It’s very difficult to hold one’s seat these days, if one’s not frozen or otherwise shut down. It feels quite urgent, the need to do something, so many angry at the vulnerability, the inaction of those playing the role of perpetuating the situations, both at home, and in the larger world.

It’s been so interesting to me, or rather, shocking, disheartening, and mystifying, how we attack others in our own overwhelm and horror, borne of the urgency to fix things, rather than coming together to find solutions. More clearly than ever it’s evident to me that finding safety in the one up position, as Terry Real calls it, just perpetuates the damage to relationships.

I also see more clearly than ever, how reactivity, no matter how well intentioned, does not mend anyone or anything. Only an increased ability to tolerate the discomfort – ours and others – can reveal possible courses of enlightened action.

Pausing to reflect and tolerate the intensity of the emotion will look to some others with their trauma colored lenses like indifference, immorality, and danger. So it adds another layer of intensity and requires even more discipline and containment to not react, and to not completely check out, though breaks may be needed in order to fully metabolize the intensity.

I’ve been watching this scenario play out for most of my life. It is heartbreaking.

I’ve had the recent pleasure to read James Gilligan’s book Violence, and it’s really satisfying to see the data that supports what I’ve been witnessing for so long, and the patterns I have sensed, and that nondual spirituality and nonviolent communication practices have assumed at their core:

• violence begets violence
• intolerable shame is at the core of violence
• shame is created by the social structure
• all people just want love and belonging, but such dependency is shamed, especially for men
• our social structure is highly segregated by patriarchal rules of honor
• patriarchy’s honor system fatalizes vulnerability, and assigns male and female roles
• males are violence objects, and women are sex objects – violating the rules brings shame
• those at the top of the structure have no interest in changing that structure because it serves them
• we are largely unconsciousness of the structure
• rules and laws reinforce the structure by multiple means (I highly recommend reading the list of ways on p. 187-189)
• warring middle and lower classes and the growing economic disparities perpetuate the structure

And one of the most amazing things to me is that this book was published in 1996, but if you didn’t know it, it would make no difference. In fact, it might be even more valid now.

The pattern is quite simple when revealed, but the cure is anything but. I myself am just now starting to be able to witness rude, dismissive, or shaming behavior without losing the ability to be present. It is still a shock. Shocking how many people do it as a way of life – family, friends, strangers – no one is immune. It pops up, it fucking stings, I work with it, it gets lighter. It still amazes me how bad disconnection resulting from shaming, indifference, coldness, or condescenscion, can feel. I’m glad to be able to feel it and stay connected to myself, simultaneous to the pain, and to the firm knowledge that the person’s response in that moment is born of an unkindness more original than them.