“If only they wouldn’t…”, “I can’t believe they’ve just said that…”, “They just need to wise up about…”, “How can they possibly think that?!”
Familiar thoughts?
Many of us experience the consequences of thinking like this in our daily lives. Some of us tragically, when armed conflicts result from an inability to be with the seemingly unpalatable.
How might I sit, listen, seek to understand someone who I take as ‘other’ in a way that honours the truth of what they feel and believe, without me feeling that I have to give up my own truths?
What can ‘I’ find in common with ‘them’ to establish a stepping stone – however tentative - a ‘we’, from where some understanding (and even mutual action) can stem?
May’s Monday Monthly will offer both an embodied practice to help us do this more effectively, and an opportunity to inquire into the experience with fellow participants.
Perhaps a small, close-in, contribution to bringing more peaceful co-existence to the world.
A new edition of Barry Oshry’s excellent short work, Encounters with the ‘Other’, inspires this Monthly. In 62 pages he writes beautifully on crafting new possibilities for how we meet the ‘other’. As he says, ‘Change the pattern of interaction and our experiences of one another will change’.
Concentrating on these patterns – we’ll train our body and mind, one of the Leading Through Storms’ Four Pathways to Spirited Leadership.
Before the session, we’ll send you a small amount of preparatory work (set aside 30 minutes for this).
And, a further flavour of the territory is this blog Kirstin wrote on this theme in the context of an impactful climate justice panel.
Booking fee:
£10