BE: Identity and Character

Healing the Heart of Conflict: 8 Crucial Steps to Making Peace with Yourself and Others
by Mark Gopin, Ph.D.

Rabbi and international mediator Marc Gopin presents an 8-step process - based on the great religious traditions, philosophy, and psychology - for healing even the most destructive, and seemingly intractable, conflicts.

For more than 20 years Marc Gopin has sought to resolve bitter disputes in a variety of domestic and international settings. What he has learned - working for peace in sticky world trouble spots such as the Middle East and Northern Ireland - is that some conflicts, rooted in the deepest, most primal emotions, cannot be solved by 'rational' discussion and negotiation. Instead the answer lies along a path of self-examination and spiritual growth.

In his new book, Gopin details a process that will help people free themselves from the soul-poisoning effects of destructive conflict. The 8 steps he describes teach us how to:

• Examine our inner lives so that our character becomes a true ally of healing
• Pay close attention to the power of our emotions and those of others in conflict
• Understand the dynamics of difficult situations
• Imaging creative solutions that no one dared see
• Take powerful action that completely transforms hopeless situations

Serious and profound, beautifully written and sorely needed, this book can lead anyone to a healing of the heart that works equally well in the family, professional, and geopolitical spheres.

Who we are as individuals has everything to do with how we get along with others. Step One prompts us to ask ourselves, "What inside of me is contributing to this conflict, and what do I have to gain from it?"

BE: TO EXAMINE THE DEEPEST ROOTS OF CONFLICT WITHIN OURSELVES AND MAKE OUR OWN PERSONALITIES INTO AN ESSENTIAL AID IN HEALING CONFLICTS.

Being able to see yourself as you are can be the most important step in facing the damage that's been done as well as the damage that can be undone inside of us all. This step is not easy, and yet it contains the most promise for leading us away from suffering and toward happiness. Even if this is the only step you take, you will surely be on the road to healing at least the conflict within yourself. The beauty of the Eight Steps, however, is that one naturally leads to the next. Once you see what role you play in perpetuating a difficult situation, that knowledge will change your attitude toward others, which in turn can begin the healing. Many people go through their whole lives suffering in conflict, not knowing why. Just looking into the mirror will lead to surprising growth.

Terry Smith felt that her colleagues at work had been avoiding her for months and, the more she thought about it, maybe even years. This weighed on her not only as a baffling aspect of her professional life but also at the basic level of her personal identity. She had given up family for career, and yet a career without respectful colleagues can feel like no career at all. Terry felt assaulted by lower-level workers seeking her help for one thing or another while neither the powerful partners in the firm nor her peers included her in the really big projects.

From what Terry said, it did seem that some people were avoiding her. And so she went on day after day feeling like a victim. But her version was not the full story. Terry had a habit of taking on more work than she could handle. She was so insecure that she said yes to every project. She tried to insert herself into everything because otherwise she felt she would not be where the action was. In so doing, she was failing badly at the basic requirements for becoming a permanent partner in her firm. She left projects half finished and then covered up her failings or blamed them on others. She would complain loudly about the burden under which she worked, but then when others would leave her alone to complete the work she would cry foul and claim exclusion. This behavior made her unreliable, but also dangerous to be around. Her internal conflict had caused her to lose the trust of her colleagues. To repair the damage done to her professional career as well to regain a sense of personal happiness, Terry needed to examine her own character.

Self-Examination as a Start

Often we will become "attached" to a particular conflict or even to a series of conflicts as the way to be in the world. This hard reality may run completely against our intuition; we tend to think of conflict as happening to us, not something we encourage. In the heat of a destructive conflict the very idea that we might need to examine our own motives seems ridiculous, insulting, wrong; it seems like that's blaming the victim—us. But acknowledging our own role is the first and most important step in order to prepare the way for a clearer understanding of our conflicts.

Self-examination yields insights about what is going on inside us at any given moment and how it subtly but decisively can lead to conflict. Consider what I call the spiral of anger. This spiral commonly begins when one person does something relatively minor to hurt another, provoking a reaction that notches up subsequent responses to a more hurtful level until there is a full-blown breakdown in relations. Let's look at this phenomenon in the context of a typical day, during which, for most of us, there are many stressors and many opportunities to get sucked into such a spiral.

Sara rolls out of bed in the morning and heads straight for the bathroom scale, where she sees that she's gained two pounds literally overnight. She feels frustrated as she thinks back to what she ate yesterday. She curses her genes, which she blames for her difficulty in losing weight, but deep down she is also angry and disappointed with herself.

She proceeds to her daughter's room to wake her up for school. Sara is already in a frustrated state, and so when she discovers that her daughter is sneezing uncontrollably, seemingly in the grips of an allergy attack, Sara reacts to the situation rather than remaining centered in herself. Now she is feeling impatient with her daughter as well as with herself. Sara's self-directed anger has spiraled into the family sphere.

Then Sara goes downstairs to the kitchen and over her morning coffee hears about yet another terrorist attack on the radio. Her children see her reacting to the news and sense the tension she's experiencing even before she's dressed for work. The result of this spiral of anger is a bad start to the day for everyone.

Now let's look at the opposite, what I call the spiral of resilience that can spin things in the opposite direction. Like many people, I have some difficulty confronting people with whom I am upset. My little daughter has no such inhibition. She'll telephone a friend who has been ignoring her in school and state exactly how she is feeling. She listens while also pointing out why she is hurt. They settle matters in a couple of minutes! I stand aghast and impressed by the speed and ease of her engagement. In a moment my seven year old has displayed more negotiation skills than my wife and I could have hoped for.

Similarly, self-examination led six important political leaders of the latter half of the twentieth century to take immense risks with their careers and even their lives. They did it in order to save millions of human beings from war and endless conflict: Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Yitshak Rabin of Israel, Mikhael Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, R W. de Klerk of South Africa, and Nelson Mandela, also of South Africa.

President Sadat made an unprecedented peace offer to Israel that resulted in the historic Camp David Accords, the first accords in history between an Arab Islamic country and the state of Israel. Sadat began the process with his daring visit to Jerusalem and to Israel's Parliament on November 7, 1977. This set off condemnation of Sadat throughout the Arab world, and eventually he was assassinated by Islamic radicals. Sadat was greatly admired by President Jimmy Carter. In a speech before the People's Assembly of Egypt on March 10, 1979, Carter said, "I feel admiration for the land of Egypt, and I feel a profound respect for the people of Egypt and for your leader, President Sadat, who has reached out his strong hand to alter the very course of history.... Sixteen months ago, one man—Anwar el-Sadat—rose up and said, 'Enough of war. It is time for peace.' The extraordinary journey of President Sadat to Jerusalem began the process which has brought me here today. Your president has demonstrated the power of human courage and human vision to create hope where there had been only despair."

Some years later, Israeli prime minister Yitshak Rabin made an unprecedented series of official overtures to the Palestinian leadership as he initiated a process of official negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. He, too, was severely condemned by Jewish extremists. He, too, was assassinated. On the last night of his life he went to a peace rally attended by tens of thousands in support of the negotiations. Friends say that on that night he was truly happy.

In 1993, F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa." Both leaders avoided what could have easily been yet another African tragedy of genocide and ethnic warfare. De Klerk was branded as a traitor by many in the white community who felt that he was putting their entire future at risk. The threat of personal harm was certainly real, as he, too, could have been killed by extremists. Further, his historic move toward power-sharing would not benefit de Klerk personally, as there was no way that after more than a century of repression black Africans would turn to a white man for leadership. Mandela, too, took grave risks preaching on the one hand reconciliation and on the other amnesty for so many criminals of the apartheid era.

Mikhael Gorbachev, likewise, paved the way for the end of both the Soviet Empire and the Cold War. For this he was popular in the West but not at home, and he lost power rather quickly. The Soviet Union could have limped along decades longer, brutally suppressing efforts to break it up. There could have been numerous wars with breakaway states, and one shudders to think about what could have happened to the USSR's vast arsenal of nuclear weapons in the wrong hands. Everyone knew that by opening up the Soviet Union to change, Gorbachev could also open up a floodgate of disintegration. The Russian state was a fragile amalgam of many different nationalities artificially forced together, but any move to shrink it or even suggest that possibility must have felt to millions of proud Soviets like a threat to their very existence. In the hands of leaders of less vision, the Soviet Union could have engaged in countless wars of enforced unification, not just one war in Chechnya.

Together, these courageous leaders took a stand for peace and saved millions of lives. They did not do what was politically expedient; instead they did something that is astonishing and all too rare in human history-they risked their political careers and indeed their lives for the sake of what was right and what was needed. These men were not paragons of self-examination at every moment. They were just as prone to impetuous, thoughtless behavior as the rest of us. Yet at a critical moment of their mature lives they asked the truly important questions of themselves, and the answers they came back with gave them wisdom and the courage of their convictions.

There have been endless studies on the political and economic circumstances that led to these fateful choices, but most overlook the fact that these men made choices inside their hearts. Their decision to take an active and honest role in ending complicated conflicts entailed intensely personal self-examination. They asked themselves the kinds of questions that ultimately all of us should ask: about the meaning of our lives, about what we are willing to sacrifice and even die for, and about the legacy we leave behind. These are the indispensable questions of being.

In the examples I've given, I've tried to show the personal, the familial, and the international ramifications of understanding and facing our anger. We have but to see how anger can affect human relations, and how real healing can be accomplished, to learn how to address conflict in our own lives. And it all starts with intensive self-examination and observation-with learning how to be with ourselves.

Self-Examination as a Spiritual Journey

It is human nature to be only partially conscious of what really moves us to act. Again and again in difficult situations we find ourselves reacting in ways that surprise us, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. And so we grow by learning from our experiences, by looking at how we live. The examined life is one in which we are always checking ourselves, acutely aware of what is happening to us right here, right now, on this day, at this moment. By being in the moment like this we can gain important perspective on all aspects of our lives. Further, a heightened sense of being is conducive to avoiding destructive conflict so that we can concentrate on the truly important issues of who we want to be, now and in the future, as family members, as friends, as productive citizens, and as leaders.

Developing the capacity for self-examination has been a goal of many spiritual traditions. One of the Eightfold Paths in Buddhism, for example, is Right Understanding. In Judaism, behinat ha-nefesh, examination of the soul, is a critical component of moral growth, characterized often as a long-term or lifelong process of teshuvah, repentance, or more literally, turning toward or returning to one's Creator. Confession in the Catholic tradition and discernment in the Mennonite and Quaker traditions also entail careful examination of both our inner lives and outer responses to the world around us. In confronting our inner lives, we may face such unpleasant sensations as loneliness, frustration, anger, jealousy, and impatience. Rather than suppressing these things, we get to know them well and even treat them as old friends. Even if we see these traits in sharp contrast to our better selves, it is important to know our enemies, to know all their little tricks, in order to overcome them. An old rabbinic adage from the first century teaches, "Who is a true hero? He who can make an enemy into a friend." If we become friendly with the more destructive side of our inner lives, we learn how to neutralize its worst effects.

Taking up Terry's case as an example again, she had to face up to her good qualities as well as those qualities that were alienating her from others. She needed to see the complicated way in which her best impulses, such as agreeing eagerly to every project in order to please everyone, actually led her down a path of anger, alienation, and poor performance. Sometimes people like Terry cannot see their own negative role in any way, but I have found that the more supportive, the more private, and the safer the environment is in which they are exploring these painful matters, the more likely that my conversations with them will combine seamlessly with their own self-examination. This is especially true when I combine that process with a great many compliments because at the very moment that all of us are forced to face something negative about ourselves, that is precisely when we need the most support from appreciative friends. Only then can we discover honesty. Honesty in self-examination is like a powerful medicine, but it cannot be ingested without a great deal of sweetness.

Self-Care

In order to engage a path of self-examination, especially in the midst of tough conflicts, we must prepare ourselves. We must engage in a great deal of self-care and even self-love. Being honest with ourselves is not about shattering our sense of self or blaming all conflicts on ourselves. Excessive self-blame is especially dangerous for women who, in many cultures, are conditioned to take on blame in a conflict situation. On the contrary, it is about embracing who we are completely and seeing the best in ourselves in order to admit to the problems we have.

I have conducted numerous training programs for students of conflict resolution over the years. I remember Stacy, a wonderful student from England who wept uncontrollably when there were any difficult moments in the one weeklong conflict-resolution training program that I was conducting. As difficult as the sessions could be emotionally, I sensed that something else was wrong. It eventually emerged that Stacy and another woman in the class had both experienced either spousal or sexual abuse and were deeply wounded. The other woman, Nita, was unnaturally silent in class, more so than anyone else.

It became apparent that neither woman had the courage to confront her inner conflict, and that any difficult encounter resulted in a self-inflicted shutting down through weeping in one case and in the other case, silence. They were hurting themselves because they could not benefit from the give-and-take of conversation, role-playing, and other aspects of the training. They needed to unmask the damaged aspects of themselves in order to flourish more fully in social settings. Their negotiation of moments of conflict needed to be less focused on blaming themselves and more on the problems they saw in others.

Stacy and Nita had exactly the opposite problem as Terry! If they could avoid internalizing the conflict and inflicting hurt on themselves, they could become better equipped for later stages of healing conflict, such as listening and speaking effectively. They could not do this until they stopped blaming themselves.

I had intense encounters with Stacy, and she wept through most of them. Since then she has written to me that she is doing fabulously well in her life. When she came to my class what she was ostensibly looking for were skills to help others with conflicts. What she needed to do first, and in fact what she did finally do in that fateful week of training, was the healing work of caring about herself.

A Capacity for Humility

What we learn from both Stacy and Terry's cases is that sometimes we need to appreciate how really wounded we are and how much we have to heal ourselves in order to move on in healing conflicts with others. But sometimes people have the opposite challenge: They need to stop blaming everyone else for a moment, take a hard look at what they are being accused of by others, and consider how subtle habits of their own attitudes and behaviors set in motion bad relations with others.

Facing this challenge takes an important moral quality- humility. The people who negotiate conflicts the best are people who have an ability to poke fun at themselves without falling apart. The humility derives from an inner strength of character, not weakness. That strength is ultimately disarming in dealing with potential friends and even adversaries.

Millions of people around the world have an abiding respect for the Dalai Lama of Tibet. He is revered by millions as a leader of his religious faith, Buddhism, but also because he is fighting against the repression of occupation under which his people have lived for more than half a century. Many have died or been tortured, especially fellow monks. The situation has improved over time for Tibetans inside the country, but the Dalai Lama remains in exile, as does Tibet's original government and tens of thousands of other Tibetans. The Chinese Communist government continues to transfer thousands of Han Chinese citizens into the land of Tibet, hoping to destroy any hope for the reconstitution of the Tibetan people inside their land.

The Dalai Lama is an amazingly engaging speaker and a prolific writer, but it is his charm that is so captivating. A critical component of that charm, and one of the reasons we tend to believe what he says, is his capacity for humility. There is hardly a major talk that he delivers where he does not poke fun at something about himself or his Buddhist community, or in which he does not engage in mischievous behavior that makes light of his personal dignity.

I will never forget the day that I appeared on a panel with him. Thousands of people from every walk of life were in the audience. The Dalai Lama comes with a large entourage, including a translator, but he seemed frustrated that day by the translator. He wanted one, but he very badly wanted to communicate directly in English. He had just switched to the translator, but as the translator was translating, the Dalai Lama bent down to the floor and started playing with a child near his feet. We did not know what to do-watch him distracted on the floor, or listen to his words only then being translated. Around that time, the Dalai Lama had been quoted as saying, "Enough with all the chanting!" Now, chanting is an important part of Tibetan spirituality, and he was not implying that they get rid of it. But he was ready to take a look at himself and raise questions about how he has spent half of his life as a monk. By playing with children while speaking to us he was above all being himself. Everyone attending the panel learned a profound lesson that day.

The Dalai Lama gains many allies in his struggle for justice this way. Without a single soldier in his army he has gained the support of people from around the world-rich and poor, famous and anonymous-due to his extraordinary character. Fortunately it has become difficult for the Chinese government to kill him or crush his cause with such a following.

A key component of the Dalai Lama's character is a unmistakable generosity toward his adversaries. When you can see and admit faults in yourself it is also easier to be charitable to your adversaries. It is easier to give them the benefit of the doubt, to try to see the best in them, even as you oppose the cruel things that they have done. When we think of how the Dalai Lama does this we have to see him as the representative of his people in confrontation with the people of China. The most frequent excuse for Chinese brutality against Tibet and prejudice against its people has been that they are seen as backward. That is exactly why the Dalai Lama tirelessly engages Western science, for example, in order to teach his people a new way of being in the world. In this way he models how he as a leader and representative has to own up to the imperfections of Tibet's culture and past. In doing so, he clearly hopes that the Chinese will have the courage to do the same.

To be both self-confident and self-critical challenges all adversaries to do the same, to copy your behavior and respond in kind. If they refuse to respond in kind, however, the dignity and generosity of your behavior is endearing to bystanders and onlookers, which strengthens you in your just struggle.

So far the Dalai Lama has not been able to move the Chinese leadership into a constructive relationship with the Tibetan people, although things have improved considerably since the dark days of China's Cultural Revolution during the late 1960s. It is estimated that more than eleven million people died across China, most of the monasteries of Tibet were destroyed, and thousands of monks were murdered by Chinese Red Guards. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama's inner skills have strengthened his position and his people's destiny. He is a model of someone whose very being can confront destructive conflict in a powerful way. With every new book he writes that exudes a confident-but not arrogant-wisdom, with every new overture to the Chinese leaders, he is doing what he can to keep the conflict between Tibet and China to legitimate issues that should eventually be subject to reasonable negotiation and compromise. He has resisted personalizing the conflict or using it as an opportunity for violence. He could have easily done so. He lost everything at the hands of the Chinese, lost many of his monks to brutal murder, and almost lost his own life as he escaped. But his nonviolent approach leaves the door always open for even his worst enemies. Under the extreme situation that exists between the Tibetan people and the Chinese government, it is doubtful that any leader could have kept his people as safe and as hopeful as the Dalai Lama has.

Courage to Acknowledge

Humility also implies the capacity to say and believe the words "I do not know the answer to that." This statement implies an openness to discovering paths forward that you have not thought of or that may be the opposite of what you had planned. This openness is critical in conflict situations. When you are arguing for a position in negotiations, who are you going to believe, the person who fights every single point and always must be right or the person who can distinguish between his own mistakes and other important issues?

For example, I am not inclined to trust the Chinese government that denied for months in 2003 that there was a SARS epidemic until it had gotten out of control. It was revealed that Chinese officials actually hid cases from international inspectors. This deception did a great disservice to all the decent Chinese doctors who were working feverishly to contain the epidemic, and it endangered lives around the world.

This trait of knowing when you don't know all the facts or understand all the conflicting feelings involved in a conflict is another aspect of being honest with yourself. It involves what is commonly called a reality check. It's important to reflect on how much you are pursuing some conflict because of the right and wrong of a certain situation and how much you are determined to satisfy your own ego. Practice in and concentration on humility gives a person flexibility and is central to being a good healer of one's own conflicts and those of others. It requires allowing for other interpretations of your own values. The vast majority of our conflicts are not over differing values but over differing interpretations of shared values. Learning to live with others who have different interpretations of the same values is one of the key goals on the path to being.

Two parents love their children and think that making financial sacrifices for them is difficult but essential to their happiness. They share values such as a strong belief in the advantage of a good education and a healthy lifestyle. Their son, Max, is a bright child who is stimulated when exploring new talents, but he does not thrive in classrooms. Max also needs to exercise to be physically stronger. He loves swimming and he loves chess, and he has an opportunity to pursue one or the other of these activities, but not both. Both options are expensive. Father gets behind swimming because he remembers how debilitating it is to be considered a weakling. Mother knows how difficult it is in life to be taken seriously intellectually, and so she leans toward chess. The parents fight over which activity Max should pursue, chess or swimming.

It would certainly help them get past the conflict if they were able to see how their own, personal experiences influenced their choices for their children. They both need to watch carefully-as all parents do-when they are projecting their own needs onto their children. This first step, being, suggests that they step back for a moment from their own viewpoints and openly acknowledge their most cherished shared value-namely, their love and care for Max's future. They could say to themselves, "Wait a second. I know we both want the same thing here: a happy, healthy kid with a bright future. Am I so sure that my suggestion is the only one that will accomplish this goal of ours? Maybe my spouse is right. If we just discuss this together, maybe we can figure out how to achieve both goals over the long term."

Some conflicts are between right and wrong, better and worse, but most are not. Most are self-righteous struggles over good, shared values. But when no one is listening to anyone else, perspective is lost. Humility gives us the space to examine what values we may in fact share with our adversary in order to approach a situation in a more constructive way.

Finding Meaning in Conflict

Another major cause of conflict is something that, in principle, should be a positive endeavor: the search for meaning in life. Unfortunately, sometimes people decide that fighting can provide such meaning. This outlook is most tempting when family or business relationships become confused or when lives have been shattered by changes in fortune. "I can't be the owner of my own business the way I thought I could. I am going on fifty now, and I will never have enough spare capital. But I am sure as hell going to get back at that S.O.B. who refused to give me a simple loan. I don't care how rich he is or how smart he thinks he is. He stiffed me. He ruined my chances at a decent life, and I am going to let everyone know who he really is." "Mom is never going to treat me with the respect I deserve, no matter what I do. But I sure don't have to put up with that sad excuse for a stepfather that she has thrust into our lives." I have also experienced this kind of thinking in communities that have been devastated by decades of violence. "Everyone in my family has either been killed or hopelessly impoverished by them. I will not stop until I have driven them out of this region. I did not know what to do with my life until now. Now I know that those pigs are to blame for these hardships. I have finally figured out that this is the fight that is worth living and dying for. I will be the stuff of legends; my father would have expected nothing less."

Shifting ourselves and our adversaries away from fighting requires discovery of a meaningful way to exist in relation to others that does not require conflict, anger, or hatred. Just getting ourselves to look in the mirror and face what conflict does for us is half the battle in altering our style of interaction with others. Only then can we begin to search for new ways to find meaning without violence or endless conflict.

It may be human nature to sit back and recognize in others that conflict is ruining their personalities and their options in life, but conflict is more insidious than that. What we should be looking for is not what it does to others, or what it does to us, but rather what it does for us and for others. Looking from that vantage point will put us in a much better position to undermine conflict's addictive quality.

Attachment to destructive conflict as a part of one's identity often has tragic consequences. I remember interviewing someone once, we will call him Steve, who was so embedded in war with another group that he was talking seriously about the need to assassinate his own leader, who was about to compromise with the other side. He and I were sitting under some trees, relaxing over lunch. He subtly broached the subject in a way that would test my response. He said, "I don't know. Something has to be done about him. Maybe somebody has to do something." Less than a year later, that leader, Yitshak Rabin, was dead.

My startled reaction to what Steve said is exactly the reason why we end up understanding so little about people and why so many interventions are a waste of time. We avoid the really deep places of rage, preferring instead to talk to more "civilized" folks. What we really need to do is probe further at these rare moments, ask more questions, and listen deeply. We need to probe ourselves just as much for the quiet places of rage and attachment to destructive solutions to our problems.

When I probed Steve about his beliefs, his justification shocked me in its candor. He did not know who he would be without this war. He had sacrificed decades of his life to his nationalist cause, and decades cannot be retrieved. He did not even know why he would remain a citizen of his country if he could not fight. "Why not go and be rich in America?" he said. What he was fighting for was an ethnically pure country with which he could completely identify. Steve became the country and the country became him. If his country were to be at peace and become an equal, truly multicultural society, then he believed it would become just another materialistic country and he would become just another barren capitalist with no sense of meaning and no unique identity.

I had to contain my revulsion and see Steve as he saw himself. I believe that Steve was on a journey of meaning; he was looking to escape materialism in his own life. He wanted something more, and he found that not inside himself or in his own lifestyle, where it would have been healthy. Rather, he found meaning in ultranationalism, in an overidentifica-tion with race and group superiority.

The search for meaning is resolved for many of us through our bonding to something larger than ourselves, such as the care of and love for children or a country, a large clan, or a religion. This bonding gets tricky, however, because in Steve's case he expected his country to be exactly what he dreamed it would be, an ethnically pure state, in order for him to be personally fulfilled. It is not the search for meaning that is inherently unhealthy, but the discovery of meaning through social oppression and violence.

Many people hold onto a conflict as if they were holding on for dear life. They change their lives and their identities so much for the sake of conflict that they do not know who they are or what to do with themselves without it. They have become the conflict.

Mourning Old Identities as a Way Forward

If you recognize just a little of yourself so far, then you are on the right track toward self-examination, toward being. If you also recognize an adversary, or a family member, or a coworker, then in taking this step for yourself, you may end up having a powerful influence on those around you.

In later chapters we will examine other alternatives to this attachment to conflict, and all the steps combined are designed explicitly to give meaning to life without destructive conflict. Here are some initial recommendations based on being.

A key to healing the heart of conflict is facing head-on the fact that you need a change in your identity, an identity that you treasure. Sometimes you can take advantage of abrupt shifts in circumstances to create a change in identity and sources of meaning in your life. And you must mourn over that lost identity. Mourning is a powerful way in which we shift identity. When I have mourned in the past over lost relatives and teachers, for example, I distinctly remember also mourning over the loss of who I was in relation to them, the dependence that I developed on those relationships. Sometimes an entire meaning system for my life depended on a loved one's life. Mourning signals the end, the wrenching process of purging that old personal identity, making way eventually for a new one. It can take years, and that is fine, as long as the path is being taken.

Alan Crenshaw is a thoughtful religious leader from Northern Ireland with a reputation in his community for honesty and integrity. As the Peace Accords of 1998 were beginning to have a positive impact on relations between Catholics and Protestants in 2000, I received a call from Alan. I did not know him, but he had read my first book, in which I have a portion on mourning the past, and he was eager to ask my advice. Alan proceeded to ask me an astonishing question: "Can you help me figure out a way for my community to mourn over this [the peace process] in a way that will not be destructive? We don't know who we are going to be without this [the Protestant/Catholic conflict]." For me, standing outside the Northern Irish/Ulster conflict, I was elated by news of progress. I thought that anyone and everyone would be relieved by the end of violence and the beginning of a peace process. It never occurred to me that peace could evoke mourning, but Alan was extremely perceptive.

It is true that I had written about the need for enemies to mourn their dead and mourn each other's dead as a way to reconcile. But it never occurred to me, until Alan posed the question, that people need to mourn their past identity in order to build a new one with a new way of discovering a meaningful life.

Alan sensed a kind of mourning already underway in his people, but he wisely saw that such mourning can either be constructive or destructive. It can lead to violent expressions of anger, or it can lead to the discovery of a new identity and new meaning. It would depend, at least in some measure, on his leadership, on other leaders, and ultimately on the choices inside everyone's hearts.

We talked about ritual, and about learning from how we mourn the dead-celebrating their good points and trying to move people on in their lives, focusing them on the reasons they have to live.

What if the people in that congregation didn't have someone like Alan? Other leaders might let them live in denial, the way human beings do when they cannot face the fact that a loved one has died. They pretend everything is the same politically in Northern Ireland, and yet reality creeps in and assaults their stability and sanity.

Hypothetically speaking, these folks, without Alan's guidance, might lash out in rage when reality hits, such as when someone from the other group moves in next door or when their own child ends up playing with a child from the other group in school. They might take the law into their own hands with threats and assaults, even against little children who are attempting to go to an integrated school. Some people actually did this in Northern Ireland, and their reactions outraged the world, and yet they could not understand everyone's outrage at their behavior.

Such folks are determined to renew the war because they are completely ill-equipped for a new identity and path of meaning. They do not know who they are in the present because they only know who they are in the romantic past. They have not mourned their dead or the death of their old war-based identity. Denial is a natural stage of grief, but when people stay in that stage they often end up acting self-destructively.

Alan Crenshaw is a wise man, and we have to consider ourselves fortunate that there are leaders like him in Northern Ireland. He has taught us that wherever possible, and as soon as possible, we must express grief over our conflict and the way in which it has fed our lives. We must actively pursue mourning in order to embark upon a new path of spiritual and personal meaning.

Defining Ourselves in New Ways

Another challenge of examining our being is facing the fact that sometimes we come to define ourselves against another person. It seems unavoidable in certain circumstances. This relationship may become the basis of our identity and a way to distinguish between good and evil in the world. For example, maybe you were not sure who you really wanted to be in sixth grade, what kind of role you wanted to play in your class or in the schoolyard. But then one day you saw two older kids picking on a weaker kid. Maybe that day you stood up to the bullies, and that action became part of your identity. Life is filled with opportunities for us to define ourselves this way, and there is no shortage of criminals at home and abroad that serve nicely as a foil for everything we consider evil in the world. Since our own sense of self is always evolving, it is easy to succumb to this way of defining ourselves.

What we do or don't do so often defines us, to ourselves and to others. President George W. Bush said in a number of speeches in 2001 that he was not sure how his presidency would be defined, what legacy he would leave, but the war on terror and terrorists-for better or for worse-would answer this question for him. On the other hand, self-definition is a tricky thing. If you define yourself by war, if it is your legacy, then military options can easily become your only solution to complex problems, and it will always narrow your set of options as to what is the best and most right thing to be done.

It does often seem to be the case that we need to define ourselves against something. The question remains how we can do this without falling into the trap of negative or destructive self-definitions that only lead to perpetual conflicts with others. There is a common expression, "Hate the sin, not the sinner." This expression has its origins in both Jewish and Christian religious sources from about the same period of the first century of the Common Era. The New Testament cites this idea, and in the Jewish rabbinic literature it is taught by way of story.

Rabbi Meir, one of the most brilliant and influential rabbis of the first century, was regularly assaulted on the roads by robbers. Rabbi Meir used to pray to God that the robbers should die, but his wife, Beruriah, a controversial and powerful woman of the Talmudic period, rebuked him. She cited a verse from the Bible and interpreted it in such a way as to express hope for sins to cease from this world, rather than sinners. The story continues that Rabbi Meir then prayed for the sins of the robbers to cease and then they stopped attacking him.

Religious stories from thousands of years ago can be quite cryptic, and we therefore may interpret them as simply miraculous cases of divine intervention. But I think that this story is trying to teach us to confront destructive behavior in the world from a healing perspective. Though it illustrates a way to eliminate destructive behavior, it can be seen as recommending an approach that does not abandon people, even those who are trying to hurt us in some way.

Coming back to our own conflicts, the implicit lesson is that if a recurring problem in our lives has formed an essential part of our identity, then let it be focused on conflict with particular things in the world that we resist or oppose rather than be fixated on other human beings. By fixating on the wrongs that we oppose, we do not abandon people but leave the door open to transforming bad relationships or helping others change in a positive way. If, for example, you are angry with your brother for how he has treated your parents, then be angry with the behavior, not your brother. Understand him, even sympathize with him, but stand against the bad behavior. In that way you can maintain your identity, deal effectively with the conflict without damaging yourself with hatred, and also leave the door open to your adversary to improve his relationship with you.

Here then are the key suggestions of Step One: Make self-study or self-examination a regular part of your life, especially that part of your life that involves ongoing conflict. Every week take time out to imagine yourself like a book to be studied or a movie to be watched. Watch yourself in your relations, and take a good hard look.

Care for yourself when you are engaged in tough examinations. No matter how many relationships are in a mess, do not take all the blame on yourself. No matter who is telling you that you are no good, be careful to not internalize the anger in such a way that destroys your sense of self. Be kind to yourself regularly, even as you take a good hard look at your behavior. Treat yourself to the things you love, especially on the days dedicated to self-examination. Work on yourself in environments you love, such as at the beach, on top of a beautiful mountain, or right before dining on a fabulous set of spare ribs.

When you get into the details of your conflict, try to look at it through humble eyes. No matter how clear everything seems, keep in mind that no one, not even raving geniuses, is brilliant enough to stay objective about themselves. Accept the possibility that you may share more values with your adversaries than you realize and that you can build on that even as you disagree on the interpretation of those shared values.

Take the time every week to search for the fulfillment of meaning in your life in at least one way that does not involve any destructive conflicts. Try to steadily build that into a happier sense of self that does not need conflict to flourish.

© 2004 by Mark Gopin. All rights reserved. No Part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

About the Author

Mark Gopin, Ph.D. is director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginai. Rabbi Gopin has worked with several U.S. administrations and numerous organizations on peace efforts in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Africa, and other world trouble spots. He appears on CNN and NPR, and in the international press, as an expert on the art of conflict resolution His books include Between Eden and Armageddon and Holy War, Holy Peace.