The Institute for Global Leadership
Consultation and Training for Emerging and Seasoned Leaders
|
The
Sacred Container™ to Address the In 1992, Virginia Swain, Director, Institute for Global Leadership, went to the United Nations to study the reasons that the Persian Gulf Resolution passed in the Security Council. In this case, an armed response seemed totally wrong. After two years of study, she began a Master's Degree Independent Study thesis project through Lesley University to explore the theory and practice of coexistence — having a minimum standard for a world safe for difference. She was also interested in developing a deeper standard — reconciliation, by creating a Sacred Container™, a holding environment in a Peacebuilding Process of Reconciliation™ — to contain the anger, fear, and other emotions that lead to breakdown of communications and to address deep-rooted, intractable disputes. Her thesis project was conceived and implemented with a Sacred Container™ as a nonviolent response to the Persian Gulf Resolution to develop political will among members of the United Nations Community and provide a new kind of leadership in a global economy. It is my hope that Reconciliation Leaders™ could contribute to the Nobel Peace Laureates initiative, The International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World (2001-2010), so that the United Nations and the international community could become a true peacemaking body, dedicated to serve it's followers, the world's peoples, by finally abolishing war. A Way to Address the Cycle of Violence Through The Sacred Container The Sacred Container™, or holding environment, is created as a safe place where people can coexist, begin to trust themselves and each other, and become conscious of unconscious behavior. The need comes from an understanding of the shadow or unconscious part of each person and situation where we express our limitations without our awareness. A Sacred Container™ is created by the Reconciliation Leader™ and the participants, to share resources and power, withdraw projections of the unconscious, and dissipate emotional reactions in such a way that the outcome of the meeting is owned by everyone present. There is an untapped potential in emotional and spiritual energy that can be released for good through the Sacred Container. A piece of beautiful Swedish glass, in memory of Dag Hammarskjold, is used for participants to take turns in speaking as a vehicle where the emotions can be held to contain their turbulence in a way that is not alienating to the other. The only one who can speak is the holder of the Swedish glass. Coexistence and Reconciliation Leaders let go of their need to control the outcome and lightly guide the process so that participants have an experience of owning unconscious emotions. "I" statements are used (rather than blameful statements), so that participants own their experiences without projecting them on the others. Virginia Swain wrote in 1996,
In Figure A, Victimhood and Aggression: Psychological Dynamics, The Center for Strategic and International Studies has shown in their model two circles: the inner circle shows the cycle of victimhood while the outer circle shows the cycle of healing when an intervention takes place. Reconciliation Leaders™ provide an intervention in the cycle of violence and help provide a way for the victim to mourn, express grief and accept loss (outer circle). Participants share power by addressing the victim/perpetrator cycle of violence in people and systems by creating ground rules as a way to re-humanize the enemy, be accountable for unconscious inner conflicts and allow people to share their gifts in safety (without being invalidated or denigrated), in a respectful, fully participatory process. The process allows a shared vision to emerge. People have new choices to forgive and negotiate solutions. With such a high level of emotions causing people to raise their voices, scream at, strike and even kill one another, skilled Reconciliaton Leader™ provides a Sacred Container as a useful way for participants to begin healing from alienating experiences, withdraw their projections and build relationships across divisions. Participants create ground rules for themselves that are primarily monitored by facilitators, but also by participants. A common experience brings people together naturally when the Sacred Container™ is in place and emotions are contained and released. There is a need for conflict competency: first to clarify what is believed and valued when it comes to conflict, second to stimulate thinking about how conflicts in one's life have been managed, and third to see that resolving conflict in a positive manner will strengthen all relationships. A Sacred Container serves as a conflict management system for community, institutional, national and global settings. There is a need to learn the impact of cultural differences (including gender, ethnicity and race) on the dispute resolution process. Because the effectiveness of various conflict management strategies are influenced by cultural considerations and differences, we need to examine the various models for training leaders to intervene in disputes where cultural differences are a factor. Reconciliation Leaders™ serve their followers by facilitating others through their transformations in the Sacred Container™, in a deeply respectful "I-thou" relationship, rather than one of control and manipulation. Elise Boulding's Conflict Management Continuum (1) is enhanced by Reconciliation Leaders™ working towards the penultimate part of her continuum, "union." Boulding's view is that we live in a society that places a high value on dealing with conflict as something that has to be won. The goal is to vanquish the adversary, or at the least successful, to threaten (deter) the adversary. Yet we all know there are other ways of dealing with conflicts. These ways of managing conflict may be thought of as ranging on a conflict continuum. Reconciliation Leaders™ help move conflict from the war of extermination to integration and union, from violence to nonviolence, from destructive to integrative behavior, from left to right. Limited war, deterrence, and threat are all on the violent side of the continuum. Noncompliance, arbitration, mediation, and negotiation lie in a violence-neutral, middle region. Reconciliation, active cooperation, and integration/union lie on the positive, nonviolent side. The components of accountability, forgiveness and reconciliation are essential to the leadership needed for the United Nation's International Decade of a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World (2001-2010), proposed by all living Nobel Peace Laureates and began in March 2001 in the United Nations. Otherwise the world will repeat the suffering and horrors of this century's wars, ethnic conflict and the use of force as a response to terrorism. The best of our humanity is desperately needed now. The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) states: Reconciliation, according to Martin Luther King, is the final, large and difficult step in peacemaking, essential if we are to move into beloved community. If we fail to nurture a reconciling spirit that listens, forgives and persists, our protests can become harsh and shrill as we move from one struggle to the next with deepening anger and frustration. Rightly enraged at the vast scope of injustice, suffering, greed and exploitation in the world, we are tempted to externalize evil as "out there," forgetting our own complicity, our own shadow (unconscious) side — our own need of redemption. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, writing in The Gulag Archipelago of his experiences in Soviet prison camps, observed that the line separating good and evil passes not through states nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart and through all human hearts. The enemy, the oppressor, the hurtful person, the "other," is (with his victim) a part of the whole human family. The cycle of evil and suffering can be broken when we open ourselves to the grace that enables forgiveness and, ultimately, reconciliation to take place. To say this does not mask the real conflict involved in struggling against injustice and oppression, but it reminds us that — at every stage — the peacemaker seeks to overcome evil with good, using means that are consistent with the aim being sought. The challenge to peacemakers to overcome evil by good (by developing the work and upgrading skills to provide resources, tools and processes for Reconciliation Leaders) is essential so that that mediation and reconciliation services can be provided for the United Nation's International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World (2001-2010). In the past fourteen years, Virginia Swain committed her consulting practice resources to design and implement a new social development model in a Peacebuilding Process of Reconciliation™ with a Sacred Container™ as it's core. (Figure B) There have been dozens of implementations, always in a political context of collaborative changemaking and peaceful evolution to advance the common good. (Collins) The conceptual framework for this model comes from my corporate experience in human resources and my fifteen years as an organizational development consultant (using models that also apply to national and global challenges), vocational counselor and certified professional holistic counselor. Virginia Swain designed a Sacred Container™ for her Master's Thesis Project, Celebration of the Children of the World: A Model for Building Global Community™(CCW). CCW was designed to build on the momentum of 40,000 people from 185 countries assembling at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED or Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. At a vigil of all the world's religions at the Global Forum, a parallel conference to UNCED, I had a profound experience of the union that Boulding (1) uses as her penultimate stage in the Conflict Management Continuum. After spending the all-night vigil worshiping with thousands in our own traditions, the Dalai Lama brought us all together in five minutes of the deepest silence I had ever experienced. At the end of the silence, a sound arose out of one person and grew — so that the sounds of 40,000 people present grew such that the sounds became one sound. We sang and danced for joy at meeting one another anew. Strangers became joyful co-celebrants as we danced the day away. Even though there was no dispute in Rio at the Earth Summit, I was struck by the potential for such communities to transform disputes through celebration. I began conceptualizing a reconciliation leadership intervention at the United Nations by building a Sacred Container™, much like what I had found at the Vigil in Rio as one of nine key characteristics or competencies of this leadership style. Fifty celebration artists and a steering committee produced the Celebration of the Children of the World event after six months of preparation, by having a vigil and performances by children. To do that, we used the Sacred Container™ model to build a holding environment for the steering committee to contain the emotions, presence and purpose to bring the various components of the UN community together as a soul force for building global community. We realized in having our own Sacred Container™, we could hold the space better for the members of the United Nations community in the event itself — international civil servants, state and non-governmental actors. In the steering committee, people were able to let go and find their common humanity because of the Sacred Container™, which we realized was especially useful for post-conflict peacebuilding. On the eve of the Celebration of the Children of the World™ event, the Sacred Container™ was put to the test. There was a dispute between two of the steering committee members and one of the mutually-agreed upon ground rules was that we wouldn't run away from conflict, but rather be a listening presence for the other no matter how hard it was. Because of the successful enactment of that ground rule, one of the parties to the dispute was able to tell the second disputant that the experience was a positive and life-changing example for her on how to work through conflict successfully. Our Celebration of Children of the World™ is a new model for building global community (unpublished Masters Thesis Project, 1993). The model was inspired by a vigil of the world's religions at the Earth Summit in June 1992, in Brazil, where people of sovereign nations came together for a celebratory experience of one human family, brother and sisterhood. Celebration helps people accept the sufferings of everyday life by allowing them to relax and let go. Celebration expresses the true meaning of community as they unite their hearts through a moment of wonder. The joy of the body and the senses are linked to the job of the spirit (Vanier, Community and Growth). Former Secretary-General de Cuellar says there is no more beautiful profession on earth than to unite humans. Celebration allows an experience of unity and empowerment by bringing people together for an experience of joy. In the times that it is not appropriate to celebrate, an appropriate ritual that would commemorate the need to mourn or express another emotional stage of growth would be availablethrough the Sacred Container™. (see A Global Liturgy ). References: 1. Boulding, Elise. Building a Global Civic Culture. 2. Steele, David. Healing the Cycle of Violence. Diagrams
|
