Conflict, Lock and Key

Conflict is like a gate, it is both the opening into the walled off garden of love, and the obstacle which keeps us out.

Which of these it is depends on whether you have the key or not.

Conflict is the smoke that points out the fire - the passion in your life. It also burns your life up with destruction. It depends on whether you know fire-craft or not.

Conflict reveals the hidden truth in both parties, or it broadcasts the lies far and wide. It depends on where you look: inside yourself for truth, or at the other person for blame.

If you avoid conflict, your life shallows out. It becomes calm in appearance it is mirror smooth, but then it just reflects your inner turmoil.

If you become habituated to the anger and blame, your life becomes a series of eruptions punctuated by tense terror, and things just seem to get worse and worse.

There is a third path, where conflict resolves into respectful differences. Sitting quietly, the calm hands you the two keys: the first unlocks your own truth; the second unlocks your curiosity about the other person’s truth.

Mediation Has Ruined Me

I’m finding fewer and fewer good reasons to justify being upset. I still get upset, but I’m noticing that in order to maintain it for any length of time, you have to keep giving yourself a pep talk about how wronged you were; and those talks are seeming less and less convincing to me.

I know most people are really good at those. Some people can take a tiny incident (some incidents are actually so tiny nobody notices it but themselves) and keep cheer-leading their hurt for years, decades!

I think being a mediator has ruined me for upset. Over and over I see people resolving their differences, discovering the moment of misunderstanding, uncovering the positive intention which was missed, letting go of the grudge and finding Love right there underneath.

My grudge-muscle is atrophying. Still all these people around me continue begrudging me and others as if it were normal. Well, it may be normal, but it sure ain’t healthy!

The Edge

Elise and I keep moving our relationship to a further edge. How many times have we gone beyond any known horizon with our truth telling? Those quiet conversations, usually in bed late, late at night, or early, early in the predawn morning.

The foundation of my home, is now, therefore, afloat, way out to sea. Grounded, I am, now in the deep waters of the soul. Mated there, soul-mated. 

I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. This is the closest locale there is to my own true epicenter. It isn’t a place. You can’t get there, the traveling was done in moments of truth-telling, and now the place I live is no longer a place. I live in Elise’s understand of who I am, and she lives in mine.

If she were to die (first - we will die), I think I would be set adrift. The journey would begin to unravel like my other, mundane memories, and I think all I would know is that I am not home, but I would not know how to get there from here. Half of here would be gone.

Strong Feelings

While it is true, according to NVC, that our feelings are created by our needs (not by other people); the sensations that needs create are pretty subtle: warmth, heaviness, weakness, burning; nothing which even rises anywhere near the neighborhood of a toe-jam.

In the ideal case, you'd follow these sensations down to the need, and either experience the satisfaction, or experience the need directly (which inevitably resources you to get it met).

Step 2: Naming the feeling: Instead, we use our brain to come up with a name for that feeling: anger, or hurt or happiness. These names are not created by needs, and they take us one level away from the need itself.

Step 3: Beliefs about the Feeling Name: Many of us have beliefs about these feeling words: "It's dangerous to be angry" or "It's forbidden to be sad" or "I can't control my anger."

Step 4: Feelings as a result of the beliefs: These belief/thoughts often come with very strong feelings: "He had no right to make me angry" or "It's his fault I'm feeling hurt." These feelings about the thoughts about the Names about the sensations caused by our needs are so far away from our needs, they make it nearly impossible to know what we are needing!

And that's why it's so hard to know what you need!