Hello Friends,
🦸♀️🦸🏾🦸🏼♂️🦸🏽♀️🦸🏿🦸🏽♂️
I read the news this week.
In a newsletter about meaning and purpose and community, I can’t write about anything else.
Conflict. It’s the air we breathe.
After studying with international conflict mediator Ken Cloke, I now see conflict as an invitation.
Of course we each need to grow in dozens (hundreds?) of ways.
Conflict shows us which of those paths are open to us _right now_.
Conflict is the growth this moment demands.
So when you see people on TV killing children
in retaliation for a massacre of their own children
by men and women who grew up hopelessly caged in fear violence scorn humiliation apartheid etc
by people desperately attempting to escape genocidal mania
What _is_ the invitation, exactly?
I go back to my interview with George Moore last month.
George had various Near-Death Experiences and experienced that infamous Life Review. His judges looked at every action he ever took from a the lens of: “Did you support Love?”
What if that’s the invitation?
Let’s suspend disbelief (just for a moment) and assume we get to a deep and lasting peace in Israel/Palestine 500 years from now. Close your eyes and inhabit that reality for a second. See what changes in your body.
(beat)
Now look back at today and have That 500 Year Self evaluate this week from a lens of:
“Did my actions contribute to this peace?”
What I posted on social media…
The arguments I had…
The things I said…
The messages I forwarded…
The events I attended…
Did my actions open a heart to someone else’s pain?
Or did they permit someone to dig in their heels, stick with their story, and defend the Home Team?
Did my actions help me acknowledge my own role in this violence, did I just blame someone else?
There’s two aspects of this conflict that apply to interactions, relationships, and conflicts in our daily lives:
1) There are no longer good guys and bad guys. Everybody’s shitting the bed. 💩🛌
2) There are no winners and losers. Everybody’s future is dark.
To close, I’ll make it painfully clear: Every time we justify either side’s violence (be it stones, rockets, or oppressive laws) and every time we pretend that the violence is helpful for either side’s future, we are acting in service of more horrific violence, not the 500 year peace.
Yours,
Ank
PPS Here’s a 9m video where Jeff Salzman of the Daily Evolver talks about the different reactions we all have from an Integral lens. I offer it up as a guided meditation. It really helped me.
Ankur Shah Delight: Community and Conflict 