Conflict and Creative Tension in Our Midst
Finding the Portal of Transformation in our Differences
Practicing Community – Part Five
In the dance of community, we’re bound to step on one another’s toes from time to time. Realistically, at times it will be more than just a hurting toe—we will see our egos bruised and challenged. We may see boundaries crossed, emotions projected, and issues avoided. Sometimes it gets messy!
There is no real community without problems, without conflict, without disagreements, and without wounding. Any time we seek meaningful relationship and connection with others, there are swells and storms to be navigated—it will not all be smooth sailing.
When we give ourselves to the practice of community, on some level we probably know this is part of the deal. But our individualism is strong, and if things get rough it’s easier than ever to jump ship and retreat back to the safety of ourselves. Or away to a different community.
How do we stay with and continue through? And when should we? Can conflict and creative tension become a portal of transformation? And how do we make our way through it?
“Toxic Environment” – Art by Marek Slaivk
Recognizing Toxicity – When to Leave & When to Press In
If we are part of an unhealthy, toxic community, it may very well be the best thing to leave. To me, an unhealthy community is a group that is not actively seeking to work toward growth, healing, and mutuality in the midst of its problems—or lacks the capacity to do so. Every community has problems. It’s how we meet them that makes a space healthy or not, not the absence of issues.
And this is always a discernment we must hold in community, doing our best to recognize our individualistic compulsions and shadows while also seeking to perceive clearly the collective dynamics in our midst. We need to look inward as well as at what’s happening between us.
When toxicity is overly present, it poisons the community. There is an energetic quality in what we bring to the collective space and how we show up. This is not conflict itself, but how we choose to meet situations of disagreement, dissonance, frustration, or pain.
Here are some examples of actions and energetic postures that are toxic to a community:
Unhealthy “othering.” In the article last week, we explored how to discover trust in the “other.” When we don’t take the step toward trust, we paint the “other” as something separate, something too different, something apart from me. Of course, they may actually be quite different, but this is a push away rather than seeking to understand or come to complement one another in our differences. Sometimes people do this to themselves, feeling they are “the other” that just doesn’t fit in.
The antidote to othering is to seek mutual understanding and shared experience, coming from a place of trust and our deep underlying unity.
Scapegoating. This is a serious problem in many communities where the energy of the tension gets projected onto a particular person in the group. It can be the “weakest” or least-liked person, who unconsciously becomes the bearer of all the issues. Or sometimes it’s the strongest personality; someone who is putting up a lot of force in a direction you don’t like. You can recognize this tendency with the thought, “things would be so much better if ‘so-and-so’ were just gone.” It is the posture of wanting to simply expel “the problem.”
The solution to scapegoating is to own the problem in ourselves and in the community at large, and to recognize it is an invitation to growth and learning rather than something that just needs to be banished.
Co-Dependence. The other side of scapegoating is projecting our own needs and deficiencies onto the community or someone in the group. Unlike scapegoating, which tries to cast out the negative, this is clinging energy that pulls closer. We attach ourselves to someone (or a group) who can constantly supply what is lacking. We latch on and come to unconsciously expect and completely rely on this external source. Yes, in healthy community we practice mutuality and interdependence, but that is different. Co-dependence keeps us from growing because the gifts and offerings of others are not something we receive, take in, and grow from, but remain in a state of constant demand, usually unconsciously. Energetically, this sucks life out of the collective.
The cure for codependency is to establish and maintain healthy boundaries with others in the community, along with choosing to receive deeply the gifts given and absorb them into your own growth and offerings back into community.
Complaining. When we complain we are giving up our ownership in the community and standing apart. Like the peanut gallery, we are watching what someone else is doing and speaking ill of it rather than trying to help make things better. Yes, there are situations in community that will frustrate us—and we may not have control over them. Complaining to others is one of the most toxic things we can do, for we are actively spreading our malcontent and undermining trust and connection.
The remedy for complaining is to communicate and contribute. Rather than distance in annoyance and criticize to others, we bring our issues directly to the source of our frustration and choose to try to work it out. And we help to make things better in the community at large.
There are other examples of toxic behavior as well of course. And when these predominate a community space it becomes unhealthy. These are things that preclude the possibility of healthy growth and healing through conflict. If we find ourselves in a situation where these are dominating the communal space, it is probably time to seriously discern leaving.
And certainly, we need to check our own behavior and posture regarding these attitudes as well. Are we contributing to making our community space more toxic? Or are we actively and consciously seeking to be healthy ourselves and help with supportive responses? In what ways might I need to change to be a more positive presence in my community?
The Invitation to Transformation
A healthy community will still have its struggles. And always some degree of toxicity. It is foolish to try to look for the perfect community. And so we ride the waves together when we know the boat is at least mostly sound—with capacity for connectedness and underlying trust.
Commonly, we decide to endure struggles and conflict in community because we have found significant value in what has been and hope for that to return on the other side of the issues. A return to equilibrium and peace. Or maybe we stick with it because of a sense of commitment or obligation we feel to others in the community. We may even have a sense things could even be a little better afterward. That the experience will help us grow and be even closer with each other.
All of these are good reasons for choosing to suffer through. But viewing conflict, struggle, and tension in such a way (and with the language I have intentionally used: suffer, stick with, endure) is from the common perspective of seeing these things as problems to be fixed. Like a leak in the roof. And once it’s patched, we can get back to watching TV undisturbed. And yes, we do want to be more healthy and less toxic, of course.
But community will not work if it is simply alternating between states of peace and disruption without a sense of purpose to it, without a direction, without a reason for the turbulence—because we’re flying somewhere! Most communities navigate this with a mission or work we collectively strive for together. A shared destination. The purpose makes the trouble worth it and gives meaning to our struggles, which are ultimately for the common cause.
And while this works to a degree—though not without some significant underlying drawbacks—it is also true that these storms water the ground, these pressures create the diamond, these deficiencies show the way to more holistic abundance.
In reality tension itself is the invitation to transformation. We are not trying to simply get through the struggle but find in the struggle itself not only the process but also the means to generative emergence. To something new. To loving evolution.
Discerning Portals and Exits
It is not always the case that issues in community offer this portal. Sometimes they are simply born out of an individual’s wounding and come from the thrashings of the ego. Sometimes they are the toxic outflows of unhealthy patterns and ways of dealing with our struggles.
Conflict certainly has the potential to be destructive. It is why we often try to avoid it or fix it quickly. And much conflict needs to be met with recompense, mutual understanding, and healthy reconciliation. It is an interpersonal problem that needs to be heard, met with care, and set right if possible.
Sometimes communities can get caught in the repetitive cycle of dealing with issues centered on internal problems. Too much insular self-care in a community withholds the energy from flowing out and being generative. If we stay in these cycles too long or too often, they will eventually lead us to the exit. To more than we can bear and is beneficial for all parties.
But creative tension is conflict that is born out of constructive energy. It comes from a place beyond the individual ego and interpersonal struggles, though often rooted in the passion of our unique giftings and experiences. It is the striving of the collective for something more, something better for the whole. It reveals a lacking in the community as is and calls for change. It speaks out from the “We.”
Discerning this type of creative tension is crucial—for it is an invitation to the portal of collective transformation.
For mystical community is not just offering an aggregate of personal healing and individual growth—that does not cohere into collective change. It is through the communal field and our capacity to engage in the collective arisings that emergence springs forth. More about that in a future article in this series, but crucially now is to recognize that emergence is very often born out of tension, conflict, disagreement. If we only try to settle back to equilibrium, we will not see the potential way through to something new.
It might not look like the form of change you expect, where one side gets its way or we settle into a compromise. It will take commitment to one another and to the hope something new is wanting to be born. It will take an ongoing turning towards and intentional bearing of uncertainty and struggle. It will reveal communal shadow and require long hard looks in the mirror, personally and together—our topic next week.
But it will also give us the energy to continue through. To be a part of collectively bearing the birth pains of a new way of being, of a transformation of consciousness in our midst, and of loving evolution.
Can we welcome it?
Practicing Community:
Choose one or all of the following practices:
Do a self-examination of your actions and presence in community. Are there ways that I am contributing to the toxicity? How can I change and show up with a different posture?
Look inward and toward your community to feel where tension might be present. Intentionally discern whether it might be calling forth an invitation to collective transformation. What might that look like? (This can only be answered together)
