A Conflict is on......

Conflict is a peculiar word that we often use more out of a habitual understanding of the world around us. Habit is something which we seem to repeat again and again in a sort of pattern to deal with our environment….or may be Oneself.

Do you resent doing what you are doing? It may be your job, or you may have agreed to do something and are doing it, but a part of you still resents and resists it. Are you carrying an unspoken resentment towards a person? Have a good look inside. Is there even a slight trace of resentment or unwillingness? Observe. What are the thoughts that make their presence felt without you even inviting them? Then observe the reaction to it. How do you feel? Pleasant or disagreeable? A conflict is on.

Now observe the way you respond. Try to go back and recollect similar episodes with different people. Forget your reactions and remember the effect. (Many a times not reacting, which one mistakes as a mature response is even more explosive.) Was it a conflict? Try to see a pattern in it? More often than not you shall find one. In the process what have you missed?

Here lies the catch. Every conflict in fact offers an opportunity to choose. Conflict cannot be without at least two things to choose from. Yes of course one chooses. But, how? We choose without knowing that we had something to choose from. As if a circumstance was thrusted upon us to test us and we had to cope up with the challenge. And how do we cope up with a challenge? Of course using the ways known best to us; that is, by resorting to our habits. So in short, we deal with our conflicts with a habitual response rather than using our ability to choose. Some people as mentioned are habitual not to respond. Just imagine the pressure these so called mature people subject themselves to.

A conflict has the ability to make one creative."In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced greater sculptor Michelangelo, Great painterLeonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."-Orson Welles(1915-85)

A Conflict has the ability to take us to those areas of our own house we never visited. Open those rooms we always were scared of. It has the ability to liberate that part of us which basically is chained to our habitual pattern. Yes. But for that, we shall have to unlearn whatever we have already tried and failed in an attempt to get a solution…We shall have to probably brush aside certain value systems…the value of which, one anyway never experiencedat all.

Sage Narada tells Sanatkumar in Chandogya Upanisad: “Only one, who knows the self, goes beyond sorrow.” By being aware of a conflict the unseen comes into view, the plethora of possibilities for remedial action open up. The fear of unknown vanishes as your list of probable results gets within sight.

The reason people have problems resolving conflicts are they fear that they could be exposed for being what they actually are not. In fact there is no such need to defend any value or dogma by identifying with it. If at all one needs to identify, it should be with the true nature of Self. And what is the true nature of Self? It is to disengage from any conflict as soon as possible. Values and dogmas as professed by the learned who have stopped learning, are highly relative and volatily ever changing as reflected in the following story. A Brahmin priest was returning home after taking his customary dip in the holy Ganga river. He was chanting his regular mantras on his rosary when he noticed a donkey lying dead on the road as a result of an obvious accident.

Deeply disturbed by the sight he remarked, “The killer of this animal shall go to hell.” While he was cursing so, someone informed him that accident was caused by his very own son. The Brahmin quickly retracted, “Actually the animal is relieved from the chain of birth and death and the one who facilitated this shall go to heaven.” Such values and dogmas which can never be put to test defy the very logic for what we are in this world for. They make us seek footprints in the sky.

Does the rose lose its value for sitting on a thorn? If your fingers bleed occasionally while picking it can the rose be blamed for that? We love the rose despite the thorns and the occasional bleeding that one could be subjected to by it because we accept the rose as it is. Accepting a conflict is the first step towards solving it. Then using our discretion in keeping the thorns from pricking us is our skill in dealing with the conflict.......... But can we really avoid a conflict?