Our anger can destroy the quality of our lives if we let it. How can we get beyond it?
This interview was done with a well-educated, successful Palestinian business man. His cultural background is different, meaning that this interview is a good example of how you can bridge great cultural differences with Integral Deep Listening. Doing so takes patience and a willingness to listen. The most important point is insisting that your client stay in role, because internal perspectives provide access to life-changing potentials that can make our dreams come true. On many occasions Samuel wanted to interject or speak. I had to ask, “Who is speaking, Fire, Rain, or Samuel? We are all habitually locked in the box of our waking world view. We are not used to taking other perspectives. IDL teaches this essential capability for growth and transformation.
We also see in this interview that Rain, an aspect of Samuel that transformed from Fire, is not the answer to all Samuel’s challenges even though it scores tens in just about everything. What it does is present a certain liberating perspective that is what he needs to grasp as a possibility, a potential, a goal without worrying so much about whether it is practical or not. He could simply allow himself to first experience and then grow into the possibility of a broader, different way of living his life. With each additional interview that Samuel does he will find, listen to, and follow his inner compass more strongly and with more confidence. As he does, he will awaken to the dream of his true potentials. Those potentials will awaken within him and he will become the unique, wonderful gift to humanity that all of us were born to be.
Notice that these issues are not Arab or Muslim issues. They are human issues, shared by all of us. How can we keep anger and action from freezing out inner calm and peace?
What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?
1 Money – my own business
2 I have four children in an American school. They need a lot of care
3. Conflicts with people: people who have been defeated usually imitate the other side. If you convince them they forget in a couple of days. There is the matter of how to build a country. They boycotted Israeli products in the occupied territories…
4. My social life. I spent eight years in prison. I became an advisor for people in Palestine. My main problem was how to change my language from an intellectual way to the language of Bedouins so they can deal with information objectively.
5. I will talk to people and they will agree with me because it is logical. Then they lose the idea and continue with what their biases are. What you think is one level and what you do is another. How do you shrink this gap between these two levels and make them one level? How to bridge this gap??
Which issue brings up the strongest feelings for you?
Conflicts with people – anger – too much pressure.
If those feelings had a color (or colors), what would it be?
Red
Imagine that color filling the space in front of you so that it has depth, height, width, and aliveness.
Now watch that color swirl, congeal, and condense into a shape. Don’t make it take a shape, just watch it and say the first thing that you see or that comes to your mind: An animal? Object? Plant? What?
Fire
Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor? It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are the shape that took form from your color and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind. If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!
Fire, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?
I am far away in front of Samuel, and small.
What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?
I don’t like myself.
Is that you or Samuel talking, Fire?
Stable fire exists everywhere. Under certain circumstances, if I grow, I will solve the problem.
What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses? What are they?
But if I get out of control, I’m dangerous.
(Character), you are in Samuel’s life experience, correct? He created you, right? What aspect of Samuel do you represent or most closely personify?
His mind. I represent control.
Fire, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change? If so, how?
Rain, as an example.
Try that..
I prefer to be rain all the time. But when I see the reality of the world it pushes me to be fire. I cannot choose to stay rain.
(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)
Rain, how would you score yourself 0-10, in each of the following six qualities: confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing? Why?
Confidence: 10 No side effect.
Compassion: 10 The most scary animals don’t avoid this rain.
Wisdom: 10 I am in the right place and the right amount.
Acceptance: 9
Inner Peace: 10
Witnessing: 10
Rain, if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different? If so, how?
I do (already)!
How would Samuel’s life be different if he naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?
He would be very happy! If he could maintain that his life would be much easier. Life without difficulties!
If you could live Samuel’s life for him, how would you live it differently?
I wouldn’t become angry if I saw stupidity.
If you could live Samuel’s waking life for him today, would you handle Samuel’s three life issues differently? If so, how?
I would be more calm. Samuel works 48 hours a day! I would reduce expectations. Everything comes out without thinking. He would have a less active life.
But if he doesn’t reduce his expectations and gets sick or dead, how much can he help his community?
He would have better health, less pain, enough time for himself.
The second issue was children: Almost the same (answer). I would be more patient. Life would go without punishment.
Conflicts with people: You have to ignore a big part of the conflicts.
Bridging the gap: Samuel is thinking like an old politician! I care about the gap but as rain I can’t do anything about that gap.
What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of Samuel’s life?
Emphasize literature and nature! Not money, not dealing with people’s psychological sickness, less light, more darkness. Keep contact to music, poetry. Not so much light on everything.
Note: Samuel lives in the Middle East where there is always much sun and much light and heat.
In what life situations would it be most beneficial for Samuel to imagine that he is you and act as you would?
When Samuel is alone. When Samuel is with people I get frozen out! I cannot find a place for myself in his very active life.
Why do you think that you are in Samuel’s life?
When Samuel is alone in his office reading or writing something, what he writes is emotional and sensitive. When he leaves to be with people the difference is great. There are two Samuels! I do not like it!
How is Samuel most likely to ignore what you are saying to him?
He’s not a bad person. He has a dream of being like rain!
What would you recommend that he do about that?
Give up his work!!! Start to move back from his action life in four years and go back to his nature!
Samuel, what have you heard yourself say?
Calm down! Life has different paces, shapes, if you deal with it in a different way.
Others comments: “The rain wants Samuel to go back to literature, to nature, The rain doesn’t like to go back to the freezer! Rain doesn’t have high expectations or needs like Samuel does. The rain knows that Samuel has the choice to choose. The rain doesn’t know how to close the gap between thinking and doing within Samuel and within others. The rain said that if Samuel could be more like it he would be even more patient with his children.”
If this experience were a wake-up call from the most central part of yourself, what do you think it would be saying to you?
It IS a message from my most central self. Life is more beautiful lived the other way! I want to give up being too much like Fire, and that’s it. But take it step by step!
