The ‘Conflict Cycle’
Hello fellow explorers,
Last month we looked at the Inner-Outer critic. This month we look at its consequences – the experience of Inner-Outer Conflict.
As a kid growing up I was sensitive to the almost constant overt and covert conflict happening in and around me in different ways. Although I didn’t understand it at the time I was urged to learn its ways, ‘toughen up’; be ‘more aggressive’. Although it never felt quite right, I tried to learn the ‘art of war’. After painful years of trying to change my nature, I realized it wasn’t making me feel good about myself.
I questioned more deeply… Is conflict really the ‘normal’ state and way of human behavior? If so why? Who said so? Is life really just about evolution, ‘natural selection’, ‘survival of the fittest’, the cross of the ‘sinner’ in a remorseless search for redemption?
Eventually I reached a point where I had suffered sufficiently to get really focused on my ‘spiritual path’. As it does for all of us, it leads directly into the mind-maze of my own Inner-Outer conflict and took me on my own healing journey.
It exposed my Separation based ‘Something-Nothing’ perception. It called me to embrace the idea that I am not here just to be a self serving ‘something’, but rather I am a ‘something’ who is an inseparable part of an omnipresent, interconnected ‘Everything’.
I started to learn that all inner and outer conflict arises directly from Something-Nothing Perception. The denial of ‘Everything’ and projection of a ‘Separation Thought’ of a ‘me’ existing separately and opposed to ‘you,’ produces a perception of ‘myself’ as a ‘Something’ in a world beyond which is ‘Nothing’.
If we believe there is nothing beyond the something we perceive, we live in a state of fear because it appears that the ‘cause’ of all conflict comes from outside of ‘me’ – that its ‘cause’ is separated from its ‘effect’ (on me!).
I began to understand that Separation based perception spawns an apparently irreconcilable mind-field of gender, racial, cultural and ideological ‘Polarities’.
I began to realize that our inter-personal conflicts are really battles of competing perceptions between humans with different levels of perception.
Yet because they are battles of Separation based perception there is an underlying ‘sameness’, a ‘pattern’ to each and every type of Inner-Outer Conflict. This is because Separation based perception produces attitudes and beliefs and habitual patterns of adversarial thinking, feeling and acting that just recycle the same underlying perception!
This produces a ‘Conflict Cycle’ predicated on a mind-field of Polarities of Separation based perception. It ultimately judges a hierarchy between the ‘worthy’ and the ‘unworthy’. It produces a self imposed perceptual prison from which there can seem no escape.
As I looked more deeply into the world I began to notice so many of its nations in some stage of splitting up or setting themselves apart, arming themselves to the teeth for some unknown and forgotten reason that had become but a habitual repeat of the Conflict Cycle.
I began to realize why inter-personal wars rage ceaselessly across the human landscape, even though names and faces change. I began to understand why the injured and dead are instantly replaced by yet more aspiring ‘heroes’?
I began to observe that even if anchored in apparently ‘normal’ values, ideologies, ‘theisms etc. inter-personal conflict from bedroom to boardroom, sporting field to battle field are nothing but different versions of the same Conflict Cycle.
Now, many years later, I observe the same old Conflict Cycle playing out in a world in which many more humans are projecting it on and through new levels, avenues and technologies. Whilst physical warfare has become increasingly lethal in terms of potential outcome, ‘cyber warfare’ is now a handy substitute!
The painful irony is that we as part of our human collective are only ever in conflict with ourselves! The Conflict Cycle is ‘life denying’, not ‘life affirming’. It cannot produce an abiding resolution. Any compromise can be but momentary, purely because it is a cycle! It can only recycle its same underlying Separation based perception.
From a place of Separation based perception, change is something we all resist with all our might. The unseen thing all participants in every conflict have in common is righteousness! This is why some of us will literally die to be right, but for what?
Even perception of an Everything based on a ‘theism’ or ideology that is conditional in some way as in loves and protects ‘him’ not ‘her’ – wants ‘this’ not ‘that’ is still Separation based perception.
The good news is that ‘divine rights’ are certainly not just reserved for ‘kings’! The Conflict Cycle is real only to the extent we keep choosing it. It only arises when we refuse to pay attention and acknowledge signals of Inner guidance from our own guiding Master Sense.
Inner guidance is transcendent of Something-Nothing perception. As we discover our inner guiding Master Sense we shift our orientation to others from ‘judgment’ to ’observation’. In this way we can transcend Something-Nothing Perception and realize the interconnection of experience and purpose of the ‘Everything’, that is. That which is ‘Everything’ cannot extend to judgment and conflict because nothing exists outside of it!
So, how about we take a look at where and how we may be experiencing our own version of the Conflict Cycle. It might be hidden behind unresolved resentments or expectations of ourselves and others. It might show up as an attachment to being right!
None of us have far to look to see some level of conflict whether inwardly or outwardly. It might be in someone we are in relationship with near or far. Relationship is where the ‘rubber hits the road’. When it comes to getting our ‘perceptual buttons’ pushed the heat really is in the kitchen!
In so doing we may expand awareness of our inner guiding Master Sense. We may discover the potential for peaceful expansion that exists in every apparent conflict. We may discover a deeper ability to find new more sustainable and harmonious ways of living and growing together.
That’s all for now…
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