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More on conflict

Posted October 5th, 2008 by Helen Davis in Suffering

Recently I wondered if I was seeing conflict coming up on this forum -but heavily coded, which I was finding quite frustrating (i.e. I couldn't get a handle on it.) Also, and I'm sorry to go on about this on this site, as a Brit, I think I don't always get the nuances of American conversation, even if we are all speaking English!

I have also been involved in a situation recently where I felt very constrained in a group that seemed to be prepared to go to great lengths to keep disagreements at bay. It is a small class of Professional Doctorate students. One member of the group consistently behaves in a way that is passively aggressive and sometimes outright aggressive towards another member of the group- me. Mostly I just let it slide by, but on the one occasion when I commented that I felt disturbed by what had just been said to me, the rest of the group jumped in very quickly to gloss it over. One by one privately however, each member of the group (including the tutor) approached me to say that my aggressor's behaviour was becoming outrageous, but not to worry, everybody was on my side! When I asked why this couldn't be addressed in public, as a group, everybody else was of the opinion that this wouldn't help. As it happened, it did make it much easler for me to put up with the aggression after that, and I'm afraid there's been a lot of 'knowing' eye catching going on between other members of the group and myself ever since when I come under attack. But it does feel all wrong, and I do so wish we could just get it out into the open, and deal with it, however messy it gets.

Is the group's behaviour symptomatic of Green? Or of the British stiff upper lip? Or cowardice?

Helen

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scapegoating?

Posted October 5th, 2008 by David Marshall

It's an interesting subject, Helen.

"On the one occasion when I commented that I felt disturbed by what had just been said to me, the rest of the group jumped in very quickly to gloss it over."

And the aggression essentially continues even though people have said that they know what is going on? Sometimes people are just so happy that they are not the ones being bullied or whatnot that they will go along with it if someone else is being bullied, because they understand if they stop the bullying in one place, they could become the next target. It becomes especially tricky if the leaders of a group are complicit, being aggressive themselves, abusing power, applying double standards, etc., which is often the case.

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Posted October 5th, 2008 by admin in response to scapegoating?

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For what it's worth

Posted November 13th, 2008 by Larry Kiehl in response to [Comment Deleted]

--Hi Shalk,

As I said to David, just getting around to responding to this thread. Sorry for being "late".

Just a couple thoughts about authority and control as leader of a group, for what it's worth. The more I open into 2nd tier consciousness the looser grip I find myself having on everything, even more so Indigo when coupled with Witness/Nondual awareness. I notice that leadership begins to show up as co-leadership in the group, that I'm not to only expert on everything in the group I'm leading, so it's important to not try to "lock down" (1st tier propensity) my authority as the group's leader. But the more I try to keep someone from speaking authoritatively in the group the more they'll try to "usurp" "my" authority. Don't know if I'm communicating this well. The 1st tier in me likes to maintain control over everyone and everything. 2nd tier opens me up to be more inclusive of everything and one, especially their inputs. I feel less insecure about sharing authority. Of course, as the group's "designated leader" it's important to be accountable for the learning environment of the group for all participants' benefit and learning.

Also, I find I'd rather bring up the issue generically in the group instead of "taking someone aside" individually when on break. The latter can look like me trying demonstrate dominance over them (it's irrelevant to me that I might actually have dominance over them), and once back in the group their resistance will occur more covertly, which the group will tend to pick up on on some level, interfering with open group dynamics.

Put another way, because someone tries to be heard in my groups doesn't necessarily mean they're trying to usurp my authority, just wanting attention or to be heard (if I had already misheard them). If my sense of authority and control is feeling "attacked", I also look to see if I'm inappropriately trying to hold someone down in the group because I'm have some insecurity with them.

Anyhow, for what it's worth.

Perhaps more than what we focus on in Integral, it's about where we focus from.

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Are we getting conflict yet?

Posted November 13th, 2008 by Larry Kiehl in response to scapegoating?

--David,

I don't know how I managed to overlook this thread until today given the my interest, as most of you here know, in us Integralists becoming more adept at 1) acknowledging, 2) addressing, and 3) functionally engaging in open healthy conflict. Oh well, I hope there's still an opening here to continue the conversation, since it's such a ubiquitous condition, covert as it might be.

Anyhow, hopefully better late than never. As you say in your post, the aggression does in fact continue, just a bit out of site, unless one has the eyes to see it. We're Green-heavy in our proclivities toward conflict. I wish I had better skills at drawing us all out on this topic. But since merely "talking about" it brings up past buried energy about it, raising the heat in the room, it's difficult to even acknowlede it (item 1 above), let alone address it (item 2). And forget about item 3.

It begs the question, not to be unduly redundant from my own posts about conflict (Got Conflict?), what stage or tier does it serve in us to avoid this topic and dynamic? How long will we choose to stay underground, as if no one is noticing, with our conflicts? It's getting quite embarrassing. Especially, I'd think, for anyone wanting to call themselves "Integral", IMO. I'm thinking that Integral = integrate, integrity, being at least integrative if not actually Integral. I'm thinking that includes including those conflict-elephants we're trying to hide in the middle of our we-space. Maybe we're thinking if we hold "the light" just right that those pesky shadows just won't be so easy to see.

So as to not generate another long post, and I don't know how many of us are interested in responding, I'll stop here.

Perhaps more than what we focus on in Integral, it's about where we focus from.

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Elephants and Shadows

Posted November 13th, 2008 by Amanda Gustafson in response to Are we getting conflict yet?

Hi Larry,

I'm going to search out your post on conflict because the topic interests me as well.

I'll name what I think is a conflict I've noticed and see if it sparks anything. (safely sitting at my computer with no one around) I've noticed people attempting to point out other people's "shadow" stuff. Shadow is shadow because, for whatever reason, we've disowned it. So it's kind of like running after someone who has abandoned a baby and saying "Hey Jerk, you've left your baby behind." and then expecting a pat on the back. It took me a master's degree and several years after that to recognize that, rather than a pat on back one is more likely to get a broken nose from sticking it where it is not wanted.

So maybe an interesting question is what group norms do we want to have about pointing out shadow? My (green flavored) opinion is that unless I ask someone specifically, I'd prefer they not do me that "favor". If anyone sees something shadowy in me, a) please point out possible consequences of that thought rather than tell me what's wrong with me (obhect vs self) and/or b) use it for your own shadow work, since it's clearly bugging you, too.

I haven't been around here very long, so I hope others will take up this thread and add.

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A starting place

Posted November 14th, 2008 by Larry Kiehl in response to Elephants and Shadows

Thanks for forwarding this inquiry into the "how-tos" interpersonal shadow work. I agree, "honey attracts more flies than vinegar", and when it comes to shadow stuff (our blind spots) how do we "go about it" bringing in the light of day, what "norms" might we eventually agree on for proceeding, etc.

For me it's not so much that we point out things about each other as it is about where we're coming from in our pointing (e.g, getting even, being supportive, fear, love, whatever), and how we express. That makes a big difference, and learning to come from a healthier place about it involves a learning curve in itself. No quick fixes here, IMO.

None of this is easy, which is probably the first thing we need to be accepting of if we're going to open to 2nd tier development and overcome the "sub-functionalities" of 1st tier engaging (not to suggest 1st tier is "bad"). Proceeding more quickly might be more painful, but maybe only in the short run in hindsight. Going more slowly might seem less painful, but the macro-pain of going slow might be more intolerable in hindsight. Is it loving to pull a tooth slowly? Is it mean to pull it quickly? Is it useful for us to feel overwhelmed by input to us? Might we then move through more more quickly than if input is piece-mealed out to us over long periods of time? Just some thoughts regarding shadow work, moving the conversation forward.

Our simply talking about this is a useful starting place, keeping it relatively conversational, instead of trying to already set up norms and rules, which I think would be getting ahead of ourselves. I'm not an avid proponent of the saying "No pain, no gain". But I also know that shadow work, by its nature, has a pain component to it. And the longer we stay in Green the more pain we'll have to face when we eventually "feel" ourselves opening into the authenticity characteristic of 2nd tier consciousness, especially Turquoise.

I'd like to get more of other's inputs on these thoughts.

Perhaps more than what we focus on in Integral, it's about where we focus from.

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Addendum

Posted November 15th, 2008 by Larry Kiehl in response to Elephants and Shadows

-- Hi Amanda,

This is an addendum to my previous post because I was at a café on my laptop when I wrote that response (not paying as close attention as I might at home), and I can see in rereading your post I overlooked a couple items I want to respond to in this conversation about conflict, and more recently about shadow (as inner and interpersonal dynamics of conflict).

Here's something that never occurred to me before now, that we all can have different senses of what dealing with our shadow can mean to us, and therefore how that affects our willingness to even consider shadow work. We can hold it as scary or we can hold it as loving liberational work, and everything in between. I'd never want to deal with (let alone notice) my shadow if I looked at it as something that I must avoid at all costs, and, as such, therefore, anyone who points out anything about me would be perceived by me as them making me look at something I absolutely don't want to see about myself (e.g, your abandoned baby analogy). Yes, I'd want to "punch then in the nose" too. I agree with you that it's not appropriate to give people shadow feedback where it hasn't been made sufficiently clear that they're open to that, and, also perhaps, what the ways are that we're open to receiving it, and such.

BTW, to see something in someone that is or might be shadow stuff doesn't mean it's because it bothers the person seeing it. This is especially the case where there's agreement to offer each other inputs, coming from a clean place about, not intending to minimize others by it so that we feel better about our self in comparison. I'd say that would be a 1st tier approach to shadow-sharing. It's also not about pointing out "something wrong" with anyone. It's definitely not about engaging each other in shadow boxing. That would only be useful if we did so as an exercise "to get stuff out", then go meta to it and look at it closely for ourselves. Again, this is relatively new and complex territory—shadow sharing—so it's probably best to do lots of "talking about" it first to feel our way into such, assuming any of us ever decide to go forward with it, and I'm not assuming anyone will want to, or not want to. It will involve a rocky learning curve, as might be imagined. It's not for the Integral "faint of heart", and not to suggest there's anything wrong with having a "faint heart" about this work. We're all in different places, naturally. We're ready when we're ready. No judgments about that. What is is.

For what it's worth, I've held shadow work for years as a "negative thing", as is to be expected for any of us, especially in the earlier phases of our life. However, I've had some breakthrough awarenesses about it in recent years. I've come to a place in my consciousness "work" where I began to notice that I was having difficulty making any further "progress" in following the current of Eros—getting into higher stages and states of consciousness—as if something was "holding me down" or "holding me back" from being able to be more fully open to those wonderful currents that previously had taken me higher, deeper, further in feeling, seeing, Knowing what's "out there", "in Here" to experience and know in consciousness.

Then one day I was listening to a Wilber audio and he was talking about how we, metaphorically, have only so much (I forget his word) "energy" or "juice" or whatever to carry us "higher/deeper/whatever-er". And that if we have a lot of this energy or juice consumed in "holding down" our shadow material, it will prevent our being able to ascend or evolve any further in consciousness. That we have to free up this energy to further evolve. His point was that we have to open to dealing with our shadow(s) if we wanted to free our energy up to further our inner "progress". To me, this isn't so much about "looking for shadow" (perhaps seen as a focus on "glass half empty") as it is to simply realize that in reality the glass is BOTH half full AND half empty. Not just only one or the other (a dualistic perspective). The glass is a unified reality that dualistic thinking determines has to have good and bad parts. Our 1st tier self unwittingly, IMO, decides that by ignoring part of the glass (e.g., our self) we'll be better off. Our Integral self, as I see it, sees that we'll be better off by accepting the whole glass and the condition of its contents. That the whole glass will be more easily "filled" by learning to acknowledge and accept the seeming "part" that is "empty" (or "dark", or whatever), lacking wholeness, and not repressing our awareness of it to make it shadow material.

This shadow message from Wilber clunked something in me and it was like a bright light going off in my Being making his point super obvious in my heart. It was like writing on the wall that I had been managing to ignore for decades (meta-shadows hiding my awareness of my shadow-ness). It took me a few months to find my footing about how to practically respond to this awareness in a way that didn't leave me feeling "messed up" or dysfunctional about the whole shadow thing. And I did find some footing, and my heart and soul have never been happier for it.

I learned to make this thing called "shadow" an object/s, getting meta to it. More specifically to make it/them object/s that I now OWNED, and WANTED to own as a key to greater freedom and lightness of being, WHILE in a body, better loving it all. Part of the shift was that I opened into a space of awareness where I realized that I was an evolutional being, a Being that was an eternally ongoing "work in progress" flowing with and in the Eros track (which also included engaging and enacting the Agape track; another story). That I wasn't a static Being that would, at best, occasionally or rarely begrudgingly and resistively "make a change" in myself. I'm clearer about how I am a dynamic flowing, developmental, Being. We all are, in truth. That's my identity, not a static or stationary Being stuck merely in self-protective circularity. I'm a Being of movement, growth, healing, emergence, wonderment-in-action, by whatever terms. It's like shifting a sense of one's ground of being from being "the bank" of the river to becoming "the river" itself, in a state of becoming, being in a "dance" with all else that is in movement, now including my shadow, passing by that which is "stuck, stifled, stagnant" (e.g., the bank beside the river).

Okay, maybe it's not a great metaphor, but the point in it is hopefully accessible. Being that which naturally moves and is in movement, bringing my shadow "along" for the ride to "work it" as I go. Not something that is stationary and takes huge work (and usually the "push" of will power; to little avail) to change or further open into more wholeness. The shadow functions like weights that are keeping us on the bank. And once we jump-shift our awareness to being a becoming of the river, those weights can seem scary in the water, a feeling of dragging us down, moving us slower than the current, but never drowning us (no shadow can kill us, we'll discover)

I'm not sure how to best articulate this so I apologize if it's not communicating better to every mind reading it.

As such, I don't experience my shadow as something to hide from at all costs (as in you "abandoned baby" analogy), and also recognize I/we can't do shadow-work alone. If we truly accept that we're all unified in Truth, not separate, just different, then to the extent that we experience that in our Being with each other, we won't fear each other's inputs. That's not to say we won't do lots of "interpersonal flinching" as we learn to enact our realization of this Truth. After all, we still have 1st tier dynamics operating in us that are "alive and well", as it were, not nearly as "free" as our 2nd and 3rd tier propensities. Of course, the 1st tier heavy-dualistic dynamics in us all will probably experience this communication from me being rather "offensive" blogging behavior, because that part of us wants our privacy, our secrecy, our shadows kept in tact. And when someone really opens up, it agitates the part of us that isn't so open. And instead of dealing with ourselves about that, it's easier to shut others down, including that part within us that another part in us doesn't want open. To feel exposed, raw, present, authentic, how would we ever tolerate it? Well, I can say, we can. And will, at least in time. Don't take my word for it, let us find out for ourselves.

In my experience, in case someone's interested in this, the territory of Turquoise, starts to break us open (Teal less so since it's a bit overwhelmed and preoccupied with trying to put a myriad of "pieces" together in the external realms), Indigo way more so, loosening our grip and attachments, functionally unweighting our us from our assumptions, our beliefs, our memories, our materiality, our very thought processes, even the mind itself. Turquoise opens us up to the richness of our inner domanin more than 1st tier ever could. This includes seeing what we've kept buried, hidden, cloaked away from "critical" eyes and minds; including our own eyes and mind about our own self, as well as about others.

I know there's a part of us that basically loathes hearing these things, it annoys us to hear someone speaking this way (that would be our 1st tier stuff), but that there's a bigger, grander part of us that rejoices in hearing it. Hearing someone be so bold, exposed, whatever. Which part do we identify with and resonate with? What you are feeling in your body right now will answer that. All is good, ultimately. It's all us. It all "comes together" ultimately. We discover there were never any "parts" to put back together, just our journey into the infinite and a confusion with what seemed like fragmentation. The One that is Many. We're evolving, some more slowly, some more quickly. Again, all is good, no judgments, just pointing out what's there, as I've navigated it and "interpreted" it, forming mental constructs "about it", forming sentences from that to attempt to convey it here.

Certainly, I'm open, as I've said in other posts, to hear of other people's experiences from their own innerworks, what you've discovered, what you long to share with "ears to hear". Like doing base-camp sharing from our day's climb mountainside. And knowing there will also be ears that don't want to hear (for whatever reasons), that will want to silence such expression and sharing. Remember, it's all us, and It's all Us. Ultimately, we're safe.

Might we surrender into trusting our ultimate safety (inevitable "bumps and bruises" notwithstanding), to find our strength in adversity, the universes way of breaking us open, strengthening us, taking us to greater vistas, empowering us into greater dimensions of knowing, being, becoming and doing?

Highest and deepest hopes and intentions,

Larry

Perhaps more than what we focus on in Integral, it's about where we focus from.

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conflict skill

Posted November 12th, 2008 by Amanda Gustafson

Hi Helen,

I can't say what it's like "over there", but my take on America's is that we have very little conflict skill. Fight or flight is all we know. As YOU know there is brilliant work on how to grow with the tension of conflict- the Johnson brothers' work at the University of Minnesota on group dynamics, and Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow's book are a couple I'm familiar with (if anyone is curious on the topic). However, it's a high skill area requiring at least basic ability to take the perspective of the other and the willingness to do so. My impression is that most people a) don't realize there are options, and b) haven't ever seen them skillfully applied.

Amanda

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conflict skill

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Agreed