Passive Participation in Conflict submit to War, Reconciliation and Healing [Main Post with PDF]
Strategies for Healing and Transforming Experience: Despair [11 of 12]
Strategies for Healing and Transforming Experience: Despair [11 of 12]
IV. Using the Framework
We all have the opportunity to deepen our awareness and heal injuries from passive participation in conflict. We will not consider our roles as passive participants in order to become invested in the roles or our identities,[1] nor to become trapped by the experience we discover on whatever side of injustice we find ourselves in the past or present. Our purpose is to see how our passive participation in conflict based upon power differences begets suffering. Ultimately we aim to transform this suffering and reclaim wholeness.
The readiness of an individual to heal aligns poorly with remedies for redress and it often comes long after suffering has been transmit to another generation. This scheme invites individuals who are ready to identify and heal their passive participation in conflict with the hope that increased consciousness may end unconscious transmission of suffering.
It is my hope that when you are ready, you will begin working with this framework in order to reclaim wholeness. The greatest limitation in complete societal transformation is the variability of individuals’ readiness for healing; the presented framework aspires to hold room for individuals to engage in the transformation and healing of their suffering and to enable cultivation of the capacity to support healing of others.
I invite you first to look deeply within your personal narrative to see where you have been touched by conflict and to understand the nuances and complexities of your power role in relation to that conflict. For those of us who are drawn to issues of social justice or who are quick to condemn the actions of another as unjust, we must be diligent not to pass over the invitation to understand our power roles and our passive participation in conflict within our own lives, in our community, and in the world. While it may be easy to identify a relationship with the oppressed/victim or to see someone else’s injustice, we may have difficulty to see how we have and do benefit from oppression of others.
Yet until we can fully embrace the truth of our wholeness, we may have difficulty gaining the trust of those who have been oppressed. For if we hasten to challenge injustice, we bring our blindness, (we do not see ourselves in wholeness), deafness (we do not hear because we do not ask/listen) and arrogance (we ignore guidance from those we claim to help because we know better). Masked by our good intentions, we may recommit the problems of the past as our actions contradict our stated intentions. Our actions, motivated by an unhealed state, are like shooting arrows at those we claims to defend.
To begin we use this framework to identify our passive participation in conflict or oppression within our family’s experience. Most of us can directly connect to a war or major conflict within 2-3 generations. We can look deeply and use awareness from meditation to see the habitual responses and patterns within ourselves and our families. We may heal the experience using some of the practice strategies outlined and we may transform the experience by cultivating awareness of our power, cultivating the capacity to share the power we have with others, and learning how to use the remaining power well. [2]
My experience looking deeply at my relationship to conflict, my family’s historical relationship to war/conflict, and my relationship to power past and present led to this framework. Cycling through this framework and healing unconscious emotional responses has enabled me to begin to cultivate wholeness, to heal injuries from passive participation in conflict, and to transform my experience by learning to consciously use the power I have to allow collective wholeness to flourish in our interconnected world.
My goal is to promote dialogue about how we may approach healing conflict in our selves and in society in a way that includes diverse experiences and promotes transformative healing for our collective benefit. My interest in alternative strategies for healing resulted from the observation that in the face of injustice, people have vastly different needs to restore a sense of wholeness and to experience a sense of safety, security, justice, peace, healing, and hope.
It is my hope that if we develop concrete ways to examine and heal our experience, we may build a just and inclusive society by becoming the change we want to see in the world. In reclaiming wholeness, we may fully share the gifts of our precious life and the capacity for collaborative, inclusive problem solving that will promote social change.[3]
[1] For thoughtful consideration of identity and perspectives on transcending identity based violence: Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence, W.W. Norton & Co Press, 2006.
[2] Books on using one’s power well are abundant. Recommended titles: Thich Nhat Hanh, Interbeing, Parallax Press; Thich Nhat Hanh, For a Future to be Possible, Parralax Press; John O’Neill, Leadership Aikido, Three Rivers Press, 1997; Dalai Lama, Kindness, Clarity, and Insight, Snow Lion Press, 1988; Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Parallax Press; Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power, Harper Collins, 2007; Wayne Dyer, Power of Intention, Hay House Press, 2004.
[3] See also. Mind the Gaps.
We all have the opportunity to deepen our awareness and heal injuries from passive participation in conflict. We will not consider our roles as passive participants in order to become invested in the roles or our identities,[1] nor to become trapped by the experience we discover on whatever side of injustice we find ourselves in the past or present. Our purpose is to see how our passive participation in conflict based upon power differences begets suffering. Ultimately we aim to transform this suffering and reclaim wholeness.
The readiness of an individual to heal aligns poorly with remedies for redress and it often comes long after suffering has been transmit to another generation. This scheme invites individuals who are ready to identify and heal their passive participation in conflict with the hope that increased consciousness may end unconscious transmission of suffering.
It is my hope that when you are ready, you will begin working with this framework in order to reclaim wholeness. The greatest limitation in complete societal transformation is the variability of individuals’ readiness for healing; the presented framework aspires to hold room for individuals to engage in the transformation and healing of their suffering and to enable cultivation of the capacity to support healing of others.
I invite you first to look deeply within your personal narrative to see where you have been touched by conflict and to understand the nuances and complexities of your power role in relation to that conflict. For those of us who are drawn to issues of social justice or who are quick to condemn the actions of another as unjust, we must be diligent not to pass over the invitation to understand our power roles and our passive participation in conflict within our own lives, in our community, and in the world. While it may be easy to identify a relationship with the oppressed/victim or to see someone else’s injustice, we may have difficulty to see how we have and do benefit from oppression of others.
Yet until we can fully embrace the truth of our wholeness, we may have difficulty gaining the trust of those who have been oppressed. For if we hasten to challenge injustice, we bring our blindness, (we do not see ourselves in wholeness), deafness (we do not hear because we do not ask/listen) and arrogance (we ignore guidance from those we claim to help because we know better). Masked by our good intentions, we may recommit the problems of the past as our actions contradict our stated intentions. Our actions, motivated by an unhealed state, are like shooting arrows at those we claims to defend.
To begin we use this framework to identify our passive participation in conflict or oppression within our family’s experience. Most of us can directly connect to a war or major conflict within 2-3 generations. We can look deeply and use awareness from meditation to see the habitual responses and patterns within ourselves and our families. We may heal the experience using some of the practice strategies outlined and we may transform the experience by cultivating awareness of our power, cultivating the capacity to share the power we have with others, and learning how to use the remaining power well. [2]
My experience looking deeply at my relationship to conflict, my family’s historical relationship to war/conflict, and my relationship to power past and present led to this framework. Cycling through this framework and healing unconscious emotional responses has enabled me to begin to cultivate wholeness, to heal injuries from passive participation in conflict, and to transform my experience by learning to consciously use the power I have to allow collective wholeness to flourish in our interconnected world.
My goal is to promote dialogue about how we may approach healing conflict in our selves and in society in a way that includes diverse experiences and promotes transformative healing for our collective benefit. My interest in alternative strategies for healing resulted from the observation that in the face of injustice, people have vastly different needs to restore a sense of wholeness and to experience a sense of safety, security, justice, peace, healing, and hope.
It is my hope that if we develop concrete ways to examine and heal our experience, we may build a just and inclusive society by becoming the change we want to see in the world. In reclaiming wholeness, we may fully share the gifts of our precious life and the capacity for collaborative, inclusive problem solving that will promote social change.[3]
[1] For thoughtful consideration of identity and perspectives on transcending identity based violence: Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence, W.W. Norton & Co Press, 2006.
[2] Books on using one’s power well are abundant. Recommended titles: Thich Nhat Hanh, Interbeing, Parallax Press; Thich Nhat Hanh, For a Future to be Possible, Parralax Press; John O’Neill, Leadership Aikido, Three Rivers Press, 1997; Dalai Lama, Kindness, Clarity, and Insight, Snow Lion Press, 1988; Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Parallax Press; Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power, Harper Collins, 2007; Wayne Dyer, Power of Intention, Hay House Press, 2004.
[3] See also. Mind the Gaps.