Creative Conflict

Today I was tidying up my home and later in the afternoon I wanted to finish the writing about Creative Conflict that I had started yesterday, but that was not possible because I was so tired that I almost fell asleep. 

There is one thing that always wakes me up if I am tired in daytime and that is to get down to the lake and throw myself into the cold water. It is like waking up to a new day!

It is a cloudy day and not too warm so I thought I would be alone with the trees, sands, winds and waters, but...

I reached the place exactly in the same time as twelve other persons also came in their cars and gathered on the sandy shore. They were dressed in white with black belts and holding long, wooden sticks.

Martial Art on the shore of Fryken

About Creative Conflict

The Talking Stick is about understanding each others emotions and motivations, those that are behind the conflicts that arise. Conflicts are often transformed into agression and what we call bad or destructive behaviour like quarreling, screaming and fighting, which we want to avoid because we want to ”have peace”. Quarreling about who is right and who is wrong is like a war. And wars are killing the world!!! So we must have peace!!! And some people think that one day there will be peace on earth!

But the result of this nice ideal is that we are so afraid of conflicts that we no longer dare to say what we think or mean.

Some people do not really like this kind of peace.
They prefer energy and energy can be created by two opposite forces, so they find oppositions more interesting, because there is a chance to understand something new and there is a chance to creativity. If we just look at the opposition and investigate it! From what is is it built up? And how?

So... why not a little creative conflict, where we can get new energy from focusing on something that we did not understand before and then step out of this conflict as two coworkers that have gained new insights?

Isn´t that better than to be peacefully sleepwalking with empty words that do not reflect reality. When the Indian gurus talk about love they do not mean that kind of empty ”love” that just consists of avoiding conflicts. They mean ”the love of everything that belongs to nature and to our psyche”. It does not mean that they love bombs and missiles. On the contrary: the bombs and weapons are the result of us not being able to solve conflicts at an early stage.
Why do we not? Because we do not dare to look at them. We pretend that they do not exist because we want to be ”positive”.

But conflicts should be solved as quickly as possible, before they start growing, so we have to learn to discover them as quickly as possible. That can also be called ”positive”! It is just a little bit more difficult!

As a conflict gives energy some people just create conflicts because they like to get this energy kick. Those who like to fight might not be interested in solving the conflict. Earlier we had the knights that were fighting with each other to test who was the strongest and there are also many martial arts where a more elegant fighting method is taught. Such disciplines should be taught at every school together with the Talking Circles (with Talking Sticks!) to send light into newborn conflicts to prevent them from becoming ”real” and destructive.

Instead of being afraid of conflicts – why not love them and treat them in more subtle, refined and graceful ways?

Creative Conflict Resolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX65plpEAGo

Avoid Avoiding Conflict

Are you introvert?

The use of a Talking Stick demands some degree of introspection, because the speaker is supposed to ”talk from the heart”. That does not just mean to tell all the others that you love them (just because the word heart is mentioned) unless you really are overfilled with that emotion. 

The "electromagnetic heart" is an instrument that reads everything that happens around a person and delivers this information in the form of subtle feelings, so these feelings are fluctuating all the time and if we are not used to listen to the heart we might not be able to recognize them as anything else than attraction and repulsion, whereafter attraction is called love and repulsion changes to flight or anger with accusations and gets called fear, agression or ego.  Hundreds of years ago they were called God and Devil.

Introvert people can often be more familiar with inner fantasies, deeper thoughts and the analysing of emotional fluctuations so it can be easier for them to understand what "talking from the heart" means, but as they can lose energy from being with people they might have to go home and think about it before they can tell others what they feel and mean. They have to "sort it out" by themselves before they know.   Read more...

How to Thrive as an Introvert! 

Introverts Make The Most Of Your Introversion

Best Jobs for Introverts

Party Survival Guide for Introverts

The power of introverts

Walking Bear

I have a friend, Karsten, who lives in Denmark but has a little house here in Sweden where he creates unusual flowerbeds in his big garden. He is a hobby gardener, a good photographer and writes a blog about all his beautiful and often also unusual plants.

Part of Karsten's Garden

The day before yesterday he wrote to me on Skype and asked if I wanted to come and look at his ”Bear Ash”, as he called it, and maybe I wanted to get a branch from it to make an Ash Talking Stick, which is a good idea as the Ash tree has an important mythological role being the Yggdrasil, the World Tree, which is an immense mythical tree that connects the nine worlds in Norse cosmology. The word probably means Odin´s horse.

The ash with the fresh marks of the bear

So yesterday I went over to him and he showed me the big marks that a bear had made on the tree. He said that the bear had made similar marks on many trees around his house and this is the way that the bear shows his territory and also shows how big he is (how high up he can make the marks). So now most of the tree had to be taken down because it was destroyed and the upper parts of it would die anyway.

But first we went down to the lake because he wanted to collect grit from the the shore. He is using such grit for certain plants in his garden.

I parked the car on the side of the narrow gravel road and he took his empty bucket and walked down to the lake while I was still searching for my things in the car. When I was about to walk away I heard a loud and clear sound that was the same rhythmic sound as that from a big, heavy person walking at a normal speed on sand or gravel. Crunch...crunch...crunch...crunch.... almost like the slow sound of a rattle.

I looked up and down on the road, but there was nobody. The sound was very clear and very loud so I thought that maybe it was my phone that had started to make noise. I picked it up but there was no sound from it. I looked on the road again and the sound was very high and very near, it was ”all around me”. I thought that there might be some other technical device in my bag, that had started to make noise, but just when I thought of searching for it in the bag the noise suddenly stopped!

I went down to the lake where I swam around for a while and I also took some photos of Karsten collecting his grit. I told him about the strange sound and he said that it was probably a ghost. 

”No!” I said, ”this was a strong, real and clear sound”, but he meant that people who have hallucinations usually say so!

Later in the evening, by a campfire, he said that ”I have heard that the Red Indians really appreciate people who have hallucinations” and he continued to tease me (he likes to be provocative): ”Fantastic that you have such good hallucinations, I am impressed!” and then he laughed!

When the sun went down behind the trees we went up on the mountain and visited Bertil, an old ”forest man” and hunter, who ”knows everything” about the forest (except for the Latin names!) He and Karsten drank some whisky and after a while, I told the story about the strange noise that I had heard by the lake.
Bertil immediately said:
”That was a bear! That is the typical sound of a bear!” and then he added ”If you meet a bear you should make yourself as small as possible to show that you have no intention of fighting. And of course not try to run away from it!” 

We came back to Karsten´s garden at twilight (which is almost in the middle of the night in summer in Sweden) and I managed to take some tiny branches before I had to escape from the swarm of little gnats that surrounded my head. I think that a Talking Stick made from that tree could get the name Walking Bear.  But they are also to be associated with Yggdrasil which is excellent for a Nordic Talking Stick. The Bear reminds us of the strength of being grounded.

When I had written this I noticed that I had forgotten to take a photo of the ash, so I drove back to the garden. After a while, Karsten said: "Hear! Did you hear? That is a raven! So now you have all your symbolism! Both Yggdrasil, a bear and a raven!" 

The raven is the bird that is together with Odin. He has two of them, Hugin and Munin.

Talking Stick in High School

Talking Stick restores order in Colorado High School. The use of the Talking Stick and the principle behind it is hopefully slowly on its way to getting a place in the Western culture, replacing the idea of fighting and winning with authentic communication and mutual understanding. 

Talking Circles replace punishment and suspension and they call it Restorative Justice when the Talking Stick is passed between the ones that have come into conflict with each other. Since starting with this method, they have seen a significant decline in disobedience and violence. They also use role-playing to teach students to conduct circles on their own.

Traditional discipline with punishment is not about restoring relationship, it is not about taking responsibility for your actions, says the principal Matthew Willis.

Colorado high school replaces punishment with 'talking circles'

Teaching world leaders to listen.

The Talking Stick is a symbol for communication that is based on listening. It is also a physical, beautiful object that makes the whole thing much more fun and easy because you can see with your eyes who is supposed to talk and who should listen. We live in the age of communication and there is a lot of talking going on, but how much do we listen? And how much do we listen to ourselves?

Some people teach children to use the Talking Stick and there are also people who teach the art of listening to world leaders. William Ury is such a person, a world-famous negotiation expert, and he is working with the big leaders in the world, helping them to handle serious conflicts. He has worked as a negotiation adviser and mediator in conflicts in the Middle East, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and Venezuela among other countries. He does not present a painted stick with pearls and feathers to the directors and presidents, but he uses other tactics to invoke ”the spirit of listening” and he is here telling about a meeting with Ugo Chavez where the whole aggressive attitude of the president got changed in just half an hour because William silently just listened to him. 

If you study the behaviour of successful negotiators you find that they listen far more than they talk, he says. Negotiation is to try to change someone else´s mind, but how can you do that if you do not know where the other person´s mind is? Listening is the key! It builds rapport and trust.

Real listening is tuning in to the other person´s wavelength and listening from that person´s frame of reference. We listen to the feelings, emotions and needs that are behind the words, what that person really needs or wants.

The power of listening | William Ury

He says that his dream is a ”listening revolution” that could turn this Age of Communication into an Age of True Communication.

He says:

Imagine a world where every child learns to listen at an early age! What if we taught listening in school? Imagine a world where parents learn to listen to their children! Imagine a world where leaders learn to listen to the people! What if we chose leaders based on their ability to listen and not just talk?

Teach children to use the Talking Stick!

The purpose of the Talking Stick is to teach us to listen to the person who is saying something and then even to listen to what is behind this talking. What feeling, what kind of experience is behind the words?

Children would love to make their own Talking Sticks,
using their own creativity and fantasy.

The main message that comes with the Talking Stick is not that we should get better in talking to make our point of view better explained. That method also exists and could be worth learning, but it is another story.

The purpose of the Talking Stick is to teach us to listen to the person who is saying something and then even to listen to what is behind this talking. What feeling, what kind of experience is behind the words? The Talking Person has to show the real need or wish that is behind the words.

In our western culture we are not really used to this way of listening and the Indian Talking Stick has come to us to teach us the two fundamental parts of a talk: to be authentic (to ”speak from your heart”) and to listen till you have fully understood the other person´s point of view.

The use of a stick is a good idea because when you have been in such a talking circle a couple of times you will remember the process and when you later get into a conflict with someone the idea of using the stick will pop up in your mind. Holding sucjh a stick will then remind you of sharing your experience and not just your opinion. If you have never been in such a circle the idea of this kind of conflict resolving will not come to your mind.

According to the Indian Medicine Wheel our thinking, our intellect is in the north, which is of the element wind, and emotions are in the south, the place of water. The basic is, according to Swiftdeer and others, to use the intellect mainly as a receiving station for information and the emotions mainly as a giving station. If we quickly give out what we feel, and if we are allowed to, negative feelings do not have the chance to build up till they become explosive and destructive.
It just means that for a communication to work well we have to listen (till we understand) and when we speak it is (especially in a conflict) good to explain the emotional experience that is connected to it.

The Talking Stick is a good way of learning both to express feelings and to listen to other people.

Everything that we have learned as small children becomes deeply roooted in our subconscious mind so it feels natural. Those who talk about ”creating peace on earth” could give a thought to the possibility to teach the use of the Talking Stick to all our small children. Those who had learned this skill would be able to solve some conflicts all by themselves, even at a low age.

Childrens´ Talking Circle with a Talking Stick

Talking Stick and Non Violent Communication

A Talking Stick is not just a stick, it is a concept, a principle. It is the idea that everyone should have the opportunity to speak up and to be understood by others.

First of all, the words have to be authentic in the way that they must reflect what you really mean and not something else. And second, the other person has to listen carefully and try to understand what is really being said. We have to put an emphasis on the listening, but to listen can be senseless if the speaker is not aware of what he really means. He might say ”something else” and then the listener cannot understand.

The idea of a brightly decorated Talking Stick comes from the Red Indians, but the basic idea about a clear and real communication can be born in any culture as our minds in many senses are quite similar everywhere.

So we have other people that are talking about the same concept, but without the use of a stick. They have discovered the same communication problems and they have put together methods that are quite similar to the Talking Stick and one of these methods is the Non Violent Communication, which is also the name of a book by Marshall Rosenberg.

In this video he gives a good example of what he means. A married couple had been struggling with the same problem for 39 years due to the fact that none of them was capable of explaining the real feeling behind the words. The real feeling and the key-thought was missing.

Solution for conflicts through communication

The ”real feeling” is what the Red Indians (or at least some of them) refer to by saying ”Speak from your Heart!”. Anger also feels in the chest (around the heart) but in that case it is OK to say ”I feel angry!” The question now would be ”Why?” and then we come to the point that MR talks about: ”What is your real need?”

The good thing with using a real stick is that it slows down the speed and it stops you (him, her) from interrupting the other person by just casting out quick arguments, which just boost new, quick interruptions and create a mental tennis match with arguments that turn into accusations, whereafter only one thing is important: to win the game. That could be fun also, but not if you take it so seriously that you start defending your opinion in almost the same way as you would defend your life or your home (because in the very moment you identify with your opinion, which maybe yesterday had not even ever been thought about and tomorrow will be forgotten!).

Grandmother Laila

"Here in the forest we use Talking Sticks instead of quarreling!" says Laila Moberg in Ekshärad, Sweden.

Mind, or not mind or what?

The Talking Stick can help you to release tensions and to alter your mind. But what is mind? In Swedish the correct translation is sinne, but in English it gets confused with Analytic Intellect. The English expression ”What´s on you mind?” is in Swedish ””Vad har du på hjärtat?” which literally means ”What´s on your heart?” A ”No Mind Festival” would to us literally mean a ”No Heart Festival” but we have got so influenced by American English that we do not notice it. The sense of heart is more in line with the old meaning of the word. Mind does not equal to head.

Talking Stick "Prince of Hearts" by Viveca Lammers

I listened to a film with JP Sears and he really did a god job in explaining how the difference between ”following the mind” or ”following the heart” is experienced in daily life. Yes, I klicked Like on it and I shared it on facebook!

But... he is using the word ”mind” in a way that has become popular, and I wonder how ”mind” has got this meaning. Is it from having been filtered through the American New Age movement?

How to Follow Your Heart (not your head) - with JP Sears

The word mind has been taken from the genitive (possessive) form of the Latin mens, which is mentis. Mentis (ment-is) has given us the word mental (ment-al) and if we say that a person is mental we usually mean that she thinks a lot or is "thought-oriented in his approach to everything. Here is already some confusion” because with that word we also mean ”windy”, in the sense of having a lot of thoughts and opinions, talking much and moving quickly. It means ”interested in new ideas” rather than just being interested physical pleasures. We have the word ”mental hospital”, which is a place where psychotic people get locked in, not intellectual people. Something has gone wrong with the mind or psyche. Not necessarily with the intellect, but rather with energy and emotions. You can also be well functioning without being analytical and intellectual.

How is the mental person thinking? Is that person windy, with quick thoughts that ”follow the wind”, often in new and unexpected directions? In that case the emotions are also windy as emotions follow the thoughts. Emotions are water, but water comes in the form of rain from the clouds. No cloud no rain! No thought, no emotion!

Or is a mental person strictly intellectual? With no emotions at all? Can be, but doesn´t have to.

Such a person with a windy mind might not at all be very reflective, analytic or intellectual. The word mind means to think, bur one of the earlist meanings is to remember.

It is the same word as the German Minne, which means memory, loving memory and love. This is not intellectual analysing – it is a state of mind, which is state of emotion. The Protoindoeuropean root men- is translated with think, but it seems more to refer to the quality of the thought and then it is more what we would call the state of the psyche and then the emotions are also included. The Latin word mens, mentis corresponds to the Greek word Psyche. If you are filled up with a memory, this memory has a certain effect on your emotions and the quality of this effect must be the real meaning of this way of thinking that we call mind. The word ”think” can be used for many different ways of thinking and mind then would indicate ”the status of your focus” and that is what New Age would call ”vibrations”. It is not ”analytical thinking” - it is the quality of the thought, which is the quality of the psyche.

So mind can be intellectual analysing but it can also be heightened emotions of love and beauty among red wine, red hearts and red roses, it can be what the German Minnesänger were expressing. They focused on the love-state of the mind, of the mens, of the Minne. A single song was called a Minnelied.

Talking Stick by Viveca Lammers on YouTube

Ikoner och runor

Kortare text

Talking Stick by Viveca Lammers. Nordic style.

Om man vill känna sig extra mycket nordisk så kan man kalla sin Talking Stick för ”talpinne” och dekorera den med runor. Funktionen är ändå densamma. Pinnen bör ha ett speciellt utseende för att kunna fungera som en ikon, som öppnar hjärnans program ”Authentic Communication”.

När det gäller ikonerna i datorn eller i telefonen så är det nog inte så många som tycker att det är mystiskt, trots att vi (de flesta) inte alls vet hur det fungerar. Vi förstår att det är datatekniker som manipulerar elektriska impulser i små ledningar och vi fattar att dessa ingenjörer och tekniker tydligen ”kan sitt jobb”. Vi vet att en ikon tar vårt sinne till ett visst ämnesområde, en viss funktion, triggar en viss känsla, men vi vet inte att det var så för 200 år sedan också, långt innan vi hade några lysande skärmar och stora reklamskyltar med varumärken. 

I stället så tror vi (eller anser) att gamla tecken är mystiska och besitter magiska krafter. Dem kan vi trolla med!!! Vi går på kurser och lär oss hur vi ska vrida och vända dem och sjunga och ramsa formler.... Samtidigt blir vi själva, om vi inte är uppmärksamma, bortkollrade och borttrollade av dagens ikoner, formler och symboler i reklam och propaganda och dagens magiker kallas PR-konsulter, som i likhet med shamaner ”...är bombsäkra på att saker som djup, strategi och eftertanke är centralt för att uppnå bra resultat.”  Läs mer...

Authentic Communication

Talking Stick by Viveca Lammers

Authentic Communication is a concept that is very similar to the idea behind the Talking Stick.

How to Communicate Authentically! - with JP Sears

I was just looking at a film about Authentic Communication with JP sears. He had got a question from ”Danny” who was wondering about how to communicate with all those people who are in a defensive state and say absolutely nothing about themselves. If you ask: ”How are you?” a person can respond ”Fine!” even if everything is really bad.
We tend to show a nice masque to other people, pretending that everything is super fine even if it is the opposite, and Danny had got tired of this and called it ”too much surface level on everything” and was wondering about how to brake that pattern without violating other peoples´space. So JP talks about how to ”invite” other people to be more openhearted and share their real feelings. 

You say: ”Hi, how are you?” and the person responds ”Fine!” even if he is deadly sick and struggling with a divorce and crying the whole nights. 

The person who answers might not at all be interested in letting you know what is on his heart so you should not force him, as JP also says. But there is a chance that he has huge problems that he would like to talk about with you, without daring to do so, and in that case it is of course OK to try to find out how it is (if you are interested in listening). 

There are some situations that JP forgot to mention and they popped up in my mind:

The person who asks might be a person who always wants to know everything about everyone because he then has good stories to tell all other people. Whoops! Whatever you tell him will soon be out in the whole city. Or maybe it will be secretely spread among all your friends and their friends and others and you would not like that. That is probably what many are afraid of.

The opposite! The person who gets asked might have the idea that every question should always be responded to with an open heart and a full and detailed story about every aspect of every feeling. And your intention was just to say "Hallo!" and not to be forced to listen to the answer for the next two hours.

Another scenario is the person who is constantly telling everybody about all his sad experiences, from birth till now, because he wants to collect love, understanding, acceptance and support from everyone else. 

Yet another story is the one that is using other people by almost forcing them to listen to a bad story over and over and over again in a way that the listener finally has to take up the bad energy (after some hours he starts getting nervous from listening to the repetition and then he swamps it up and looses his temper and energy).

Those were some things that JP did not mention in this film (maybe he does in another one?) and I wrote them down because here are also interesting points.

Maybe it would be a good idea not to say: "How are you?" if you are not prepared to or even interested in listening to an answer! The question can make the other person believe that you want to know, even if you do not. After all, it is a question!

Our communication

Talking Stick by Viveca Lammers

The Talking Stick helps us to talk about "hot topics" without losing temper. It can help to solve the tricky effects of Internet when they spread into reality.

When the physical borders fall we gather in mental groups, that are stronger and bigger than ever (with one group having members in the whole world), and affinity, fellowship and solidarity gets lost in the physical world but refound on the screen, where we find or create our new homeland. It is quite similar to the shamn´s way of creating a medicine wheel, a personal space where only certain spirits are allowed to enter while the other ones get blocked with magical formulas, similar to the blocking of an unwanted person on Facebook with the help of magical clicks that keep your circle safe. Read more...

Swiftdeer and the Talking Stick

The person who initiated the use of the Talking Stick in Europe was Harley Swiftdeer when he travelled around giving workshops to thousands of people in shamanism, ceremonies and magic, mainly assisted by his apprentice Batty Gold.  

Harley Swiftdeer in Stockholm 1985
teaching the Medicine Wheel

Swiftdeer was a tricky person with a strong presence and many called him a Heyoka, which is the trickster that often makes the opposite to what is expected from a spiritual teacher, deliberately
challenging peoples´ believes about who, how and what a teacher or a shaman should be. He was born precisely at full moon, which gives an interest in the fight and balance between oppositions, so he was also busy training and teaching martial arts.
He was a Gemini (astrological sign) and Geminis are ruled by Wind and Mercury, which is the god of communication and language skills. Read more about Swiftdeer!

Collection of Talking Sticks

On Pinterest I have collected more than 650 pictures of Talking Sticks and other magical wands and staffs from all over the world.

To emphazise any kind of communication and to show authority with a stick or staff is an international phenomenon all the way from the shaman´s drumstick to the golden mace at the king´s court.

"One of the oldest symbols of authority, the earliest ceremonial Maces were actually practical weapons intended to protect the King’s person, borne by a royal bodyguard. Later, cities and parliaments adopted their use. Heads of medieval universities also followed suit, and today the Mace serves its vital role as the object vested with the power of the institution."
 http://www.medallic.com/products/maces.php

Talking Stick "Heyoka Dance"

Talking Stick by Viveca Lammers

A Talking Stick is a beautifully decorated tool that is traditionally used by the Red Indians for communication.

Talking Stick "Heyoka Rabbit"

Talking Stick by Viveca Lammers

The Talking Stick can revolutionize the communication in the home as well as in bigger groups.