Blog promoting the spirituality and practice of nonviolence and equality in relationships.

HAPPINESS REALLY IS OUR CHOICE. By Bob Myers.

26/5/2014

Peace and happiness isn’t about being free from pain, suffering, disputes or conflict. Peace and happiness depends on the quality of our relationship with other people, with the environment and with the cosmos. The good news is that peace and happiness increases as we become more aware of our true place in the scheme of things and work to preserve it. The pain and suffering, disputes and conflict that can be part of everyday life then becomes easier to cope with.

People gain awareness of this in various ways. Some gain it through religion, others through science and some gain it through everyday experience. Many would probably say they gained it through a combination of all the above. But regardless of how it happens, the awareness is of peace and happiness increasing as we improve the quality of our relationships.

Most human spiritual and social development is the result of reflecting on the consequences of what we say and do; what others say and do; what happens in our environment; and on cosmic events. However, the direction our development takes depends on what we centre on as we reflect on these things. Choosing what to centre on is crucial to the quality of our relationships and is a decision that needs to be made many times each day, for as long as we live.

Each decision comes at the junction of two possible paths. One path leads to the enduring peace and happiness that continues even though there may be trouble and strife. The other path leads to instant pleasure and temporary relief from life’s problems. Everyone comes to these junctions and must face the same decision many times every day throughout life.

The choice is to centre on our own needs, or to centre on the needs of the relationship. Regardless of whether the ‘other’ is a person, the environment or the cosmos, centring only on our own needs is at the expense of the other and damages the quality of the relationship. The consequence of that damage may not be immediately apparent, but it does exist. The next junction reached may be only seconds away, where we again have to decide between increasing the damage done at the previous junction or take the other path.

Nature and the cosmos are very forgiving and will allow us to simply start again at each junction throughout life. However, other people at each junction have a choice. They may allow us to simply start again; they may impose some condition before resuming the relationship; or they may terminate the relationship. The quality of our relationships, and therefore our happiness, really is our choice.

Photo: North Island New Zealand.

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DOES FEMINISM HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH BEING FEMALE?

12/5/2014

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Some say feminism is about the fair distribution of power. Others say feminism is about the nonviolent use of power and nonviolent resistance to the abuse of power. Some say feminism is about empowering women.

There are many versions of feminism and that makes it difficult to say precisely what it is all about. However, it seems that most feminists agree that it promotes gender equality and, therefore, seeks to strengthen the status of women. That, unfortunately, doesn’t mean feminists believe all people are equal. A feminist can believe in gender equality in a very unequal social system, as long as male and female have equal opportunities, and experience equal consequences for their efforts.

Feminism is about changing the present patriarchal system , with its emphasis on power being ‘power-over’. However, that type of feminism seems to be too narrow in its focus. Many feminists reject the patriarchal aspect of society but readily accept the structural and systemic inequality of a status system. This leaves the way open for a matriarchal system to develop, which would just change the roles of the players in the game called ‘Domination’, without solving the problem of gender inequality. Nor would it solve problems such as domestic violence, or any of the other social diseases so many studies have linked to inequality.

To be effective in achieving gender equality, feminism should seek to change the underlying assumption that power is about having power over others and the environment. Gender equality is a noble and worthwhile aim but many great feminists, male and female, have advocated that all people are equal and this obviously includes gender equality. This brand of feminism is committed to convincing people to think of power in terms of having power with other people and the environment rather than having power over other people and the environment. It seeks to apply this in the family, workplace, business, and community.

‘Power’ refers to the ability to produce an outcome.

‘Power over people’ refers to the use of power to control the actions of other people, by allowing or withholding what they need.

‘Power with people’ refers to people sharing their powers to meet the needs of all those involved.

‘Power from within’ refers to the sense of having the knowledge and skills to meet one’s own needs. This is why education is so important for achieving gender equality. Not just academic education but the whole range of life skills necessary for people, especially women, to feel confident in their ability to solve life’s problems and achieve their ambitions. In countries where men resist gender equality, the education of women is quite often banned.

‘Power from within’ also includes the power flowing from the sense of belonging; being part of - or connected to - other people, nature, the universe or God. People fortunate enough to feel the power flowing into them from strong connections to nature and the cosmos have strong self-esteem and self-confidence. They can share this inner strength with others endlessly because it is limitless and is often expressed in the ‘people power’ movements that counteract the ‘power over’ tactics others use in attempting to dominate.

By Bob Myers.

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FINDING PEACE AND HAPPINESS IN THE DARNEDEST PLACES.

1/7/2013

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People spend millions of dollars on what often turns out to be a fruitless search for some form of peace and happiness. The sad news is that most waste their money because they can’t recognise peace and happiness when they find it. So they pass it by. This is partly because we think of peace as being something calm and tranquil. We don’t think of finding peace in the midst of a heated argument. And if we think of happiness as being a constant state of euphoria,, we don't think of finding happiness in a catastrophe. Constant tranquillity and constant euphoria might sound like a promise of heaven but it certainly isn’t life.

The best we seem to manage in life is experience short periods of tranquillity or feelings of euphoria that pass too quickly. Most are just fleeting moments that become wonderful memories we carry with us for the rest of our lives. However, we can do better. We can have both peace of mind and a sense of harmony as normal parts of daily life, even in the midst of turmoil and sadness, if we are realistic and aim for dynamic peace and happiness.

The word dynamic means vibrant, lively, energetic and surprising. Dynamic peace immediately becomes more appealing and exciting than constant tranquillity over the long term. Therefore, peace and happiness can vary without being lost, because it is really based on something deeper than the fluctuations and disturbances appearing on the surface. Large fluctuations can occur without destroying the overall sense of stability within human relationships when the people involved follow the guidelines that transform conflict into creative conflict. They can learn from nature and experience harmony in disputes.

Four themes run through the material on the Road of Peace website and I will explore these in future blogs. Using these four themes as the framework was inspired by the work of Brendan McKeague, lead trainer with Pace e Bene Australia.

1.    Exploring our relationship to other people; to the environment and to the cosmos
         (or God, by whatever name).
                    Included under this heading are things like identity, self esteem, self confidence and
                     morals, as well as beliefs and values regarding authority (ours and theirs).
2.    The ways in which our culture affects how we relate to each other.
                    Included under this heading are things like love, sexism, racism, social status,
                    structural and systemic inequality and discrimination.
3.    Where and how to regain spiritual and emotional strength when life gets tough.
                    Included under this heading are the myriad of ‘self esteem service stations’ people
                    use to lift their spirits, ranging from religious practices to secular activities such as
                    shopping and sport.
4.    Exploring new and better ways to enhance problem solving and conflict resolution skills.
                    Included under this heading are various sets of conflict resolution methods and
                    guidelines, as well as the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Dorothy Day,
                    and various religious figures.

Bob Myers.

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WOULD IT MATTER IF WE NO LONGER HAD THE TORAH,BIBLE AND KORAN? By Bob Myers.

22/5/2012

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In a three-minute introduction, an MC spoke in glowing terms about the guest speaker’s attributes and accomplishments, and at the very end winked to the audience. That single wink reversed three hundred words and maybe led the audience to doubt anything the speaker subsequently said. Why is a single action so powerful?

While driving across a desert in Western Australia, my wife and I came across two Japanese bikers who obviously had a problem. Neither of them spoke English and we didn’t speak Japanese but we soon worked out that one had fallen and damaged his ankle. We convinced them to leave one motorbike hidden behind a bush while we transported the injured rider to a roadhouse, where the Flying Doctor Service could be contacted. The second rider could then bring someone back to retrieve the bike. All this was achieved without understanding one word of each other’s language. How can people communicate all that without words?

According to communication theory, words convey only 7% of a communication. Vocals such as pitch, tone and volume account for 38% and the other 55% is made up of non-verbals, such as gestures, facial expressions, posture and so on. When reading, we have to use imagination because none of the vocals are there to help us understand what is written. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes our imagination is way off target. Combining a speaker’s words and vocals gives verbals 45%, which means there is only a 10% difference between verbals and non-verbals and yet we take much more notice of non-verbals than we do of verbals. Why?

Lucy is the name given to Ethiopia's world-acclaimed archaeological find. Lucy’s almost complete hominid skeleton was dug up in 1974, and was estimated to be at least 3.2 million years old. Hominids are the family of primates from which humans supposedly emerged about 200,000 years ago. The ability to use language defines what is known as ‘modern humans’, but language, as we know it, has only been around for about 35,000 years This means that for 165,000 years people communicated with each other non-verbally, with gestures, expressions, and movements, as well as the pitch, tone and volume of grunts. So, for the vast majority of human history our ancestors relied on reading the signs of human behaviour, and the signs in nature, to understand the world they lived in. The human race has had far more experience communicating in, and learning from, non-verbals than from words. It’s no wonder we place more importance on non-verbals and trust them when someone’s words and actions don’t match up. As the saying goes, ‘actions speak louder than words’.

Archaeologists claim that religion has been part of human existence for at least 70,000 years, which means that for 35,000 years before language fully developed, people believed in life after death and buried things with people to help them in that life. It doesn’t seem logical that God would only start communicating with people after they invented language; less than 25% of human history. Wasn’t God capable of communicating before human language developed? Were humans smart enough to try to communicate with God, but God had no way to communicate with humans? The communication theory mentioned above suggests that God could use non-verbals to communicate very effectively with people, and did so for all of the time before language was invented. The medium for that communication was the natural environment.

People felt they were part of the land and of nature in general. They were as one in spirit with the plants and animals and could ‘read’ the signs carried on the wind, buried in the soil, transformed by fire, floating on or immersed in water. Nature was their provider and teacher and was present with them and in them every moment of every day. There was an intensity and intimacy involved that we sometimes fleetingly experience in sport, when the perfect shot seems effortless and almost automatic.

Non-verbal communication, like the burning of incense or lighting of candles, still plays a big part in religious ceremonies and rituals, but the three main religions are ‘religions of the book’, which means they are driven by the word of God contained in their respective holy book; the Torah, Bible and Koran. Although these books were written by people, each religion claims their book was dictated by God and therefore contains ‘the word of God’.

I’m not concerned here with comparing religions or holding one book higher than the others. I’m not even concerned with whether those books really do contain the word of God. The point I make is that the words contained in the books, important as they are, are just a small part of the overall communication package and I wonder whether it would really matter if we no longer had access to them, and God was again experienced as speechless. We would still have the great majority of God’s communication to guide us, and it would be the communication that is specifically aimed at us personally, since it is what we experience. We could study that communication without the sense of already knowing the truth. Much of the violence in the world occurs as a result of people being certain they already know the truth, and anything else has to be rejected and destroyed.

The Torah, the Bible and the Koran are valuable inspirational books that contain the spiritual experiences of many of our ancestors, expressed in the words available to them and guided by their knowledge of the make-up of the universe. We certainly need the accumulated knowledge of past generations about our relationship to each other and to God. But unfortunately those words are now being interpreted by people who have not had the same experiences. We are no smarter than our distant ancestors, but our knowledge and experience is different and so our interpretation is different. However, God doesn’t change as our knowledge or understanding changes. God’s communication is still through the world around us and in us and is available to refer to whenever there is doubt about ‘the truth’ of what our ancestors recorded. The disaster is that so many people are intent on changing or destroying the environment God communicates through and we are left with less and less to study in its natural state. We would be better off working to understand it and cooperate with it instead of seeing it as something to conquer and change.

Disregarding the non-verbals makes communication as accurate as trying to picture what someone looks like from listening to their voice. People who disregard the environment as part of God’s communication not only miss out on the majority of God’s actual communication, but also miss out on using the main way we have of expressing our beliefs and values to God.

My dream is for all people to look at ‘the word’ in the context of the non-verbals formed by the whole of creation. Ideally, that would result in us seeing the environment as the interface between ourselves and God and therefore alter the way we treat that interface.

Imaginings, dreams and ‘what ifs’ are usually about impossible or highly unlikely events, like winning Tattslotto, but they are also little rays of hope for the future, and my ray of hope is that the religions will one day discover that the Torah, Bible and Koran all contain part of the truth that will emerge if we continue to verify it against the non-verbal communication from a God choosing to remain silent.

Photo: Butterfly garden, Malaysia.

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Author

Bob Myers owned and operated an electronics sales and service business before gaining a degree in sociology and further training in relationship counselling, conflict resolution and mediation. He worked in that field for more than thirty years, mainly with teenagers and their families. For 16 years he was the director of a non-government residential facility for teenagers. He is the author of three books on parenting as well as :
Travelling the Road of Peace and Happiness.

Bob is dedicated to nonviolence as a way of life; a founding member of Pace e Bene Australia (PeBA); and a PeBA nonviolence facilitator.

HAPPINESS REALLY IS OUR CHOICE. By Bob Myers.

DOES FEMINISM HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH BEING FEMALE?

FINDING PEACE AND HAPPINESS IN THE DARNEDEST PLACES.

WOULD IT MATTER IF WE NO LONGER HAD THE TORAH,BIBLE AND KORAN? By Bob Myers.

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