Tag: Division

Unlearning Our Divisions

Happiness, Leadership, Relationships, Success

We are born into this world without prejudice, without judgement, without hate. We are born one with the human race. We learn to name things and catogerise things and to say what is good and what is bad and who are good and who are bad. We sort the world into this and that, us and them. These are divisions, whether they are small or big, and at the heart of every division is a conflict. Two opposing things set apart by the way we think about them. To understand our place in the world we go through this process of organising everything into divisions, this is natural and necessary.

However, the challenge is to discern one thing from another without having prejudice and judgement of others to cloud our view of the world. To pre-judge or to have prejudice is to assume things about a certain thing or person based on how we have categorised them. It has little to do with them. We think they are this and they are that. Often this way of thinking is passed down from generation to generation and we have whole communities that are in conflict with each other because of what they are told about each other.

To break out of such thinking, when all around us our loved ones think in this way, is very difficult. However, the task of unlearning these divisions is essential in order to live a peaceful and happy life, which is the purpose of a spiritual practice. It is the deliberate practice of dissolving divisions, the end result of which is wisdom.

We Are All Connected

Happiness, Relationships, Success

“The energy you use to get a drink of water comes from sunshine working its way up to you through the food chain – in a real sense, light lifts the cup to your lips. The apparent wall between your body and the world is more like a picket fence.” (Page 27, Buddha’s Brain, The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom by Rick Hanson, PH.D. and Richard Mendius, MD)

I have long pondered the connectivity of us and our world/universe. From the energy we need to live coming from our Sun to the elements that make up us and our planet being forged in a long dead sun to the interwoven weather systems and ecosystems across our planet to the interwoven cultures that mingle through the immigration of people and ideas; we are very much connected. That being said we often get in our own way by demanding independence from others and seeing other people as different and strange.

You could say that all divisions are created by ourselves through a process of trying to understand the world in which we move and education systems that classify and categorise things. Much needs to be unlearned in order to reduce division in the world. Unlearning our learned divisions is the work of the wise; the work coming first and the wisdom follows. It is up to each of us to choose how we see ourselves and how we see others, the future of our collective world depends on this choice that we each must make.

The Emptiness Of Compassion

Happiness, Health, Relationships

When we think of compassion we think of sympathising with those who are suffering in some way. This relationship with the person who is suffering is one with a them and a me, which has an innate division. In Buddhism compassion is very important, as is the concept of emptiness, which is essentially that all things are empty of labels, characteristics and preferences, to put it simply.

Compassion, in its best form, is one where there is no division between yourself and others; there is an innate unity. This would mean that the compassion you feel is for the suffering of another living being and the wish to end this suffering, because you see no difference between them and you. This is the kind of compassion I would advocate for, the kind that has no divisions, only an understanding of the suffering of others and the wish to end it.

Working Better Together

Happiness, Relationships, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When we look at the world, our experiences and our relationships with a strong sense of Self, then we set up an us and a them automatically. When we hold our sense of Self up with pride at what we have done or what we know or who we know or whatever, we create further division.

If we can reduce our sense of Self, even to a level where we see ourselves as equal to others, we can live a more harmonious life. The eastern idea of there being no Self can be hard to agree with or even understand, but it is clear that a strong sense of Self causes problems.

Trying to think in terms of everyone being like brothers and sisters, much like many native peoples do, then we can cooperate more and develop wonderful, supportive relationships, and make the world a better place to be. The aim is to move from division to unity by getting ourselves out of the way.

Making Positive Change

Happiness, Relationships, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

What we do and what we say shapes the world we live in. Through our interactions we co-create our relationships, which in turn creates our society, which in turn creates our nations and our cultures. How we choose to live our lives will influence everything else, even if just a little.

What we need is a harmony revolution, because the only sensible way to counteract division in our own lives is to bring people together in harmony. By harmony I mean, to use a metaphor, the bringing together of very different instruments into an orchestra to create beautiful music. When we come together as human beings and we share what makes us unique, then we can collaborate, cooperate, and co-create. We can make the world a better place to be.

What Should We Unlearn?

Happiness

Our reality is largely what we are told that it is, from the explanations and examples of our parents to the education we receive to the religion or lack of religion that we follow. Our starting point for understanding our place in the world, or the universe, is received from other people.

It is only later in life, as our childhood becomes adulthood that we really start to question the foundations of understanding that we have been taught. Some understandings, particularly religious ones, it seems, can last a lifetime without being questioned.

There are many understandings of things, both religious and non-religious, that create divisions, which are further worsened by seeing a them and an us. More and more I am starting to believe that there are no divisions or categories or labels except the ones we create to understand the world and the universe, to give us a framework from which to go about our daily lives.

Don’t get me wrong, without such things we would not have science or medicine or a great many other things, but there is much, I think, that we have to unlearn about how we see each other and our place in the grand scheme of things.

Inner And Outer Circles

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Leadership

In the business world there is often what is referred to as an inner circle, a group of high ranking colleagues who have their own circle that the majority are kept out of. There are also examples of inner circles in other types of organisation too.

The problem with inner circles is that they create a division that casts everyone as lesser or below those in the inner circle. I guess you could say that everyone else is in the outer circle.

Any division creates conflict and there is an us and a them. Within an organisation if there is division within it, hopes of working together are reduced. The idea of a circle is a positive one though, what matters is how many people are included within it. It is better to be inclusive than exclusive. The more we include the better our society will be.

Divisions Create Conflict

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

There are many divisions in our lives and this week, more than most, we turn our attention to them. On Thursday it will be 11th November, the date the First World War ended and peace was declared. On Sunday churches around the country will be holding Remembrance Services.

World Wars, and armed conflict of any kind are horrific in their nature and take a toll on humanity. We also have smaller more personal conflicts in our own lives which are born out of division. Any time there is an Us and a Them there is a division and there is some form of conflict in every division.

During this time of Remembrance let us strive to heal the divisions in our lives by removing the need for a Them and including everyone as Us. When we see people as human first we are better able to use empathy and resolve issues.

When Nelson Mandela came out of prison where he spent 27 years of his life he realised that if he continued to hate those he incarcerated him he would never be free. He later led his country, as President, to forgive and heal after the atrocities of Apartheid. He was a remarkable man, but we can each try to heal the divisions in our lives and use examples like Nelson Mandela as a beacon of hope, hope that it can be done.

Brexit: Them and Us

Happiness, Leadership, Success

“Not one of us can rest, be happy, be at home, be at peace with ourselves, until we end hatred and division.”

– John Lewis

Them and Us

We have officially left the EU and have become an island unto ourselves. Times they are a changing, as the song goes, and it is important to reflect on the consequences of this change. There are two other growing parallel changes in the world as we move forward into the 21st century. Over the past few years, there has been a resurgence of nationalism is America and in countries across Europe, including the United Kingdom. Our departure from the EU has elevated the idea of ‘Britain First’ from the small conversations of the few into a more national conversation. You may have voted to remain or to leave the EU, you may now wish you had voted differently. Either way, we must be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking we are above or better than the countries of Europe, just because we say we are.

There has also been a rise in those who wish to protect our planet from the global, environmental crisis, which is becoming a movement that spans the world. This is being led by our youth, the ones who will be living in the world to come. They are trying to save their future, as the adults of the world appear to be trying to save their own national and personal priorities. Our strengths are always evident when we come together to achieve great things. Our weaknesses are evident when we separate into factions and try to take care only of our own.

Tribes

There is something inside human beings that pushes us towards trying to belong to a group. Wanting to belong to a group is a drive that is part of our evolution. In caveman times, it was safer to be in a group of people who would look out for our wellbeing; that would keep watch while we slept and would catch food so that everyone in the group could eat. Being part of a group, or a tribe, is a very human thing to do, and most of the time there is nothing wrong with this.

We support football teams, we belong to congregations, we are identified by the country in which we were born, the religion we follow, the ethnic roots we have. It is normal and adds to the variety of our communities and gives the individual, whether child or adult, a sense of not only safety, but also an understanding of themselves. However, what we need to be careful of is other people hijacking our drive to belong to a group, by setting us against people who belong to other groups. This is when we have real division, which then breads conflict. This happens in many places in the different areas of our lives; in the workplace, in schools, in social groups and in families.

Conflict On Demand

This is where division comes from, the dividing up of them and us. It happens with small groups of people and with countries, it happens with religions and with ethnicities, it happens between popular people and those who are not popular. We are fed conflict as entertainment, whether it is in the Big Brother house or characters in a soap opera, there is a pervasive message in modern culture that conflict between individuals or groups of people is entertaining.

If you think about the plays of Shakespeare, blockbuster films and programs on TV, there is very little that does not have a strong element of conflict. It would seem that there is a human desire to experience conflict, but when this spills out into our lives and we argue with other people, when we try to dominate other people or we create division between other people, this is when our actions and words bring conflict into the world.

The tensions and conflicts around the world, pose complex issues steeped in a human history of conflict across both national and religious lines, including the Crusades, the World Wars and the so-called War on Terror. What we need is exceptional leadership to guide us out of the darkness into the light. But that leaves people like you and me with a problem, what can we do to stem the flow towards division and conflict.

What Can We Do?

Well, what we do and what we say shapes the world we live in. Through our interactions we co-create our relationships, which in turn creates our society, which in turn creates our nations and our cultures. How we choose to live our lives will influence everything else, even if just a little.

What we need is a harmony revolution, because the only sensible way to counteract division in our own lives is to bring people together in harmony. By harmony I mean, to use a metaphor, the bringing together of very different instruments into an orchestra to create beautiful music. When we come together as human beings and we share what makes us unique, then we can collaborate, cooperate, and co-create. We can make the world a better place to be.

Often the best way to stop others trying to create an argument with us, or fight with us, on an individual level, is to not participate in the conflict, because then it fizzles out. If a fire has no fuel it will go out. A conflict needs two participating sides, if one side comes to the situation with peace, compassion and forgiveness, then healing can take place, because every attempt to create conflict does wound the other person, but if they do not retaliate then healing and harmony is possible. And when this happens, both sides are healed.

Those who are the angriest are the ones who suffer the most, because to be angry is to suffer. The best way to respond to anger is with compassion, because they are suffering, and compassion can extinguish anger. Nelson Mandela taught the world that forgiveness can free the soul and can break the cycle of fear and violence that can seem inescapable. There are inspirations in our global culture that lead us towards the light of freedom, forgiveness, compassion and love.

Healing Ourselves First

The words of the 1991 song by Micheal Jackson, Heal the World come to mind, “Heal The World, Make It A Better Place, For You And For Me, And The Entire Human Race.” And I believe that we can heal the world, one human interaction at a time, but we must start with ourselves. If we heal the divisions within ourselves; the prejudices and the grudges, we are more able to heal the divisions between ourselves and those in our lives.

I am not in any way negating the realities of the challenging daily lives in which we live. I am not assuming a totally peaceful Utopian ideal world is at our fingers tips either, but if each of us, in our own way, considers small ways in which we can connect more with our friends and families, neighbours and work colleagues on a more human level, this would be a great start. Taking the time, when possible, to make perhaps a bit more of an effort in ways that you may already be doing, to chat and ask after each other’s wellbeing, share a story or a joke. Our children and others will see this and perhaps change their own behaviour for the better.

Even though it seems such a small thing to do, there is evidence of efforts of this kind having a genuinely positive effect on those doing this and on those around them. So, I ask of you, in your own way, to have a think about what you can do, and what you may have thought about doing, along these lines, but have not done yet, because for one reason or another you just haven’t. Make that call to that friend or relative, knock on that door. Lift your head and give a sign of greeting and even stop for a quick chat with that neighbour or colleague at work. Connect with your eyes, words and smiles. Chances are the world will start smiling back at you a lot more often too.

Fearlessness is a dangerous road

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

– Nelson Mandela

 

Fearlessness

In our culture today there is a great emphasis on the need to be fearless. It is found in common turns of phrase, the media. It is also found in advertising, whether it be men’s aftershave or energy drinks, the word ‘fearless’ is banded around as if it was held at the same level as integrity or fortitude. I think we are mistaking being fearless with having courage, and they are not the same thing. The problem with being fearless that it encourages us to mask or block out our emotions and to discount our very natural physical responses to danger and stress, responses that have developed throughout the evolution of human beings in order to keep us safe.

If we were truly fearless then we would have no fear of running in front of a car or train, or skydiving without a parachute. These are extreme example, but this is the point, to be fearless means that there is less preventing us from going too far and putting ourselves  and others in danger. It would be profoundly stupid to skydive without a parachute, and our intellect and experience would tell us that this would not be a good idea. However, there are situations that have unknown aspects and if we leap without looking, without consulting our intelligence, our experience and our capacity for rational thought then we do not know if we are putting ourselves in danger. A balance is needed.

The other extreme is to be so paralysed by anxiety that we do not try anything new and we retreat into our selves, even becoming housebound by our anxiety. I have had my own challenges with anxiety, that caused me to have pain in my chest and my hands to shake when in certain circumstances. This is not a good place to be, to put it mildly. As I have worked through the roots of my anxiety and developed strategies to reduce it, I have found a profound truth about fear that can put us on a more even keel. Fear is an essential part of our defense mechanism, it is integral to our survival, but it is supposed to appear when we are in danger and then dissipate when the danger has gone. To use a well worn example, if our cave man ancestors mistook a rock for a tiger in the long grass, causing then to run fast in the other direction, they would be safe. If they mistook a tiger for a rock and didn’t run, then they would have been the tiger’s lunch.

Finding A Better Path

Some of this is obvious to point out, but I feel in a climate and culture where being fearless is seen as a lordable quality, especially in men, then I think the obvious truth of the situation needs to be pointed out. We should not be pushed into either being fearless or to living with anxiety, a middle road is needed. There is one quality that I feel should be the focus of our intention in life, and that it the quality of courage.

Courage is not the same as being fearless, it is in fact acting in a positive way in spite of fear. It is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. As Nelson Mandela tells us “…courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” This of course needs to be reserved for situations that are not life threatening. We are are not, after all, talking about being a soldier or anything like that. I am talking about having the courage to go to job interviews, to tell someone that we love them, to stand up to those who bully us, to stand up for what we think is right, to follow our dreams, to try and improve our skill-set. All of these things are about living a fully, deeper life.

I do think that it is important to try new things and to push past our current limitations, to grow and improve our skill-set, especially in our careers. To live at the edge of our skill-set is a very courageous thing to do. There is also a very important reason we should try and get very familiar with the things that scare us in life. If we run from the things that scare us then we internally harden our hearts. We close down our compassion and we restrict our love. We close ourselves off from having meaningful, deep relationships with people. The people we care about becomes limited to family, friends and those who share our beliefs and values. We become tribal and divided, we get aggressive,  even violent in extreme cases. We become part of the problem that divides up the world into us and them.

If we can extend our compassion to include others we disagree with, those who look different from us, even those who treat us badly, then the world will be better for it. Be warned though, it take courage to love your enemies, but if you can do it, then you will have no enemies.

Something to reflect on:

If you can get familiar with the things that scare you, and have the courage to live there, then the fear will dissolve and you will be stronger for it.

Choosing unity or division

Happiness

“The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.”

– W. Somerset Maugham

In many areas of our lives there are divisions; between the good and the evil, the reds and the blues, parents and children, the religious and non-religious, the rich and the poor, one religion and another, one political party and another, and many more, but there are also those who strive towards unity, towards the acceptance of and respect for others. However, even with such people in the world our society is divided, in many ways. There is a lot of them and us mentality about, which makes any effort towards unity and acceptance very important, in my view. What often gets in the way of working towards unity is the human need to belong to groups. Belonging to any group automatically creates them and a us situation, which creates a division, whether small or large.

Belonging To Groups

So, what is it that makes us want to belong to a group? It happens in all walks of life, all ages, all genders.  Whatever country we were born in, or religion we were born into, this too is part of our identity, whether we have left them behind or not. And I do think that we need to belong somewhere in order to fill in a piece of who we are. This could be a hobby, a football team, a religion; whatever group we choose to join the group becomes part of who we are. It tells ourselves and others that we are sporty or religious, or whatever, which is part of why, I think, we are drawn towards belonging to groups.

However, if we don’t conform to any of societies accepted groups, then we can become outsiders and the need to belong and not being accepted might leave a gap in our sense of self. I suppose whichever side of this division we fall on, whether we belong or we don’t belong, this is also a key part of our identity. Our past also inform our present, it is the context within which we understand our place in the present. Without a history, without a story, I suppose we might not have a sense of self at all.

Our Mythologies

This could be why across all of human culture there are many mythologies, stories that explain how everything came to be. These stories vary across the world, but usually place humankind either as owners or caretakers of the world or as an equal part of it. In the novel Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn, this idea is explained with humankind being labelled as Takers or Leavers. In the novel it is explained that “The premise of the Takers story is ‘the world belongs to man,’…The premise of the Leavers story is ‘man belongs to the world’.” The Takers are those who belong to the cultures of the world who might class themselves as civilized, cultures that try to subdue and control nature. Leavers are those who belong to the indigenous cultures of the world like Native American Indians and Australian Aborigines for example, that try to live in harmony with the world.

These cultural stories, these mythologies, can be a significant part of our lives, explaining how everything that exists came to be, and most importantly where we fit into the grand scheme of things. Some cultures, especially in what we call the West, are becoming secular, and our secular societies have their own story given to us by Science. This story is constantly evolving, as new discoveries are made about the world and the universe in particular, but the story still puts human beings at the top of the pecking order, so to speak, creating a division between human beings and the world.

But what of the “Leavers” in our current world? I have heard it said that Native American Indians see all living creatures as their brothers and sisters, the birds in the air, the fish in the rivers and the animals on the land are all family. All life in this regard is a family community, in need of each other. I think a lot can be learned from these indigenous people. They have a lot of wisdom that we can all benefit from, if we can see past our own cultural mythology and understand the cultural mythology of another.

“At the heart of every division is a conflict, created by the division itself.”

 

Generally, in our civilisation we have come to regard the world as something to be conquered, something to own. Animals being there for us to eat and hunt and breed. This is, generally, our way of seeing things. It is a perspective shared by many people around the world. Yet, dividing ourselves from anything, I think, causes more problems than it solves. At the heart of every division is a conflict, created by the division itself. The moment a division is created there is an us and a them, whichever side you are on.

Do our groups define us?

Problems occur when we see the groups we divide ourselves into as what defines us, rather than our own personal perspectives. We put our faith in the mythology, in the story that is told by our group, this then separates us from others. Even seeing ourselves as human separates us from the rest of the natural world. This “primary boundary,” as Ken Wilber puts it in his book No Boundary, is, according to him, “…that split between the seer and the seen, the knower and the known, the subject and the object. And once this primary boundary occurs, a chain of inevitable consequences follows. A host of other boundaries ensue, each being built upon its predecessor; the various levels of the spectrum exfoliate; the world as we collectively know it leaps into existence; and we become lost, amazed and enchanted, distracted and complexed, loving and loathing our universe of opposites.”

The main point that Ken Wilber makes in this book is that all boundaries are created by ourselves, in order to make sense of the world. But if these boundaries only exist in our minds, if they truly are our collective view of existence, of the world, then surely we can change how we see the world, change how we see others. We can start to see the good in others, to be grateful for their kindness, to see them as equals in this complex and beautiful world in which we live. This is no small task however, given that we have spent our whole lives learning to see the world as we do. We are very good, on the whole, at community spirit, what we need to do is make our communities bigger than our religion, our town and our country. We need to connect to those outside of the groups that we belong to. Our community is our world; it’s up to us how big that world is going to be.