In the book Building Unity, Paul Werder defines community as “The process of two or more people accepting and transcending their differences, so they can communicate effectively for their common good.”

He describes learning Scott Peck’s model of group maturation which follows these steps (see also the Wikipedia article):

1. pseudocommunity - where people pretend to get along perfectly and cover up differences by acting like they don’t exist.
2. chaos - when pseudocommunity breaks down and people realize they can’t ignore their differences and conflict starts happening in an unproductive way.
3. emptiness - when people learn to empty themselves of their ego-resistance that is getting in the way of community. They give up in some way some part of themselves that is not conducive to community-building (i.e. stubbornness, being right).
4. true community - when people are in real empathy with each other, and there is a sense of mutual respect, acceptance, and working together.

These stages can also be seen in relationships - you meet, you fall in love, but eventually all your “stuff” comes out and you have to deal with it before you can create true acceptance and a real bond.

I’ve also read a study that compared the satisfaction levels among clients who had been in therapy for a period of time. They found that clients reported more satisfaction in cases where some incident had come up that had to be worked through between the client and the therapist themselves.

Successfully working through conflict creates trust and fosters a deeper level of interaction.

Unfortunately, most groups and organizations don’t get past stage 1 pseudocommunity. 

We have a cultural preference (or a cultural problem) of not engaging in any conflict, and it gets in the way of building real relationships with each other.

I’ve noticed that in business, it’s often seen as “not professional” to deal openly with conflict - there is an unspoken ideal that all business be conducted with calmness and any conflict be smoothed over immediately. Consequently, most business is conducted at stage 1, and never gets to the stage of true community.

Many people do not have the skills to enter stage 3 and 4 - or even the awareness that it exists.

Emptying-out is a spiritual process. It goes against our American rugged individualist psyche, which is very ego-centric.

We also just plain don’t have discussions about this sort of thing. Could you imagine how different Congress would be if both Republicans and Democrats had the goal of creating community rather than winning their position? What if your Senator sat down with himself and thought about emptying-out his ego-attachments that were getting in the way of communicating together for the common good?

My prescription: be more willing to engage with each other authentically, and examine your ego-attachments that are at play.

Let’s all create more community. Let’s deal directly with our differences. Let’s look at our stuff. Let’s start creating a culture where we can relate at level 4 much more often.

It’s easy to point at our culture and criticize it (hey, I just did that!), but it comes down to each of us anyway. We could all get better at stages 3 and 4. And the heart of stages 3 and 4 is learning to take responsibility for ourselves and what we truly want.

I recognize in myself a great deal of resistance to community. A lot of it, surprisingly, is a dislike of Stage 1 pseudocommunity. I can’t stand not dealing with things, and I’ve been in the situation where I’m in a group and it goes into stage 2 and then people quickly gloss things over and get us back to stage 1. Most people feel safer and more comfortable there; I often feel uncomfortable and strained.

My ego-emptying right now is to recognize that for some people, conflict has to happen at a calmer pace and tone or they really can’t do it. And that doesn’t mean they don’t want to discuss anything, it just means they get a lot more adrenaline with flat-out conflict. So I need to be mindful of different constitutions and not assume people are superficial and out to judge me when really they just want to take a breath and check in with themselves.

Another emptying-out I am working on is just my abject fear of being rejected and my automatic suppression of my authentic self. It’s subtle and most people wouldn’t even know it was happening, because I tend to be pretty open, but I notice it is still there.

What about you? Do you recognize barriers to community in yourself? What is your experience with building true community?

Tags: big ideas, healing by emma
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If you look at the date on the previous post, or if you have this blog in your feed reader, you’ll notice I haven’t written here in quite a while. Here is what a block feels like: “I just have nothing to say…”. But underneath that silence is a whole lot of stuff. Feelings and beliefs, mostly. And just recently, it’s beginning to unfold.

Here is one thing: I want to write about God.

Not the white-haired-dude-in-the-sky, of course. Rather, the interconnectedness underneath everything, and how to access it and why it matters and what it means, and how a misunderstanding of it leads to crappiness.

All fine and good, but I grew up in a very intellectual home, and “believing in God” just seemed sort of low class. Intelligent, sophisticated people just don’t talk about that sort of thing. If you wanted to do that in the privacy of your own home, fine, but keep it to yourself.

So essentially, I am afraid. I am afraid smart, interesting people will think I am stupid, delusional, need some kind of crutch to get through life, etc. Because that is exactly what I grew up thinking about people who believed in anything.

And when I run across people like this - intelligent, interesting atheists - I feel anxious and want to “convert” them. (I realized this recently, to my chagrin - how crass!) I feel the urge to tell them how I used to think like them, and I was wrong, and I was so close-minded, and I just didn’t understand before, and they are not hearing what I really mean.

And you can imagine how seriously un-fun that conversation would be.

But what I’m realizing is that underneath that anxious desire to convince them that I’m right, I just want validation. I want someone to say “OK, I see why you think that, that makes sense to me”. Because whatever my connection to Spirit was as a kid, it was never, ever validated. Whatever I believed in was squashed, repeatedly and definitively.

For example, when I was very young I believed in Care Bears for awhile — imaginary helpful teddy bears that live in the coulds. And when my brothers went on a trip, they took pictures out of the airplane windows of the clouds to prove me wrong. This was the atmosphere I grew up in. So I want people who are skeptical to believe me so I feel like I’m not crazy. Which I often did, as a kid. So I project a little bit of my family dynamics onto these unwitting strangers, and then try to make the past come out different. And/or, I live in fear of them judging me.

Which, on the whole, is not a great energy with which to approach teaching or writing.

What this points to of course is just another internal area that needs healing, and that’s fine. But I just wanted to come out with it: sometimes this blog scares me shitless and pushes all my buttons.

I feel constantly afraid of being ridiculed, although that has never happened here. I will have recurring thought trains that I ought to be able to justify my thoughts on God with logic and proofs and arguments based on new physics.

But I can’t — I don’t actually know that much about physics, and my connection to the Divine is not logical, it’s intuitive. I can describe the sense it makes to me, but I can’t lead someone from atheism to spiritual connection in a logical argument. And if I could, it would miss the fundamental point: God only matters if you feel that inner connection, and that is between you and whatever you feel is at the heart of things. I don’t know what your path is — it’s yours, and it has to unfold for you.

It’s very hard, when you find a path that leads you to liberation, to not decide it’s the best path for everyone. And this urge is compounded if you have a fear that you are crazy if people don’t agree with you.

For the most part, I’m fine, but devout atheists punch a particular button having to do with my childhood, and that’s what I fear–that someone will come along and trigger the painful feelings of being invalidated so often as a kid, about something that later turned out to be a huge part of who I am and the work I want to do in the world.

So, there it is. Now I can work with it. Hello, fear. =)

Tags: god, healing by emma
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This post is taken partly from my comments on Mark’s post about the bail-out.

Mark expresses a common sentiment along the lines of “I don’t know if our civilization will survive”.

Here’s my take on this, and I apply it both to our US culture and to our global situation:

I tend to take a very long view on our countries economy and structures, and our world’s struggle with environmental pollution.

I think of our country/culture/society, and the world at large in which we have a huge influence, as being in its adolescence. We are growing up…which means learning from our mistakes…which means we will make more, I’m sure.

I see them as part of a much longer/broader cycle. Our country as a whole is struggling to move from anger/blame/finding fault to responsibility and cooperation. So every “crisis” is an opportunity for us to grow, and I have faith that this is happening.

Civilizations mature over long periods of time. So I don’t worry so much about it on a day to day level. I focus more on my own maturity, and developing my own consciousness in order to help and teach etc, to move things along in whatever spheres I have influence in.

Like “Think globally, act locally”, I like to “Think long-term, act day to day”.

Will we survive?

I just have this faith that we will. I act as if we will.

I figure, if we don’t then we don’t, but wondering about it makes me spend energy in worry and hope/doubt, and that creates ineffectiveness.

I have a strong sense of faith that we’ll make it. And a sense that if we don’t commit to making it, if we stay hovering in fear/doubt–that this is part of the problem somehow.

I believe that the very act of having faith in ourselves and humanity given the current situation is a radical act that will help create the future where we do survive, and thrive. Because it seems to me that vision precedes action: you have to believe in something before you act toward it. So I feel that faith in ourselves is, in itself, important to have.

I almost see it as an aspect of growing up and developing maturity and responsibility: you see yourself as capable of taking on the things in your path, as being equal to your life. I see us as equal to our situation. It’s dire, but we can meet it, we will meet it, we are meeting it. Progress is slow in some areas, but it is fast in others, and it will crystallize soon. I have a solid sense in my body that this is true.

And I want to get off the fence with it, come out of the “intellectual skepticism” closet and commit. I think it’s important. I believe in us.

I want to help heal our culture and help it mature; I think one of the key aspects of a healer is that they can see the person they are helping as whole long before the person sees themselves that way. Through the healers eyes, the person begins to be able to see themselves in a new way, and then starts to believe that new things are possible.

They start to believe in themselves because they are believed in. From believing in themselves, they start acting in ways that support their own healing. Vision precedes action.

So what I see is that our culture has all the inner resources and wisdom it needs to heal (just like a person does). And it has the support of its community and the Universe, if it reaches out and asks (just like a person does). And, it has some roadblocks to realizing this (just like a person does). But it still has that potential and I want to have faith in it (like I would a person).

So when I look around, I don’t see signs of doom and reasons to be hopeless. I see a young culture struggling to grow up.  The US was founded on a very strong need to individuate and go our own way. We are still maturing into realizing that now we need to play well with others and what it takes to do that.

I see lots of people in our culture trying to learn just that. I see all the folks looking to the East and other cultures for spiritual understanding. That is happening. And it’s because as the people of our country mature, they realize that there is stuff out there that is wiser than our “rugged individualism” and our love of the marketplace above all else, and they seek it out.

This affects our culture. We are our culture. We are the cells that make up the body of our country, and we are healing ourselves from the inside out, and that will heal our country from the inside out. The idea that culture is created by someone else is bogus. I claim my culture-creating abilities and exercise them. I am blogging, I am creating community, creating art, creating life. So are millions of others.

Our culture is growing and maturing. And I have faith in it.

Tags: big ideas, healing by emma
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I am, in general, a fan of the LOA, but sometimes people use it as a “spiritual bypass” - an attempt to avoid necessary psychological work by escaping into a false spiritualism.

If you have a history of childhood trauma, your brain learned to adapt and cope by finding some mechanism by which to avoid feeling all the feelings that occurred during the trauma - so your little self could survive. It could be one or several of many things - denial, addiction, fantasy, obsession, workaholism, perfectionism, co-dependence, etc.

So it occurs to me that for folks like us, The Secret and the Law of Attraction stuff can be another means of escape. By promising this superwonderland if you just focus hard enough on what you want, and avoid thinking about “negative stuff”, it encourages a tendency that is already ingrained, and unhealthy. It’s exactly the opposite of what is needed for healing. Healing requires the confronting, accepting, re-experiencing, and integrating of the painful “negative” emotions that were repressed - and it will never happen if you are trying to avoid “negative” feelings. They will still be there - and they will run you until you process and heal them.

I think “positive thinking” is helpful - depending on the spirit in which it is done. Affirming ourselves as whole and capable and that we can create healthy and vibrant lives for ourselves is good. It creates positive pathways/habits in our brain to replace the dysfunctional ones. But if I use “positive thinking” to run from or avoid the negative, I won’t heal. Instead, I think what is needed is to create a safe, healthy container within which to embrace and heal the past hurt - and that work will finally heal the wounds and create the lasting wholeness, happiness, and freedom that everyone seeks.

The message of never feel bad again or get everything you want encourages running away - or it can easily be interpreted that way by a brain that wants to or has trained itself to.

Which is not to say that the Law of Attraction isn’t true, or isn’t helpful. Just that the way it is sometimes portrayed won’t really bring happiness if healing is required. First you heal, then you transcend. You can’t transcend what you haven’t healed - it just doesn’t work that way. (And believe me, I’ve tried). Having gone through that merry-go-round a few times, I have developed an appreciation and humility about the power of healing and the lessons that can are learned by walking through the darkness - not trying to run from it, even if you are running towards the light. The darkness will still be there until you face it and integrate the shadow side - i.e. “come to terms with it”.

Good/bad, positive/negative - these are dualistic poles. True peace emerges - naturally - after you have experienced and accepted both as part of life. And you don’t have to work night and day at it - it is the peaceful confidence that only comes from having confronted the “negative” that is inside you. You’ve walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and you’ve survived - and thrived. It didn’t kill you - in fact, you found a piece of yourself in that valley. You brought it back home with you. You now know that you exist everywhere - in the dark and in the light. This is the true spiritual homecoming that the Law of Attraction work is talking about (I think).

I don’t think it’s possible to experience this without having experienced and accepted your shadow in a “dark night of the soul” type of experience of some kind - walking through the underworld and emerging into the daylight. And I haven’t seen a book or article (yet) about the Law of Attraction that acknowledges this journey, or the need for healing and acceptance before a “negative” experience or emotion will truly be released - rather than just repressed.

Besides the one-sided nature of the LOA, there is also the issue of effectiveness. Repressed psychological “stuff” has a lot of energy that counteracts  “think positive” efforts. To be effective with the LOA, you need to dig a little deeper. I think our core beliefs have a lot more to do with what we attract than our surface emotions.

This is how I look at it: the Universe is abundant. To be able to receive and transmit Divine love/creative energy/the good stuff, I just need to clear out whatever is in the way of receiving it - whatever is in the way of connecting and living in the present moment. And that’s what spiritual traditions have been teaching throughout time. It’s not a secret!

Tags: healing by emma
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