As we move into a new sustainable world, it is important to note that it will be a new kind of society, one that will be defined by greater interaction and connected community, even as everyone will be sovereign and authentically self-actualized.  If everyone is going to be living their highest expression, we are going to have to learn to get-along with each other in ways that we do not today.  When we disagree today, we tend to group with like others in to camps and vilify those with which we disagree.  If societal stress is high then violence ensues and intolerance becomes the norm.  Current politics and societal norms are predicated on the idea of making a population fit a norm of mediocrity to crush creativity and thereby be compliant to hierarchical control. 

Chaos and hate are great tools for hierarchies to use when controlling society.  As such negative conflict defines our lives.  We want to thrive, but only the lucky ones manage to find themselves in limited financial freedom, the rest struggle within growing economic hardships and little real relief in sight as economic and societal chaos grow    Making us feel like victims is the way the hierarchy diminishes our inner power.  If this sounds like a dystopian novel, think again.  It describes the current situations that most people in the world now find themselves.  The large middle classes that arose during the heyday of the 1960s have been eroding every more rapidly since the 1980s as global wealth has siphoned up to a every smaller number of financial elites.      

I don’t want to sound like some religious catastrophist stood on a soapbox proclaiming “Repent for the End is Nigh,” but I will say, that ‘Big Change is Coming’ and we all need to prepare to live well with each other and the natural world to thrive.  I read this the other day and think it says it all quite succinctly, “I don’t know who needs to hear this but the best environments to thrive in will fill you with peace and love not chaos and hate.”  Peace and Love will create a sustainable world, especially if we start to use conflict as a positive tool for grow and thrive.  We are the ones we are waiting for and we have to take responsibility in co-creating the sustainability revolution with each other.  And that will require truly listening and allowing everyone to thrive individually even as the community thrives as a whole.    

Thriving means leaving violence behind, and that means learning to respond with empathy and compassion instead of reacting when our mental triggers are pushed.  That means to see the world differently from the conditioned way we ‘think’ it is.  Step one: recognize when you are triggered by anything.  Being triggered means your unconscious baggage is being accessed, and that is always from past experiences being used to ‘predict’ the next experience. For example, I was emotionally hurt the last time someone said something like that to me and I know I will be hurt again is not a great way to live, and certainly not if it triggers any violence of any kind.  So, our second step is to defuse any emotional reaction as or even before it occurs.  Emotions are great psychological tools we need, but consciously understood not unconsciously acted upon.    

While there are many psychological tools available to deal with negative conflict, I have found that self-help guru, Heather Plett’s, term, ‘Holding Space’ as an easy way to work positively with people to avoid violence and misunderstanding.   Psychotherapist Gary Drevitch, sums it up as follows: “Holding space is the backbone of supportive relationships and bridges the gap between two people, especially when one person is in distress” or adversarial within a relationship.     

Plett describes holding space as “being willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on, without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome.” Holding space refers to the act of being fully present with someone else, without judgment or distraction, so that the person can share their experiences and perspective. This looks like creating a safe, accepting environment, engaging in attentive and empathic listening, and offering non-judgmental support. Research shows that holding space can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance relationships, and improve mental health and well-being.  It means effectively getting past the conditioning!

We are so stuck within our heads and all the mind-chatter every second, very few of us stop to consider where our beliefs originate and how we become so attached to ideologies that originated outside of ourselves.  Our possibilities become restricted to what we ‘know’ from a very limited view of seeing the world.  We see only what we expect to see until we train ourselves to see otherwise.  Watch this short video as an example of how we lose much information about our world based on what we focus and what we place our attention upon.    

And that attention effect is how the hierarchy has misdirected our thinking of thousands of years.  Real life usually doesn’t come with the option to replay, except in our memories.  So, how effective are our memories at capturing what really happened?  We become so absolute about what we know and think is ‘right’ that we do not stop to consider for a moment that the other person may also be ‘right’ as well – it’s all about perspective.  In this modern world that lives through worldviews predicated on scientific-materialism, we have lost sense of the sacred, the subtle, and the interior nature of ourselves. Naturally, this affects mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health and how we make decisions every minute of the waking day.   Recognizing conflict in all its forms helps us move forward in connecting with each other.  Even righteous anger can be a negative form of conflict.  I have been looking at various social and environmental justice movements and despite their good intentions they are rooted in negative conflict, i.e., getting even or trying to force the oppressors to make amends by forcing idea of struggle and victimhood as part of their agendas.  Essentially it becomes change rooted ideological fervor and not change rooted in Love, compassion, forgiveness and unity.  As a saying about vengeance states, ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’    Most of us go from one unconscious reaction to another rarely knowing what is really going on with our lives.  Fear is rarely a choice because it is an autonomic response of the brain.  Anxiety is fear unattached to anything real, except our anticipation of feared futures – suffering is fear anticipation of something to come.   Fighting for peace is a major oxymoron if I ever heard one.  War versus war is still war.  War always leads to trauma with even more conflict, anger, fear, lack and hopelessness.  No war brings peace, love, and compassion in all our lives.  Our thoughts, intentions, and actions affect the whole human collective.  The simple yet elegant beauty of learning to deal with conflict as a positive resource leads to harmony, cooperation, and deep connection to spirit and heart centered consciousness.  That is truly a choice worth making.    There is a spiritual maxim that whatever you put out you get back (eventually if not immediately).  Yes, we can have differing opinions and ways of thinking and we can all agree to disagree a lot of the time.  That is what personal sovereignty is about.  Indeed, the amazing diversity of thinking is our great strength.  By accepting diversity in all its forms and listening, we change conflict from a negative to a positive and then listening, really listening, to each other leads to fruitful discussion and creative solutions.    Our greatest challenge is believing that we can make these choices.  Before male paternalism took hold some 5-6 millennia ago, we had a world that was much more harmonious.  That kind of control is falling away at this time despite what the mainstream media may make it seem like is happening.  What we do next is up to us.  If we continue to give away our power to the hierarchy, we will not like the new world they have instore for us.  Love is an unparalleled force of good.  We empower ourselves by learning to respond with compassion, kindness and eventually unconditional Love using an innate sense of wisdom about what is right and what doesn’t work, instead of using millennia old conditioned reactions.  A sustainability revolution is here, but before we focus on getting the technologies right, we must get our mindsets right first.  How it progresses is up to every one of us.