Journey

The Tranquil Approach

A few hours later everyone packs up and you follow along not sure where they are going. Something has changed and your state of tranquility is disturbed. You head back home and the next day you go to work. The tranquility is gone. You boss is yelling about something and you come right back at him. Now yesterday is like a dream and today is not all that pleasant. How can you get back to that serenity?

First, you need to tune out the disruptions. When your boss starts yelling all you need to do is ignore it. If you just keep on working like you never heard him then someone else will take care of whatever it was. Next you need to find a way to deal with all this anger. This guy keeps pushing your buttons and then you react. You need to find a way to avoid feeling agitated.

At lunch you talk to some of your friends. You tell them about the great lecture you heard yesterday and they tell you about this guy they know who can teach you how to feel peaceful all the time. As you discuss this guru your boss starts yelling again and everyone scatters. As you head back to work you mutter a few words about your boss but you say them a little louder than you planned and the jerk himself tells you that you either better change your attitude or find another job. That does it. Tonight you are going to find the guru and learn about meditation-whatever that is.

In a few months you learn that you can simply tune out the noise of the world around you. And a few months later you learn how to ignore the anger and retain your serene state in spite of the chaos around you. You learn that you can focus on the peace within yourself and not be drawn into the world of the unenlightened. You learn to pray with intensity and learn that you can respond to the anger others dump on you by praying a silent prayer for peace. You learn that you can listen to music and forget about the noise that the unenlightened make as they struggle on their disruptive paths. The only problem that you still cannot solve is the disruptions your boss causes with his uncontrolled emotions.

One day you notice there is going to be seminar on a technique called smoothing. You skip work that day and go to the seminar. What you learn there is that the smoothest way to deal with conflict is to just give the other person whatever they want. The woman leading the seminar reminds you that those in authority, even tax collectors, are there for a reason. She teaches you that the best way to deal with problems is to distance yourself from them. The key to smoothing is to not get drawn into anger and not get drawn into a discussion that you cannot control. Just let the noise and the anger flow off of you. Your inner state of tranquility cannot be disturbed unless you allow the noise or anger to enter.

This seems to work. You find peace when you are with certain friends who think like you. You avoid the people that make you angry. And, most importantly, you avoid listening to people who want to complain, especially if they want to complain about you.

The Reciprocal Approach

Life is good. You know how to tune out the noise. You know how to turn loose of your anger. And then, one day, you come home and there is a tax collector and a couple policemen standing in front of your door. They show you some papers and you tell them you are not interested in their disruptive ways. They ask you to open the door and you tell them you have tuned out their anger. They knock your door off the hinges, walk in, and a gang of people start hauling your furniture down the street. You try to block them but one of the policemen knocks you down and the next thing you know you are sitting in a jail cell. Everything is gone and your tranquility went with it.

Once you get this matter cleared up you move in with your cousin and he tells you that the guide that lead that expedition to the mountain is back in town. You track him down and ask him what to do about tax bills. He asks you who makes the coins. What a stupid question. Everyone knows that the government makes the coins. Then he tells you to give to the government the things that belong to the government. Yeah! That's it. Give them what they have coming.

So this guy keeps quoting from that old book your mother was always reading. You go back to your cousin's place and find it. Sure enough, it says right in there to do to others just like they did to you. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Now we have something.

You check about and pretty soon you find a few other people who were roughed up by the tax guys. They know some other people that have another gripe with the government and you check in there as well. They understand how things really work. That meditation stuff was like you were drugged or something. These people know about action. Action is what the world understands.

A few days later your boss starts yelling again and now you know what to do. Ignoring him was never going to fix the problem. What you need to do is make it clear to him that he is yelling at the wrong person. A whole year of listening to this jerk and now you let loose. That took him by surprise. Now he knows not to mess with you. Hey, the economy is doing well and there are lots of jobs. It was a waste of time working for such a jerk anyway. From now on when someone pushes you are going to push back. When someone yells you are going to yell louder. They are going to learn to respect you.

You negotiate a loan from your cousin and start your own company. You are the boss and people had better jump when you yell. You watch them. And if they keep on gabbing when lunch is over you tell them what for. No one is going to take advantage of you. You are the boss. You have the power to fire any of these slugs any time you want and you remind them about it every chance you get. The only problem is that this takes a lot more energy. You have to do all their thinking for them. You have to keep watching them constantly. And you lost track of all your friends. The meditating zombies think you are too full of anger and you work so many hours that you seldom see anyone else anyway.

That night there is a storm and you toss and turn. What sort of a life is this? And then the storm ends. The next day you hear everyone talking about how suddenly the storm ended. They say that tour guide from the mountain trip made it stop. Now that is nonsense, but, still, if he can make a storm stop then maybe he can tell you how to stop the storm that surrounds your life.

It takes you a week to find him again. When you get there he is surrounded by a huge crowd but what you hear is that you should treat others like you want to be treated. Instead of doing to others before they do it to you now you need to do for others what you would like them to do for you.

The Transformation

You finally get back to your shop and there is only one person still there. All the worthless stupid slugs are gone except this one guy. What you should do is treat him like you want to treat all the other workers that are off loafing around somewhere. Then you stop. What the tour guide said is to treat this guy like you would like to be treated. Now that is going to be tough. You need to turn loose of your anger. Well you take a few minutes and meditate and get back to a tranquil state. Then you ask the only worker still there in your shop what happened to the other workers. He looks at you, shrugs and goes back to work. You can see that he is sweating so you get him a cool drink and ask again. He looks at the drink. Gulps it down. Looks at you, shrugs his shoulders and goes back to work. Well standing here waiting is tough after all the walking you did last week so you hunt for a chair. Then you remember that you are supposed to do for others. So you get the chair and tell him to sit and rest. Then you pull up another chair and ask again. What he tells you is a bit of a shock. He tells you that they, not he, but they, decided you were a jerk and they did not want to work for you anymore.

Well now what do you do? You could just ignore this disruption to your peace and return to your tranquil self. You could explode and make sure this guy never insults you like that again. Or, you can do for him like you want him to do for you. So what do you want? You want the storm to be over. You want to be rid of the anger. But tuning out does not work. The tax people will be here pretty soon if you do not make some money off this operation. And to do that you need workers. So what you want is to get people to work for you. Well then the thing to do is to work like you would want other people to work.

In a few months you have your business running again. Whenever one of your old workers stops by to see their friend you grab them instead and treat them like a long lost relative. It takes a while but they learn that this is a new you. You ask how they are and you mean it. You take the time to make them comfortable. And when they open up and tell you what a poor soul you had been then you agree with them and ask them to tell you more. This is important now. You need to know what you can do so that you can make them feel as happy as you want to feel. What you find is that listening is the gift that people value the most. And when they reciprocate for the anger you used to give them you dampen that antagonism by graciously accepting the truth in what they say.

Word gets around pretty soon and people all over town start coming to your shop looking for work. This is wonderful but something is still missing. You are working too hard. You are still making the decisions for the whole team. There are other things in life besides work and you need to take some time to go find that tour guide again. So you gather up your team and you talk with them. You ask their advice.

Well they certainly had a lot of ideas and some of them are just not going to work. There are a few ideas, however, that could work if only everyone agrees to come together and work as a team. You confront the team with the challenge and there is a lot of commotion. It is nice to hear so many opinions and know that you do not need to do all the thinking yourself. The goal now is to get to consensus. The problem is this one lady that wants to keep blaming you for what you did before your transformation. You find that it takes a lot of work but you dampen her anger by listening and by reassuring her that she is a valued member of the team. Finally your company is achieving the goals that the team has set.

That then lets you schedule a week away from the shop. You know that the tour guide is going to be down in the big city for the holidays and you hurry out of town to find him. He helped you find that first tranquil experience. And he has given you the answers that are now bringing peace to your life.

Chaos

When you get to the big city you hear the news. That nice tour guide was killed by government thugs. You hunt around and you find some of your old friends. Now is the time for action. It is time to settle old scores and make sure everyone knows how powerful you are. The problem is that everyone is angry and everyone has ideas but there is no sense of direction. People are scattered all over the place. Some want to change the government. Some want to retreat out into the desert and build their own government. Some say that the problem is the religious people. It was the religious leaders that took the tour guide to the government. They are the ones that caused all this trouble. Everyone wants action and everyone has ideas. What are you to do?

You sit down and you think. You used to be happy. Before you went on that mountain expedition everything was just fine. Then you studied meditation. You found that you could tune out the noise and turn loose of the anger. But the world would not let you stay on that mountain top. Things keep changing all the time and you cannot sit still without something disrupting your tranquility.

You remember how angry you used to be. You learned to act with anger before you even thought about the consequences. That, it turned out, was a costly habit. Anger is not the answer. Of course, you could always pretend like you are not angry but still plot revenge anyway. That would surprise them. Act like everything is peaceful while you fume away inside. You could get revenge on all the people that got in your way. You could plot revenge on the people who killed the man you admire.

That, however, seems all wrong. The tour guide said to treat others like you want to be treated. A surprise attack? Revenge? Those do not seem to be the types of things you would want someone to do to you. Silence is wrong. Anger is wrong. Somehow you need to hear more while refraining from anger.

You think back to the workers you left behind. The best times you had with them were sitting around talking about problems and how to fix those problems. It was great when there was a lot of discussion and no one got mad. Now here you sit in the midst of chaos. Sure everyone wants to discuss how to fix the problem but everyone is so filled with anger that they do not even listen to each other.

And then you see how the pieces fit together. When you were tranquil you did not pay attention to the people around you but you held no antagonism. When you sought to reciprocate you were filled with hatred and paid no attention to the damage you caused. When you were transformed you loved hearing from everyone and you sought ways to make things better. Those conversations were wonderful because there was no antagonism. No secret agendas only teamwork. And now you are caught in a whirlwind. Everyone around you is full of anger. Everyone is talking about change but no one wants to work together to make it happen. Chaos does not work.

Somehow you need to get back to the transformed you. You need to get away from these people who are filled with anger. You need to tune out the antagonism without tuning out the communication. Right now you just need to get away from this. So you search about and find a café with some singers.

Dissonance

Harmony is when the singers work together as a team. The most important tool to a singer is their ear. Dissonance is the difficult work required to sing in a way that the ear tells you is not melodious in order to produce a result that is melodious. It is hard work and it requires careful listening and an extra effort. Fortunately we have the ability to hear.

Sadly we often choose not to hear. We find it inconvenient to listen to things we do not like. We find it inconvenient when people tell us that problems are complex and solutions are hard. We train our ears to avoid hearing. To an extent this is important. We are surrounded by distracters. You sit in the café and listen to the singers. The clattering of silver and china disrupts your ability to hear. Yet it is that clattering that pays the bills that keep the shop open so there can be singers. To your ears the clattering is a distraction. To the shop keeper that clattering is a prelude to a good receipt for the night.

When we are little we learn to listen to our immediate family. We are taught to distrust strangers. As we grow older we learn to trust not only family but also friends. Then we learn that we have much in common with others who also cheer for the same team or wear the team colors. We are taught that you can tell who you can trust by looking at the color of a person's skin, the color of their hair, the type of clothing they wear or which building they go to when they want to find tranquility. Dissonance occurs when we try to break those old habits. As beautiful as dissonance sounds when sung well, it grates when it suddenly appears in our lives.

As you sit in the café you see the crowd differently. There is a common sense of frustration with the world. Everyone here is hurting. Now some try to hide that hurt but inside every one of us has been hurt. It is annoying to hear over and over again about the pains that every person at this table has felt. That is dissonance - and that is the communication that is meaningful.

Two people next to you start to bicker. Their tone is polite but their words are cutting. They have taken their difference and expressed it as antagonism. Antagonism is any expression of anger. War is the most extreme expression of anger. Tranquility requires that we tune out the anger around us. Transformation requires that we do unto others as we would want them to do for us. What you want now is for this bickering to stop. To do that you need to tune out the antagonism - but not in yourself. Instead, to get back to your transformed self you need to find a way to help others turn down their anger.

You motion to the waiter and give her some cash. Soon she comes back and serves the people next to you. There is a commotion. You turn and tell them that this is your treat and thank them for being there tonight. You did for them as you would want someone to do for you. They thank you and you leave.

You seek someplace quiet and you find a garden. There are a few people sitting there and you go over to see what topic has them so excited. They are talking about the tour guide who was killed. You tell them how he taught you to do for others like you want done to you. And they tell you that was just the beginning. They tell you that the answer is to love even those who would hurt you.

The way to turn down the antagonism is not to turn it down. Instead, we need to reverse it. The opposite of antagonism is love. Well, perhaps love is a bit much. Maybe we should start with compassion. Yes, compassion is what you learned to share with your team back home. Compassion is what you have for your cousin. Is that then enough?

A Vision

It has been a long time since the tour guide gave any lectures. Still, you search. Now you know to avoid the gurus who want to sedate your mind into tranquility. You have learned that telling others what to do might get compliance but it builds an underlying antagonism that will erupt sooner or later. You have learned to avoid the chaos of anger and discord. You lead your team by setting the example.

You strive for consensus as you confront difficult problems. You work the problem and you know that attacking the person is counter-productive. You seek to avoid antagonism. You strive to embrace dissonance. Yet something is missing. It still seems like you are caught in the middle. Everything seems to be a compromise. You avoid some of the anger but no one is satisfied. You address some of the problems but you just cannot solve everything. You are stuck in the middle and you know it.

One day you hear a man speaking and he tells you that he has a dream. He has a vision of a day when people will no longer judge each other by the color of their skin or the model of car they drive. This reminds you of the lectures on the mountain. This reminds you of the ideals that we dream of without being able to reach. What are you supposed to do with such a vision?
The answer is that we are supposed to live like it is possible. We need to act like that far distant future could be tomorrow.

When we ignore the problems of the world and isolate ourselves from the frustration and anger then we use a conflict resolution style called smoothing.

When we tell others what to do and ignore their protests then we use a conflict resolution style called forcing. We use force to get compliance even if the force is only verbal. And we tune out the dissonance as they tell us about the problems we create.

When we receive anger back in response to our anger and we both perceive there is a problem then we create chaos. Chaos is a whirlwind that cannot be stopped unless both parties terminate the antagonism.

Compromise is a conflict resolution style that leaves no one happy.

Confronting the problem without anger means that we need to listen attentively to the full discussion about the problem. Confronting requires a high tolerance for dissonance and the ability to dampen the antagonism. Remember, antagonism is not just overt is it also an internalized feeling of resentment.

The vision for the future is alignment. Alignment with other people and alignment with ideals.
Performing

People are social. We cannot live in isolation. Thus we form communities.

One of the most common types of a community is called a team. When a team is first organized everyone treats each other formally. We avoid antagonism and we avoid mentioning the differences. We all want to be liked and we all want to look like we belong.

The next step in organizing a team is to start staking out territories and establishing boundaries. This seems like a primitive behavior but it is human. And most of us respond to territorial encroachments with anger. In team formation theory this stage is called storming. There is internal contention, expressions of antagonism and a tendency to act without first stopping to listen.

When things go well a team will begin to explore a stage called "norming". This is supposed to be the normal state of affairs. When we get to this stage we honor the differences and learn to respect our distinctive skills. In order to hold this together we minimize the antagonism. Perhaps we resent someone but we treat them politely. We act as if there is little antagonism. We act as if we want to hear all the differing opinions. Sometimes we slip out of norming and go back to storming. Sometimes we stop somewhere in between and compromise.

When we are aligned then we hear the dissonance and respond with love. This is rare among teams. Every time there is a change in the team the team has to go back to forming, work through storming, struggle to get back to norming and then again try to reach performing. Thus teams that are in the performing stage require cultural stability and they require that everyone gets past their antagonism. To truly make it to performing requires that the people in the team learn to anticipate each other and act with love.

This is not easy but it is expected. Remember what the tour guide said: we need to love our enemies.

It is when we are globally aligned that we see the vision of the Kingdom of God.

The problem is that we find it too easy to seek cheap tranquility, too easy to demand our own way, too difficult to get out of the chaos that surrounds us and too hard to get beyond the normal state of affairs.

Small Kingdoms

We cannot change the world all at once. But we can change one small part of this world. Small groups of people allow us to practice. If you change your team and you will change the world. Not all of it, but part of it.

Listen to each other. Value the differences and learn from our diversity. Seek the dissonance. Find the acts that we do that cause pain to others and right the wrong. This is hard work. But the result when we ignore each other is a contagious spread of pain and anguish. And our human response is anger.

Find the anger and dampen it. Seek the anger in your heart and turn it into love.

The way forward has been laid out for us quite clearly. Jesus taught the way forward when he preached his sermon on the mountain. Martin Luther King Jr described his dream of one day seeing all of the wrongs set right. Think of the other saintly souls that you know who have told us that the answer to our anger is love. The answer to our problems is to work together. The vision has been made clear.

Now we need to do something about it. Start with your family. Spread this sense of listening and loving to small groups of people around you. Expend energy on taking us one day closer to that vision.

Change yourself and you change those around you. Change those around you and you change the world.

Do not allow yourself to be deceived by the distractions that sedate your mind. Look around and see the gap between what should be and what is now. Then do something about it. And when in doubt, remember that the tour guide for this journey is always there when you pray.