often speak about power as though it is a fixed thing that individuals possess or lack. Yet power is rarely static. It is more like the blood moving through our veins or a current of electricity. It changes shape and direction through the interaction between people, roles, resources, stories, environments, and circumstances. It shifts as conditions shift. What appears insignificant in one context can become highly influential in another. Like water, power can create, destroy, nourish, overwhelm, sustain, or transform. Its impact depends not only on its force but on the environment through which it moves.

This understanding of power has shaped much of our work over the last two decades. It has also increasingly shaped the questions we ask about change and transformation.

One of the most important insights I encountered in the last decade came through the work of Julie Diamond. After a lifetime of studying power in individuals, organizations, communities, and social movements, she arrived at a deceptively simple observation: one of the greatest abuses of power is not power itself, but the failure to recognize the power we have.

Power appears in many forms. There is positional power and institutional power. Cultural power. Economic power. Spiritual power. The power that comes with expertise, age, education, race, gender, charisma, access, and social standing. Most of the time, however, we only recognize a fraction of the forces at work. We simplify power into stories about who has it and who does not. In doing so, we often miss the complex web of relationships that create the actual dynamics we are living inside.

Our understanding of power is further complicated by the fact that many of us relate to it through old experiences. Childhood relationships, formative experiences of authority, belonging, exclusion, success, or failure continue to shape how we perceive ourselves in relation to others. As a result, our assessment of power  is often less about the conditions in front of us and more about patterns we have carried forward from the past. We can feel victimized by someone when in reality in this situation we are the ones with the power and have become the bully.

When power remains unseen, it does not disappear. It simply begins operating in the shadows.

Over the last decade, through the work of Open Circle, we have spent considerable time exploring circles, rites of passage, participatory leadership, community building, and many of the practices emerging in response to the limitations of modern institutions. These approaches often arise because something in the existing system is no longer working.

Schools search for new ways to support wellbeing and belonging. Organizations experiment with alternatives to rigid hierarchy. Communities seek deeper participation. Social movements pursue justice, equity and new ways of doing things. Families look for healthier ways of living in relationship with one another.

Across very different contexts, people are searching for forms that can address problems inherited from outdated ways of organizing ourselves. What has increasingly captured my attention is not the emergence of these forms, but the shadow that accompanies them.

Every transformational movement creates a shadow. The shadow of transformation emerges when we assume that changing a form automatically changes the consciousness that inhabits it.

A circle is introduced and we assume hierarchy has disappeared.

Decision-making becomes more participatory and we assume power has been distributed.

A rite of passage is created and we assume transition and transformation will occur beyond it.

A social movement gains influence and we assume it has transcended the dynamics it originally opposed.

Again and again, we have observed ourselves and others introduce new forms while unconsciously carrying the same assumptions, fears, wounds, and power dynamics into them.

What changes is the structure. What often remains untouched is the underlying paradigm.

This is not because we are insincere. Quite the opposite. Most transformational work begins with genuine intention. Yet intention alone does not free us from the deeper patterns that shape how we relate to ourselves, to one another, and to power itself.

In many ways, this should not surprise us.

Human beings do not simply inhabit structures. We interpret them. We bring our histories, identities, beliefs, and developmental capacities into every system we create. Transformation involves more than changing behaviour, it involves changing the way we make meaning. Without this deeper shift, new structures are often asked to carry old assumptions.

The result is a curious phenomenon: the appearance of transformation without the substance of it. What looks different on the surface continues to reproduce familiar dynamics underneath. It is there that the shadow of transformation becomes visible.

One of the places we have observed this dynamic is in the movement of introducing circles as a socio emotional tool for children in schools. Over the last twenty years, many schools have introduced circles as part of restorative practices, social-emotional learning, and student wellbeing initiatives. The intention is often admirable. Circles are used to create spaces where students can speak honestly, listen to one another, develop empathy, and build stronger relationships. In a culture where many young people feel increasingly isolated and disconnected, these are worthy goals.

Yet introducing a circle does not remove the institutional reality in which that circle exists.

A student may sit beside a teacher in a circle, but the teacher still has the power to grade them. The principal still has the power to suspend them. The school still sits within a broader system that shapes opportunity, behaviour, and access to resources. None of these realities disappear simply because people are sitting in a different configuration.

Years ago, a student of ours described exactly this tension after her school introduced circle work. Her concern was not with the circle itself. In fact, she appreciated the intention behind it. What troubled her was that they were being invited into vulnerability without anyone acknowledging the power dynamics already present in the room. The circle was presented as a space of equality. The experience felt different. Participation did not feel entirely voluntary. Choosing not to engage carried consequences, whether explicit or implied. What was offered as an invitation often felt more like an instruction.

The problem was not the circle. The problem was the assumption that stepping into a circle somehow suspended the power dynamics already operating around it.

This distinction is important because power that is acknowledged can be worked with. Once acknowledged, it becomes possible to discuss it, question it, and design around it. Power that is denied, however, tends to become more influential precisely because it can no longer be spoken about. It operates beneath the surface while maintaining the appearance that it no longer exists.

A similar pattern often appears in organizations attempting to move beyond traditional hierarchy. Leadership teams redesign decision-making structures. A new language is introduced and people begin speaking about participation, collective leadership, distributed authority, and self-management. These shifts are often motivated by a genuine desire to create healthier and more adaptive organizations.

Yet beneath the surface many of the same questions remain.

Who controls resources?

Who determines strategy?

Whose voice carries greater weight when disagreement arises?

Who feels safe speaking openly and who does not?

Without examining these dynamics, organizations can find themselves reproducing hierarchy while simultaneously insisting hierarchy has disappeared. In some cases, the language of participation can make power more difficult to see rather than easier. What was once explicit becomes implicit. What was once acknowledged becomes hidden.

The shadow grows stronger precisely because it becomes harder to name.

This pattern is not limited to schools or organizations. It appears repeatedly throughout history and social change movements as well. Paulo Freire in his work on Pedagogy of the Oppressed observed that oppression has a tendency to reproduce itself unless our relationship to power fundamentally changes. Those who have experienced domination can unconsciously recreate the very dynamics they seek to dismantle. The external positions shift, but the underlying pattern remains intact. What emerges is not transformation but inversion: a reversal of roles that leaves the deeper structure untouched.

This observation remains profoundly relevant today.

Many contemporary movements begin with a legitimate critique of existing systems. They seek greater justice, participation, equity, or inclusion. Yet the desire to overturn an existing power structure can sometimes obscure a deeper question: what relationship to power is being cultivated in its place?

Without addressing that question, transformation can easily become a process of replacing one dominant group with another, one ideology with another, or one certainty with another. The language changes. The actors change. The dynamic remains surprisingly familiar.

This may be one of the reasons genuine transformation is so rare. Changing structures is difficult. Changing consciousness is harder. And yet it is precisely this deeper shift that transformation requires. Part of the challenge is that transformation is often understood as a change in behaviour, structure, or process when, in reality, it involves something much deeper.

We can change what we do without fundamentally changing how we make sense of the world.

This distinction sits at the heart of much of the work in developmental psychology Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, in their work on Immunity to Change, describe how human beings continue to evolve throughout adulthood, not simply by acquiring more knowledge, but through shifts in the very structures through which we interpret experience. Transformation, from this perspective, is not the addition of new information. It is a reorganization of meaning making itself.

These shifts rarely happen because someone encounters a new framework or adopts a new practice. More often, they emerge when our existing way of understanding the world begins to break down. The assumptions that once organized our experience no longer provide adequate answers. We encounter situations that exceed our capacity to interpret them through familiar categories.

This is one of the reasons periods of genuine transformation often feel disorienting. We experience uncertainty not because we lack information, but because the structures through which we have made sense of information are themselves being challenged. These moments can be the ones that most profoundly shape us. Something is ending, but something new has not yet fully emerged. We find ourselves in a threshold between worlds. It is precisely in these moments that many transformational forms become attractive. Whether that is for individuals or for societies.

Circles, rites of passage, restorative practices, community processes, leadership frameworks, and social movements all offer pathways through uncertainty. They provide language, structure, and orientation during times of change. At their best, they create conditions that help individuals and communities encounter themselves differently.

Yet there is a subtle danger hidden within this. The very forms that support transformation can become a substitute for it.

A circle can become something we do rather than a practice that changes how we relate to one another. A rite of passage can become an event rather than an encounter with uncertainty and changing identity. Participatory decision-making can become a process rather than an examination of power. Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives can become programs rather than invitations to question the assumptions embedded within an organization or culture.

In each case, the form remains visible while the deeper developmental work becomes optional.

This dynamic appears in many wisdom traditions as well. Across cultures, rites, ceremonies, and contemplative practices were rarely designed as solutions to problems. They existed within broader ecosystems of meaning that shaped how people understood themselves, their communities, and their relationship to the world. When these practices are removed from the paradigms that gave rise to them, they can easily become techniques. We inherit the outer method as a personal transformation tool while losing sight of its relationship to the web of individual, community and environmental relations, cycles and seasons it was embedded in.

The  pattern can be observed in our relationship with many Indigenous and land-based traditions. Modern societies often look toward these cultures searching for answers to problems created by industrialization, individualism, and ecological separation. There is much wisdom to learn from. Yet there is also a tendency to extract practices while leaving behind the deeper worldview and wisdom from which those practices emerged.

We can see this play out in the tensions within  contemporary rite of passage organizations, in yoga and in the plant medicine ceremonies as they have spread more widely in the western world. We adopt the form. We preserve our paradigm.

This may explain why genuine transformation so often resists our attempts to control it. It asks more of us than behavioral or structural change. It asks us to examine the assumptions that organize our perception, the identities we hold onto, and the ways we relate to life itself. Without that deeper movement, new forms are repeatedly recruited by embedded patterns. The language changes. The structures change. The appearance changes. The underlying logic remains surprisingly familiar.

If the shadow of transformation is our tendency to recreate familiar patterns inside new forms, then the question becomes: what allows something genuinely different to emerge?

In my experience, transformation rarely occurs by moving from one certainty to another. More often, it arises through our willingness to remain present to tensions that do not have immediate solutions. And in this way force us to discover different ways to remain steady while not leaning on outside structures or institutions.

Much of modern life encourages us to think in binaries. We are taught to choose between individual freedom and collective responsibility, hierarchy and participation, stability and change, certainty and uncertainty. Public discourse increasingly rewards those who can position themselves clearly on one side of a divide and defend that position with conviction.

Yet many of the most important challenges we face cannot be resolved in this way.

Organizations need both leadership and participation.

Communities require both individual agency and collective responsibility.

Healthy cultures depend upon both belonging and difference.

Too often, however, our attempts at transformation involve swinging from one pole to the other. Hierarchy becomes the problem, so participation becomes the answer. Authority becomes suspect, so consensus becomes the ideal. Individualism creates fragmentation, so we emphasize community. Community becomes constraining, so we return to individual freedom.

The movement can create the appearance of change while leaving the underlying pattern untouched. What remains absent is the capacity to stay in relationship with the tension itself.

This is where much of the work Open Circle has explored over the years has led us. Again and again, we find ourselves less interested in choosing between poles than in understanding the territory that exists between them.

The symbol of the circle is useful here. Many people assume the value of a circle lies in the elimination of hierarchy. The shadow emerges when the circle itself becomes the way. When consensus becomes a way of avoiding leadership. When equality becomes a denial of the different forms of power that are actually present. In these moments, the circle ceases to be a practice of awareness and becomes another structure through which unconscious dynamics can operate.

The deeper promise of the circle may be something else entirely. A circle creates the possibility of seeing multiple perspectives at the same time. It allows differences, tensions and uncertainties to remain present without requiring immediate resolution. It invites us into a relationship with complexity rather than offering an escape from it.

The same can be said of rites of passage.

Much of contemporary culture struggles with this. Faced with ambiguity, we often reach quickly for solutions, frameworks, ideologies, or identities that restore a sense of certainty. Yet in doing so we may leave the threshold before it has completed its work. We want to take the mystery out of the rite in the rite of passage and want it to become a safe repeatable process.

At their deepest level, rites of passage are not designed to provide answers. They create conditions in which certainty is disrupted and familiar identities begin to loosen. The initiate enters a threshold where old ways of understanding no longer fully apply and something new is allowed to emerge. What is significant about these traditions is that they do not rush to resolve uncertainty. They recognize that transformation requires a period of disorientation. The threshold itself is part of the process.

The challenge across all of these transformational modalities is not simply to tolerate uncertainty but to develop the capacity to remain present within it long enough for something genuinely new to emerge.

This requires a different relationship with power. Not power as domination. Not power as control. But power as awareness.

Power as the capacity to direct attention toward what matters and  as the ability to remain present to complexity without collapsing into certainty or fragmentation.

Power as the discipline of noticing what is happening beneath the surface rather than reacting only to what is immediately visible.

This kind of power is not found by eliminating hierarchy, authority, conflict, or difference. Nor is it found by abandoning participation, collaboration, or collective wisdom. It emerges through our capacity to work consciously with the tensions between them.

Perhaps this is why genuine transformation is so rare. It asks more of us and requires genuine and often hard work in its participation. It asks us to remain awake to the forces moving through the structures and practices in our lives. It asks us to be curious about the shaping of our decisions, our relationships, our institutions, and our understanding of ourselves.

Most importantly, it asks us to remain open to the possibility that what is needed may not be found at either pole of a debate, a political fight or even a war, but in the fertile territory that exists between them. It is here, in the tension between competing truths, that something genuinely new has the possibility of being born. Seen from this perspective, the challenge facing many organizations, institutions, communities, and movements is not simply one of structure. It is one of attention.

Where attention goes, power follows.

This is what Julie Diamond points toward when she writes:

"Harnessing your focus gives you power. Without the capacity to direct your attention, you are a leaf in the wind, blown about every which way. You respond to everything but accomplish nothing."

At first glance, this appears to be an observation about individual leadership. In practice, it applies equally to groups, organizations, and societies.

Every organization directs attention somewhere. It pays attention to certain metrics, conversations, relationships, tensions, and outcomes while neglecting others. Every leadership team, whether consciously or unconsciously, makes decisions about what is worthy of focus and what remains invisible. Over time, these patterns of attention shape culture, behaviour, resource allocation, and ultimately the organization's capacity to fulfill its purpose.

Power and attention are deeply intertwined. What receives attention gains influence. What remains unseen often becomes the shadow. In the attention economy this has become magnified. And the discipline of what we resist and where we choose to put out attention is fast becoming a revolutionary act.

The decision of where to put our attention can start with asking questions:

Who participates in decisions?

Whose perspectives are consistently absent?

Where does authority actually reside?

How do informal relationships influence formal structures?

What tensions are being avoided?

What conversations feel safe or unsafe?

These questions are rarely technical or simple. They are relational and filled with complex, seasonal changes and often paradoxical answers.

And as David Whyte points to - shadow play is a never ending process because anything that has light has a shadow. So any big movement or change process will have its own shadow. In this sense, power dynamics in transformational processes are not something to eliminate, they are simply something to notice and be aware of.

When structures and processes hide power, people often find themselves trapped in patterns they cannot fully explain. They  become frustrated by decisions that appear inconsistent. Informal influence begins to override formal structures. Tensions emerge between stated values and lived experience. Trust erodes not because power exists, but because its operation is obscured.

Conversely, when power is always considered in its both visible and invisible potential, it can become a source of resilience. Groups develop a greater capacity to navigate conflict, adapt to changing conditions, and engage differences without fragmenting. Leadership becomes less about control and more about stewardship. Participation becomes more meaningful because the realities shaping decisions are no longer concealed.

This is why I have come to see power awareness as one of the essential capacities of transformation. Not because awareness guarantees wise action. But because without awareness, transformation remains vulnerable to its own shadow.

The shadow of transformation is not simply resistance to change. It is the tendency to recreate the very conditions we are attempting to move beyond while convincing ourselves that change has already occurred.  New forms alone cannot save us from this pattern.

Neither circles nor rites of passage.

Neither participatory structures nor social movements.

Neither new frameworks nor new language.

Each of these can create conditions that support transformation. Each can open important possibilities. Each can help us encounter ourselves and one another differently.

But none of them can do the work for us.

The deeper task remains the same. To become more conscious of the assumptions we carry. To develop the capacity to remain present to complexity rather than collapsing into certainty. To notice what is emerging beneath the surface before rushing to impose solutions. To be open to mystery and experiences beyond our understanding.

Perhaps this is what transformation ultimately asks of us. Not that we abandon structure, but that we stop confusing structure with transformation. Not that we try to eliminate power, but that we learn to see it more clearly. Not that we resolve every tension, but that we become capable of inhabiting them with greater awareness, responsibility, and care.

The work, then, is to become the kind of people, communities, and organizations capable of navigating new territory in deeper connection and alignment to the ever changing seasons and cycles of our lives and world.

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