Conflict is contact.
Times of great change can bring forth confusion, tension, heightened emotions – the breeding ground for conflict. Which is not necessarily something to fear or even avoid. Not the conflict is the problem, but the possible anticipated rupture. The feared cut, the slow thinning out of the thread that ties/d us together. The loosening of the web of connection, of relation.
But I believe we are missing the point. For me, it is not about well-behaved harmony, a peace constructed, protected and cherished externally like a fragile house of cards. The praise and false security of instability - when it is quite literally more about comfort & immobility.
When it seems not so much about truly being at ease within ourselves and between each other, but about playing cool in hell. Having our tongues tied to the roof of our heads because we fear our own power, the sharp sword of our truth. Swallowing our words of holy rage and powerful anger, of bitter deceit and honest hurting; for the illusionary sake of “togetherness”.
Which itself is to be questioned if you can not be with each other in your truest expression, in your confused vulnerability, shaking and trying to find a common stable ground…
Not the confrontation is the problem but our reaction to it, our reflection and our integration. Our respons-ability, the capacity to meet ourselves and each other in a moment of triggered emotions, clashing opinions, hurt egos or hissing dismantled wounded parts, masks & personas.
The goal is to not take the open space of conflict as a war zone and a vacuum of lashing out at each other everything that we have stuffed down within ourselves – to spit at the other what we can not accept and do not want to hear (about) ourselves. Let us not forget that what irritates us most in others can lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Conflict is a fragile, but clear mirror.
Generally, conflict means being in the present: It is an urgent matter to be acted upon in the now.
The question is : What can the conflict point out to? In us, around us, between us?Acknowledging that (e)motions/feelings are the trigger and often the origin, but also a barrier to true understanding & connection.
The voice of conflict is: „Can you make me feel safe?“
Does the conflict point out to conflict with oneself’s own history?
The conflict is not with or outside of you, you end the conflict.
You trying to resolve the conflict outside is an avoidance of facing the conflict that you are within. Endless stable harmony is a dangerous illusion.
A bubble of comfort that keeps us a stagnant polluted water, not a flowing clean river of life.
The conflict asks: Am I open for life to change fundamentally?
Or do I intend to keep my own sense of safety; to have the least „loss“?
How to be aware of your own projections but also make the other aware of their image/perception, without attacking them?
Ask yourself: Is the background to the situation possibly more important than the situation/confrontation itself? Are emotions or rationality ruling the discourse?
Can you see that hurt people hurt people - that every perpetrator is to some degree a victim in another dynamic? Adopting a different perspective on the present “drama triangle” can help us step out of or above the conflict in order to not perpetuate the fight/aggression.
How do you resolve an emotionally loaded conflict? How do you even define the resolution of a conflict? Is there such a thing as a bad conflict, compared to a productive, „good“ conflict? Is it about a constructive compromise, coming back to resonance, or simply the regulation of triggered emotions?
Do you want to go back to the state before the conflict or actually go higher/deeper?
Biological and evolutionary programming molds us to feel or be confident in homogenity. Are we dependent on familiarity? Is addiction to harmony not simply a way to keep us small and adapted?
Creative and compassionate, conscious conflict is a process of creation.
Just like discomfort is the pathway to growth, these confrontations make us clarify within and without where there is tension. Where there is things unsaid, to be addressed, to be changed, to be transformed, to be torn down and rebuilt. The question then is: How does one just be with the experience of conflict without any attachment to what it means (instead of what is)? How to let go of the fear and come to the open appreciation of the unknown and new. To focus on the potential instead of the challenge. Shifting your awareness from what might be lost to what can be gained.
Can conflict find its own voice?
It might already have its own driving force in the start of its coming into being - but the integration needs an awareness of our own (hi)story.
A consciousness of shadows, wounds, desires, values and vision.
A clear communication, not against the other, but for ourselves.
Are you able and willing to let go of the story? Or to commit to at least not adding more to the already loaded personal level?
Factually not knowing what the one truth is: How far are you willing to go for it? What is the worth of a won fight you do not know the real reason for/behind it?
And one question that sits with me since I started writing this: Do we fear conflict because it is a threat to our integrity? Or, more bluntly put… because we fear it might expose our lack of integrity? Because it mirrors on the outside a war we are leading between the different parts & voices within ourselves?
I am dedicated to ask these questions; and let life reflect the answers back to me.
Conflict is contact, life is dialogue.
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung