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Wylie and Helene Parliament of the World's Religions |
Transformation through Diversity
Taught by Myrna Wajsman and Greg Lewis
In today’s world a path to spiritual growth and transformation can be found through resolving diversity issues.
This was a great class. It used the Taoist principle of "The whole contains the parts, the part contains the whole". A corollary to this is that "the parts thereby contain a 'part' of all the other parts".
Search for Resistance
The teachers requested a social theory, no matter which, from the class. That acted as a seed for discussion. Soon disagreements began to occur. The teachers then fanned the disagreements into arguments and fanned them further into accusations.
The purpose of this exercise was to focus on resistance and diversity of thought. This resistance contained the “wisdom” that, when explored, would help the whole group come to a deeper understanding of the issues involved. This, in the end, would allow a stronger foundation of communal vision to be built.
Playing your part
What was interesting was that even though only two or three people at a time would be involved in the arguments, all of us could feel a part of ourselves engaged, especially when things got hot. This demonstrated the Taoist principle that each of us contains a part of all the other parts. The people involved just happened to be playing “roles” that we shared.
When the discussion had finally turned to accusations the teachers asked each person to list their accusations. In this stage no "self defense" was allowed. One could only list the accusations
There by the Grace of God Go I
The "contestants" then tried to "own" the most hurtful of the charges leveled at them. The reason that the charges had been hurtful was that in fact the person charged did own it to some degree.
In the end the two "contestants" found that they did in fact "own" the most hurtful of the charges that had been leveled at them. The interesting fact was that it was actually the same issue for both of them! The teachers said this was often the case, what we did not have compassion for in ourselves is what we would strike out at in others.
Honor Diversity
By honoring all the diversity in ourselves we honor the diversity of the world. By honoring the diversity of the world we honor the diversity in ourselves.
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