2. Becoming Whole
Capacity Two: Becoming Whole
Key Question: “What is true?”
Mindfulness Work: We work to understand and integrate our own unconscious patterns of behavior, inviting transformation within ourselves, by asking “what is true?”
Social Change Work: We go deeper into the complexity of a system and the underlying human dimensions of change or resistance to change, through our own experiences and collective insights into “what is true” with others.
Mindfulness Work
Becoming more mindful leads us to see how change affects us personally. We become witness to our own patterns of unconscious behavior. This can include noticing our typical ways of thinking, feeling, and reacting. But, as we see what is really true underneath all that we experience, mindfulness enables us to change our behavior and assumptions more easily.
Conscious Social Change asks us to work on ourselves to make sure we are not contributing to the problem before we try to change others. We can notice our emotions before we react and cause harm in previously habitual ways. We can move through fear and limiting beliefs to change our internal messages. We can work to understand how wounds in our lives have fueled protection mechanisms that we might not need anymore. With increased awareness of the aspects of ourselves that we do not accept, we can prevent our judgment and projection on others, and better integrate these qualities within ourselves. For example, if we were conditioned to always be productive, we may despise laziness in ourselves and others. We might recognize how this causes us to judge or even write off a whole subset of people in our lives or society. As we ask “what is true”, we might begin to explore the origins of this judgment and the potential for the upsides of “laziness” in our own lives – finding that allowing more time for rest and wellbeing, inviting contemplation, giving ourselves more downtime and space to let go of responsibility and rigidity around being productive without causing harm, might actually offer beneficial restoration.
CSC also asks us to examine our own role in the system we aim to transform, exploring how our blind spots have unintentionally sustained the status quo. For example, how have we been blind to how our privilege has been at the expense of others, and what can we do to repair that inequity? We may also recognize the ways we get attached to certain outcomes and why, and then work to disentangle our expectations from reality so that what really needs to emerge can be free to do so without so much rigidity.
As we change ourselves, we will also improve the quality of our relationships. As we mitigate our own stress, approach ourselves with less judgment, and allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we can extend the same curiosity about “what is true?” to others. As we cultivate the capacity for empathy, we release bias. We may find we can connect more deeply, which can foster greater trust, acceptance, and respect, even across differences. As we go through our own shifts, we start to understand what drives other people’s behavior, especially the ways they cope with change. With a deeper, more compassionate understanding of change, we can then make more informed decisions that more effectively enable transformation in others, whether that is within our organizations or the broader community. We are more likely, then, to design solutions and mitigating interventions built on human understanding and work together as allies not opponents. Read more about why we use inner work for social change here.
Practices and Modules Supporting this Capacity in the Individual
The following practices are integrated into the personal transformation work of Conscious Social Change, which lay the foundation for understanding the human dynamics of social issues, or what motivates or inhibits others from engaging in change:
Considering the role of perspective
Understanding attachment and detachment/aversion to change
Examining the difficulty of change from our own experiences
Listening and evaluating our unconscious impulses
Exploring and integrating our shadows and understanding projections
Using three breaths to diffuse reactivity
Examining and releasing our limiting beliefs and fears
Exploring power dynamics in dominant culture and sources of power from within
Honoring lived experience
Click here for a practice you can try on your own for Becoming Whole.
Social Change Work
Through this range of experiential and deep inner work that CSC helps to facilitate, change agents become experts in transformation from the inside out. They can then apply this deeper understanding to the exploration of “what is true?” within the complexity of the whole system they wish to change. They can examine the role of shadow and power dynamics in a system, they can look for where resistance to change reflects fear or attachment. They can build compassion for the ways we compensate for our vulnerabilities and limiting beliefs. Their deeper understanding of the dynamics at play under the surface of the issue in society, gives us a deeper capacity to engage with mindfulness and work collaboratively to address what is at stake. Collectively we can find new, innovative avenues to shift the system and meet deeper needs in the process.
Conventional change too often works from an “us vs. them” paradigm, that tries to compel people to change with sticks and carrots, or demonizes the opposition. For example, there is also a lot of talk about “empowerment”, especially in international development work. But, “empowerment” still implies something we do to another. This orientation perpetuates the concepts of “us” and “them” and a separation between those of privilege and those without. Change is often incremental and temporary, only affecting others when the incentives or punitive measures are present. Imposed externally with a lack of engagement among or trust of those with lived experience, such interventions are less likely to be sustainable because they may involve incorrect assumptions and are disconnected from the reality of the lives they are aiming to serve.
Instead, CSC uses mindfulness to help us understand why people want change, why they are averse to change, and how change happens. We must look at opposition or perpetrators not from an “us vs. them” paradigm, but with the mindfulness principles of curiosity, non-judgment, and compassion. We recognize and honor that each stakeholder has unique insight from their particular experiences and a role to play in the larger ecosystem. By engaging the wisdom of all parties, we can access the most innovative ideas. We apply our analysis of the root causes of each social issue to understand the drivers of human behavior, behavior that comes from individuals experiencing suffering. With greater compassion and an inside-out understanding of transformation, CSC works to engage others on a more equal level, recognizing our similarities, finding common ground where core values overlap and integrating other’s wisdom and needs to devise a path together towards long-term transformation.
Practices and Frameworks Supporting this Capacity in Social Change:
The CSC methodology uses frameworks like the following sample to conduct an analysis of what is true at the roots and systemic level of a complex social issue in understanding the human dynamics behind an issue. It allows a more comprehensive, compassionate and collaborative understanding of the human dynamics behind a social issue, which then informs the process towards solutions-building that comes next.
Mindful Issue Diagnosis – Going deeper to allow our inner work to inform what is really true and transpiring at the roots and systemically between stakeholders
Stakeholder Analysis – Evaluating importance, relevance, and developing value propositions of stakeholders for partnership
Issue mapping – looking at the issue as experienced by the target population to explore the deeper human dimensions at work
Click here for a sample framework: PDF of Mindful Issue Diagnosis.
