Considering conflict. Is it necessary? Is it healthy? So why can't we all just "get along"? Perhaps we are not supposed to. At least, not by suppressing and deflecting our anger and frustration. Conflict can surface as healthy competition, as easily as fisticuffs if one is disciplined to channel those feelings. The popular culture of my generation revered the idea of peace and I'm wondering now how much of that was a sucker punch and an avoidance of the more difficult path of mediation and understanding the full spectrum of authentic experience through allowing those feelings to surface.
This poem has me contemplating the shadow of suppressing or avoiding anger and how doing so empowers it and stops the flow of the energy's natural dispensation. Damming the flow forces it to externalize and become hardship in the world. It seems that there must be an awful lot of suppressed anger and fear in the world today for us to be rattling sabers all day and all night as we do. Perhaps we are too emotionally bankrupt and distempered to do otherwise.
In reading this poem by Hafiz, I'm reminded that conflict is necessary. I believe this to be true. Conflict provides motion in a life whether it be fight or flight as opposed to entropy and anxiety. Even the planets cross each other to provide energetic conflict to elicit motion. Hafiz suggests that when conflict exists, it is our responsibility to react in such a way that accommodates the larger dance of life at play. We need to remember we are making a choice about when and how to engage or stand down to the fray; how to stay with our understanding of what the flute is playing.
Thank you for listening.
Music: R. Carlos Nakai is a world renown cedar flutist. Many a butt with sullied mind and troubled heart has landed upon billowy pillows and cushions to let his music help them reconnect with something valuable of themselves. We could all stand to time out to this a little more - especially when conflicted. Here is twenty minutes of the sweet stuff designed to remind us of the better nature of who we are. If you add a little grounding and breath work you just might experience something of the Holy Dance Hafiz speaks of.
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz can be found here.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.
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