Turning Conflict Into Art

There is real difficulty in naming, acknowledging, and owning the experience of violation and, potentially trauma, that can sometimes occur in intense conflicts.  It can be even more challenging to move on from conflicts that offer no balm or accountability for the unethical actions of others. We can be hurt so deeply when the acknowledgement of our voice, our perspective, our strength, and the integrity of our intentions is refused.  The 'easy', (and sometimes brutish) route of blaming and scapegoating  for a conflict situation emerges when another's humanity is denied.

Speaking truth to power is one of the most paradoxically powerful and vulnerable forms of conflict that emerges in our world.   Toxic authority - both the kind that is entrenched in outer systems, as well as in inner ways of relating that are learned behaviours - does not like to be challenged, or have its actions questioned in any way.  Toxic power can respond to questioning with rage, panic, and ruthlessness.  Rather than allow the truth to emerge, cover ups and denial are the learned modes of operating, thereby creating more and more confusion and despair within the self-regulating system of life.  Healthy life systems have their own exquisitely tuned feedback loops which are always co-creating towards greater self-expresson, self-expansion and wholeness.

Learning from the dance of opposites that we find in the natural world, we see the stunning co-creativity that is constantly at work in all dynamics.  If we could remember, and truly trust this instinct and impulse, our  trauma could potentially become the canvas of the greatest form of expression of the deepest source of our selves.  The artist of life, through honouring and expressing the comedy and tragedy of the dance, can turn painful conflict into an exquisite new creation.

Self-Forgiveness

It's often easier to forgive others than to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we make along the way.  As human beings, we are bound to make missteps - sometimes big ones.  If we are committed to birthing our ideals in the world, we can be very hard on ourselves when confronting our own contradications. Can we forgive ourselves? 

More often than not, our intentions are good.  Unfortunately, we can be inexperienced, naive, overly idealistic, and even triggered by our past wounds.  We can override our intuition and find ourselves in a shark pit.  We trust where we really shouldn't. We can say too much, and be too honest, when we should learn to be more careful and circumspect.  We can have too much blind hope in our ideals, and not be willing to face the way things work "in the real world" to disasterous ends.  We get jealous, frustrated, and angry. We can be so driven by our vision, that we lose sight of the here and now - forgetting that it is in the intimacy of the everyday that the world is transformed, moment by moment.

I've always loved that Gandhi's autobiography is called My Experiments with Truth.  That is what a conscious, committed journey really is - an experiment.  When we surrender to that which is weaving us, we glimpse the implicate order, the larger pattern of our lives...the larger story that weaves the pieces into a whole.  This quilt includes all the themes on the journey - big mistakes and all.  When we poke behind the mask of our mistakes and the faces of our adversaries, we find our greatest teachers and life lessons. 

In my life, Kuan Yin (the goddess of compassion) has often been hidden behind what Bill Taggart refers to as the 'blessed betrayers" - the people and experiences that have caused the most grief, hurt and pain.   If I can seek and find compassion for the other who has deeply hurt me, then I must be worthy of extending it to myself as well.

The Power of Projection

Have you ever found yourself at the centre of a vicious storm of projection and betrayal?  The wounding of being so devalued and delegitimized to the point of dehumanization results from the confrontation with the raw, brutal energy that has been split off from feeling or empathy.  It's something that one never forgets if one has experienced it.  It is part of the collective memory that lives in the bodies and psyches of those who have experienced genocides (at the collective level), and serious bullying (at the personal level). If you are a woman, it is often experienced as the energetic equivalent of being perceived as "the witch."

Owning our projections is the difficult work of a humanity seeking to embody soul values rather than keeping them out of life on a perfectionistic pedastal.  Reclaiming our capacity for deep love is the healing journey that leads us into our frailties and wounds, and the ways in which these wounds prevent us from trusting new dimensions of life and love to flow through our bodies and psyches.  It is not an easy journey, and it takes us right into the centre of our own fear and the tender bruises of our heart's frustrated efforts to connect and be received.  It reminds us that our vocal chords may be 'choking' on the repressed expression of the truth of our experience, and our eyes are fearful of recognizing what they see as plainly as posssible.

While projections have real power when they are unleashed, they are equally powerful when they are reclaimed.  Instead of that energy being placed out there on the "enemy", it can instead flow into creative possibilities and connections.  With new eyes, we can see others in a fresh light.

In the reclaiming, we remember who we really are - and are humbled and healed by our own perfectly imperfect story, and our ability to honour it in the other.

Life's Exquisite Promise

To believe that love is stronger than fear and hatred is the most radical idea to embrace.  I would argue that it is more radical than any political philosophical position.  How does one live this in a world so fractured?  How do we embrace this within our own wounded hearts?  What does this mean in the context of life's realities, and our personal and professional obligations and responsibilities?  How is an open heart lived within the paradox of the fundamental need to protect oneself and others from harm?  How do we allow ourselves to be inspired by transpersonal ideas and symbols, yet work to manifest these within the small and immediate realm of our human lives and communities?

From an early age, I have been asking questions centred around the reality of love, and its possibilities for transforming our world.  Rilke's words have helped me in this inquiry - an inquiry that has been (and I would imagine will continue to be) full of challenges, contradictions, pain and joy.  In Letters to a Young Poet he writes:

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Now that I am entering early middle age, I revisit Rilke's words again with a more experienced eye, and a fuller and wiser heart.  I glimpse an implicate order where myriad manifestations of its stunning accuracy reveal themselves if I pay attention.  I recognize the capacity of life to bring me into situations that, if responded to from my deepest truth, reveal their brilliant tendrils forcing me, leading me, to greater wholeness and healing.  I am brought face to face with my deepest fears, my hidden wounds, and my unclaimed gifts.  I am brought face to face with my capacity to love, forgive and learn in the face of life's unrelenting force of will. 

Life is the most radical, transformative classroom of all, and its lesson, its promise, is so simple that it is always a learning in process, one that takes lifetimes to master:

Love.