The possibility of community
Being in community, our humanity is brought to the fore. There is no escape from the opportunity of relationship. The question is if we can work with it. Not through some models, or other ways of thinking that only produce further confusion and misery, but by noticing our reactions in the moment, and getting to the source of it in ourselves.
Since we operate by thought, it seems an extraordinary challenge to see ourselves without distortion. It threatens who we think we are, the image we have created of ourselves over time, and our need to be right with it. The mind produces all sorts of deceptions from reality as part of this, confirming how separate we feel from one another. It does not help with conflict at all, yet we use it all the time for it, unaware that it’s the source of all the mess.
Beyond thought is the possibility of peace, in perception – to perceive what is clearly. This is as risky as exposing beliefs and views that we hold, as illusions. It requires tremendous courage, as we cut through the distortions and identifications of the mind, but offers a liberation that’s beyond comparison.
Conflict evaporates without our doing, without any effort, as we are perceiving the truth within ourselves. That’s when being in community is a significant opportunity for transformation, and pure joy, even in the inevitable darkness of it.
Reader-response
Can we, in our relationship with each other, allow thought not to be? Or rather, can we discharge it of whatever energy we habitually attribute to it? Be vigilant observers of its functioning, without identifying with it?
It is in our relationships that our mind is constantly tested. Our identity or rather, who we think we are, is being challenged. What would it be to remove all power from this belief? If we were nothing and simply paid attention to what is. Is it even possible to be nothing?
Could we use our conflict as a mirror of the structures of the mind? Like in security control at the airport the alarm goes off the moment a metal is detected. It points out to us the structure of the mind. And maybe in that very moment, only by recognising it, it loses its destructive energy.
– Angelica Carletti
