The essence of unravelling conflict is to understand firstly what is REAL. If we don’t understand this principal, then we have no connection and we are in conflict without a capacity to connect. If I see things my way, but I think your reality is not as important as my reality, then we don’t listen and we feel angry when our individual realities are not validated.
For example, if you feel comfortable in your own reality, but the person you live with thinks your reality is stupid, they will want you to change and live by their reality.
Respect for the other person must be deeply felt in order to stay calm. But we must not confuse real connection with a temporary agreement. And if we both agree to disagree, we must both REALLY agree to let the other person be comfortable in their reality. That is the concept of doing what is required for TRUE MEETING. Usually we say “as long as you accept my reality, then I’m prepared to meet you and connect with you”. But that is not connecting, that is bargaining to win.
Understanding the energy of deep connection is important. You can live with someone without feeling connected, ditto in your work environment, or you can have sex with someone without much connection. So you need to do what is required to make the connection work. This connection is more intimate than just physical connection.
First, safety of Love has to be found inside you. Approval from another person is not necessary. When there’s a sense of generosity in your actions, there’s nothing to get because you are safe. But if your heart is not open, you can not meet. People believe you have to agree on everything or have the same ideas in order to begin a good relationship.
In truth, a relationship has to begin from zero all the time, starting from freshness. Otherwise, you are reacting to and relating from a memory of that person, as opposed to the immediate freshness of now. Since REALITY is always fresh in the here & now, your ‘knowledge’ of a person is in the past, by definition. You can never ‘know’ a person, because knowledge is a system of labels, it is not fresh. Love is what makes familiar things look and feel fresh the first time – the thing itself – not the memory of it. The word ‘love’ leads us astray from the real fresh experience of love. The word is a useful convention, but it is not the experience in itself.
In essence, all relationships are ONE continuous, interwoven, infinite process. By social convention this has many names, including The Infinite, God, The Supreme. To help us to explore the components of the ONE continuous, interwoven, infinite process that may also be known as manifestation, we have placed a fine grid over it in order to deconstruct it into billions of components, just to learn more about ourselves. It’s a construct that we created, as though we are separate entities in a hostile environment.
The naming convention begins broadly with animal, mineral and vegetable. Then with some refinement we examine and name smaller and smaller aspects, right down to quantum particles. Our brains produce our experience of the world, as though we are separate entities. But the ONE is everywhere, in everything and everyone. Separation is a conceptual hoax that our mind creates and we believe in it so wholeheartedly that we fail to see separation is just a game for the purpose of understanding. As long as the search goes on, the hoax maintains its camouflage. But for those who recognise the hoax, the search is over. The game continues, but with fresh understanding.
Acting fresh in the now comes by knowing how to surrender the past, to surrender what is in memory. When relationships hurt us, we identify pain with a person even though the pain was probably there before the relationship, so we need to approach the person from a position of surrender – from zero. The end of the conflict is the possibility to say ‘you’re right and I’m right. Just two different perspectives. And I love you”. Drop the need to defend your feelings, drop your belief that your point of view is more valid than another person’s.
A relationship with someone with whom you’re not connecting is not satisfying. It lacks freshness. Freshness is the result of generosity and surrender. Thoughts and memories of the past block that freshness.
Be Yourself is often taken to mean ‘build up your ego into a strong persona’, but if you are truly yourself and authentic in every moment, then be yourself means be real, be truthful, be present, be fresh.
Expressing yourself from ego does not change, it is frozen, so a true meeting can not happen, connection can not happen. But, expressing yourself truthfully changes moment by moment with freshness, like the swirling beauty of a stream.
If you honour your own perspective, if you respect and validate it, then you can let it go, you can surrender it. That’s love. That’s the middle point. It’s where we are alright. Like a bridge where I build the first half, you build the other half and we meet fresh in the middle. My half of the bridge looks different from your half, but we meet in love by accepting and being grateful for the bridge that brings us together.
Conflict is sometimes inevitable, but it’s the attitude that comes afterwards that causes damage, pain, hurt. If you respect your own perspective, you will naturally respect the perspective of others with a clear vision.
A perspective is not REALITY, it’s one of millions of perspectives. It’s valid for you, but it’s not how the other person should be. You do not need to impose it on others. Your need to impose it on others is in direct proportion to your incapacity to accept yourself. If you are confident of your perspective, you don’t need anyone else to approve you.
The first relationship is me with myself. Are we two? No. Me is me, who I AM, who can not be known, always fresh. And myself is IN me, with a set of understandings that produce the outcomes and understandings.
Violence in relationship is not just shouting. Violence is saying to someone: “you should not be like that, you should be different, be more like me”. Violence to the spirit comes if that person believes that statement and tries to change. Then blame happens and you feel that person is hurting you.
You are in a relationship with everyone you know. The relationship with yourself gets purified once you know yourself because you stop fighting against yourself. There are endless ways of rejecting ourselves, but often we are not even aware of them. Once we become aware of it, we see how we were inflicting pain on ourself.
This is why ‘know yourself’ is the primary imperative for peace. Knowing yourself will set your attitude in a different perspective.
Freshness is expansive by comparison to the narrowness of thoughts. When you speak from freshness and act from a place of love, it is totally different.
You only feel trust if you feel safe, so you need to feel safe. This will happen when you feel you are in relationship with ALL, and not a separate entity playing a bit part in someone else’s movie.
Feeling separate makes us struggle with trust. Melting into oneness is the way, surrender to the infinite connection that we truly are. In this context, ‘know yourself’ means union with all that is. This is the beginning of safety. Then trust arises out of being utterly safe. Drop the idea that trust and safety are based on other people having the same ‘right idea’ or ‘right understanding’ as yours.