Conflict Resolution
This has been written keeping in mind a life inside an intentional community.
Humans are subject to get into conflicts with the beliefs systems they carry. We all have a tendency to believe what is right or wrong and hence we want people to behave or act according to our beliefs. This should be very much understood by all community members to thrive together in peace. We are subject to ideological disagreement and this also triggers anger, hatred or disliking towards others. What we should understand that our being or habit should not harm or damage other human life psychologically or physically.
Below is the list of disputes or beliefs we carry:
A. Vegetarian and Non-Vegetarian food eating
This should be a personal choice and we should not judge a person with his eating habits; the best spiritual people also had been non-vegetarian.
This is much related to the idea of violence; however we must know that in nature violence is imbibed in food chain and eating non-veg or vegetarian food could be very much subjective choice depending on the kind of body you have. During pregnancy a fruit like pappya and meat both could be harmful to human body. Choices of such food should be left on persons not on community consensus.
There are always non-violent way of eating non-vegetarian food and violent way of eating vegetarian food. So eating non-vegetarian food or vegetarian food should strike a balance for sustainability and should not be an ideological clash. One of the tribal communities where hunting is mandatory hunt animals with very many non-violent methods and pray and says sorry to the animal after killing the animal as to tell it that doing so was their survival need. We should be worried about weather eating animal is sustainable in application or not if yes then how much in quantity. Can animals live in the vicinity in a sustainable way? Some may be fine with eating animals and hence I would not judge them if they raise and eat animals as they eat plants. My concern would be they should not eat humans! If they someday decide to become vegetarian for any particular reason I would not consider them as great achievers either.
B. Atheism or Theism
This is a subject which is debatable so much that people can go on and on for years without coming to any conclusion.
Theist will always counter by saying “Absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence”. Logic is weak to prove anything when it comes to faith, love, belief etc; the belief of creation by naming it energy, force, God, operator, destroyer etc will always exist as it is much logical to believe that everything is done by someone so world would not exist without something behind it, even big-bang can be further countered by saying that there is some force which created big bang and that force we call the force of God. However; ideas like messenger, messiah, representative of God, Avtaar, Son of God, born out of virginity seems very unscientific and can be completely discarded by scientific theory but the funny part is that if someone really wants to argue then he will bring an argument by saying that in old times there were science which could make a women pregnant without intercourse and such examples are available in both eastern and western scriptures thus validating the idea of birth from a virgin; one can counter it by saying what science can do today could have been done thousands years back also as we can seen very high quality of constructions and engineering works in our history which are difficult to be repeated and they did it all without hi-tech machineries, hence birth from a virgin could be also possible!
The debates of Atheists against the ideas like child from virginity, some special avatar or messiah to save the Earth and humanity are very much logical as well. In fact being atheist or theist doesn’t change anything in human body and human behaviour. Both, Atheists and Theists can be bad and good persons.
The belief only gets bad when it starts attacking or judging others for what they are and one believer starts conditioning children or other people under a belief system and separates others from him as sinners! A theist judges other theist or an atheist and in same way an atheist judging other atheist or theist is also separating others from your level thus considering yourself higher and better and giving unnecessary self-importance. I must add that atheists also have ideal clashes as much as religious people have it. My concern would be not imposing personal beliefs and faith on others.
C. Religion
Different people practice different kinds of religions and people who are considered morally bad or people practicing taboo etc also follow religions in most of the cases!
A particular religion has all kinds of people in it; violent and non-violent.
Few religions are extremely non-violent in nature i.e they have never attacked other people for sake of winning a religious war; the practioners seldom would have attacked other religious communities or nations. However; some of them are highly self torturous in nature but this would be again a perspective. They don’t call it self torturing or violence on body or self; they call it “spiritual or religious work” which gives them better state of being or higher state or altered state of consciousness or as per their belief a road towards salvation or nirvana. Jainism and Buddhism are few such examples.
However when people following some particular religion (way of living) judge, condemn others it becomes a psychological violence for others in community. Such people when make groups and separates themselves and considers themselves higher than others, pious than others or better than others surely invites trouble. Hence I am worried about people imposing religious beliefs on others and vulnerable children.
D. Science & Subjective Study of Human Consciousness
A huge intellectual debate keeps going around these two methods as well. Science is about studying something from outside and it keeps denying its own old researches and accepts new understanding as it comes to it. So today if science discovered x no. of minerals it may later can always say there were x+ no.of minerals and therefore we must not create a staunch belief on the basis of research based on science however scientific methodology gives us accurate results or more close results towards a problem. However, there are many methods of healing which is cannot be verified under scientific methodology yet. Placebo effect is one of such.
Similarly study of human consciousness falls under different category of observation i.e self observation or observation of self by self. The feeling that “I am” and “I can feel my thoughts and emotions” and by observing them for long time I can alter my state of consciousness is a very common experience amongst people who practice such methods.
These simultaneously give them different kind of understanding in course of few years as well and their perception and understanding grows with time as much as it happens in people who use scientific methods of studying some object.
However; the benefits of such understanding remains limited to the practioners of self-observation but in case of science the benefits gets passed on to others in common. Science of studying of Human Consciousness through self observation and Science of studying matter have quite different approach and none of the methods are applicable to each other in exchange. The psychological and physical symptoms can only be recorded by science in cases of people who have achieved different state of consciousness by self observation techniques.
E. Spiritual practices
A lot could fall under such practices. However; we should consider them as matter of personal beliefs and sometimes the not understood phenomenon as much as placebo effects are. The word “spirituality” is much used in modern world without a very clear definition of it.
Lot of practices like reiki, pranic healing, prayer healing falls under such category; however the effects of such practices are not constant for all. Sometimes people practicing methods of self-observation also call it spirituality. Sometimes religious practices are also labeled as spirituality. However; everyone may have a different say on this subject and we should consider it as one’s personal understanding and perspective only and I don’t see there any reason to be in conflict. A community may have such people who would want to practice their kind of spirituality without harming others or judging others. One of such practices which fall under this category is “not to judge others”.
F. Sexuality, Taboo & Morality
Morality is always relative. What is moral in one country can be immoral in another according to their laws and cultural perception. The idea of good or bad is relative to the goal or aim of such culture or aim in any given area. A community may have people having different kind of sexual orientation and no individual has right to judge other person’s sexual orientation. Diversity of sexual orientation is our human reality.
Sexual crime prevention requires education, openness to talk about the subject and education. Most of such problems can be solved with education under a conscious community.
by Sushant Roy
This has been written keeping in mind a life inside an intentional community.
Humans are subject to get into conflicts with the beliefs systems they carry. We all have a tendency to believe what is right or wrong and hence we want people to behave or act according to our beliefs. This should be very much understood by all community members to thrive together in peace. We are subject to ideological disagreement and this also triggers anger, hatred or disliking towards others. What we should understand that our being or habit should not harm or damage other human life psychologically or physically.
Below is the list of disputes or beliefs we carry:
A. Vegetarian and Non-Vegetarian food eating
This should be a personal choice and we should not judge a person with his eating habits; the best spiritual people also had been non-vegetarian.
This is much related to the idea of violence; however we must know that in nature violence is imbibed in food chain and eating non-veg or vegetarian food could be very much subjective choice depending on the kind of body you have. During pregnancy a fruit like pappya and meat both could be harmful to human body. Choices of such food should be left on persons not on community consensus.
There are always non-violent way of eating non-vegetarian food and violent way of eating vegetarian food. So eating non-vegetarian food or vegetarian food should strike a balance for sustainability and should not be an ideological clash. One of the tribal communities where hunting is mandatory hunt animals with very many non-violent methods and pray and says sorry to the animal after killing the animal as to tell it that doing so was their survival need. We should be worried about weather eating animal is sustainable in application or not if yes then how much in quantity. Can animals live in the vicinity in a sustainable way? Some may be fine with eating animals and hence I would not judge them if they raise and eat animals as they eat plants. My concern would be they should not eat humans! If they someday decide to become vegetarian for any particular reason I would not consider them as great achievers either.
B. Atheism or Theism
This is a subject which is debatable so much that people can go on and on for years without coming to any conclusion.
Theist will always counter by saying “Absence of evidence is not an evidence of absence”. Logic is weak to prove anything when it comes to faith, love, belief etc; the belief of creation by naming it energy, force, God, operator, destroyer etc will always exist as it is much logical to believe that everything is done by someone so world would not exist without something behind it, even big-bang can be further countered by saying that there is some force which created big bang and that force we call the force of God. However; ideas like messenger, messiah, representative of God, Avtaar, Son of God, born out of virginity seems very unscientific and can be completely discarded by scientific theory but the funny part is that if someone really wants to argue then he will bring an argument by saying that in old times there were science which could make a women pregnant without intercourse and such examples are available in both eastern and western scriptures thus validating the idea of birth from a virgin; one can counter it by saying what science can do today could have been done thousands years back also as we can seen very high quality of constructions and engineering works in our history which are difficult to be repeated and they did it all without hi-tech machineries, hence birth from a virgin could be also possible!
The debates of Atheists against the ideas like child from virginity, some special avatar or messiah to save the Earth and humanity are very much logical as well. In fact being atheist or theist doesn’t change anything in human body and human behaviour. Both, Atheists and Theists can be bad and good persons.
The belief only gets bad when it starts attacking or judging others for what they are and one believer starts conditioning children or other people under a belief system and separates others from him as sinners! A theist judges other theist or an atheist and in same way an atheist judging other atheist or theist is also separating others from your level thus considering yourself higher and better and giving unnecessary self-importance. I must add that atheists also have ideal clashes as much as religious people have it. My concern would be not imposing personal beliefs and faith on others.
C. Religion
Different people practice different kinds of religions and people who are considered morally bad or people practicing taboo etc also follow religions in most of the cases!
A particular religion has all kinds of people in it; violent and non-violent.
Few religions are extremely non-violent in nature i.e they have never attacked other people for sake of winning a religious war; the practioners seldom would have attacked other religious communities or nations. However; some of them are highly self torturous in nature but this would be again a perspective. They don’t call it self torturing or violence on body or self; they call it “spiritual or religious work” which gives them better state of being or higher state or altered state of consciousness or as per their belief a road towards salvation or nirvana. Jainism and Buddhism are few such examples.
However when people following some particular religion (way of living) judge, condemn others it becomes a psychological violence for others in community. Such people when make groups and separates themselves and considers themselves higher than others, pious than others or better than others surely invites trouble. Hence I am worried about people imposing religious beliefs on others and vulnerable children.
D. Science & Subjective Study of Human Consciousness
A huge intellectual debate keeps going around these two methods as well. Science is about studying something from outside and it keeps denying its own old researches and accepts new understanding as it comes to it. So today if science discovered x no. of minerals it may later can always say there were x+ no.of minerals and therefore we must not create a staunch belief on the basis of research based on science however scientific methodology gives us accurate results or more close results towards a problem. However, there are many methods of healing which is cannot be verified under scientific methodology yet. Placebo effect is one of such.
Similarly study of human consciousness falls under different category of observation i.e self observation or observation of self by self. The feeling that “I am” and “I can feel my thoughts and emotions” and by observing them for long time I can alter my state of consciousness is a very common experience amongst people who practice such methods.
These simultaneously give them different kind of understanding in course of few years as well and their perception and understanding grows with time as much as it happens in people who use scientific methods of studying some object.
However; the benefits of such understanding remains limited to the practioners of self-observation but in case of science the benefits gets passed on to others in common. Science of studying of Human Consciousness through self observation and Science of studying matter have quite different approach and none of the methods are applicable to each other in exchange. The psychological and physical symptoms can only be recorded by science in cases of people who have achieved different state of consciousness by self observation techniques.
E. Spiritual practices
A lot could fall under such practices. However; we should consider them as matter of personal beliefs and sometimes the not understood phenomenon as much as placebo effects are. The word “spirituality” is much used in modern world without a very clear definition of it.
Lot of practices like reiki, pranic healing, prayer healing falls under such category; however the effects of such practices are not constant for all. Sometimes people practicing methods of self-observation also call it spirituality. Sometimes religious practices are also labeled as spirituality. However; everyone may have a different say on this subject and we should consider it as one’s personal understanding and perspective only and I don’t see there any reason to be in conflict. A community may have such people who would want to practice their kind of spirituality without harming others or judging others. One of such practices which fall under this category is “not to judge others”.
F. Sexuality, Taboo & Morality
Morality is always relative. What is moral in one country can be immoral in another according to their laws and cultural perception. The idea of good or bad is relative to the goal or aim of such culture or aim in any given area. A community may have people having different kind of sexual orientation and no individual has right to judge other person’s sexual orientation. Diversity of sexual orientation is our human reality.
Sexual crime prevention requires education, openness to talk about the subject and education. Most of such problems can be solved with education under a conscious community.
by Sushant Roy