Conflict, Integrity and Tolerance and the Role Driven Sense of Good

My experience is that when I enter a church, or my work place, or a group of friends preparing for a Sunday afternoon football game, my Sense of Good was impacted in sometimes very different ways. The impact of peer groups, be it spirituality, work, or recreation represents the differing facets of community. I realized at some point I needed to develop a Sense of Good that aligned with all these facets and at the same time maintain integrity between the two dimensions of me.

Pause I was about developing a practice in which you can enter into a space of non-judgement to access your singular Sense of Good. Over time and practice you will find both the energy and motivation from that space to use throughout the decisional process. You may need to ground and re-ground yourself in your Sense of Good as you call up your particular Sense of Community. Pause II introduces judgement into your considerations for the decision. In developing your Sense of Community, you will find yourself looking at the precepts of your religion, the ethical code of your profession, the range of good that resides right in front of you in the name of family and friends. For some people judgement is a good word when one is being complimented for exercising good judgment, but a bad word when applied to a charge of violation of family codes of behavior, morality or ethics. For The Good Decision, judgement is the product of an interior/exterior conversation with your community in which your Sense of Good evolves and matures in relationship to your immediate community. We can only grow our Sense of Good through an active conversation with the community you anticipate to be impacted by your decision. This conversation can only happen in an atmosphere of reasonable tolerance. This applies to individuals, organizations, corporations and nations. I have had most of my work come from organizations that need to update their Pause II Sense of Community.

Conflict Focus I: Most conflict in your life arises from the Pause II community based role derived virtues and not from any single community member’s Pause I Sense of Good. In Pause II you carry your Sense of Good into the complexities of community to negotiate what you can. The goal of Pause II. is to come to terms with the community derived virtues which inform you regarding the yes/no of the decision in front of you

Conflict Focus II: Your health and well being will always depend on the quality of the connection between your role driven virtues practiced in your community and your Pause I Sense of Good.

Conflict Focus III: Conflict is a teacher for both your Pause II Sense of Community role driven virtues and your Pause I Sense of Good. “Freeze-up” is when a person who is in conflict feels the need to suspend the interior learning dialogue between Pause I, the private individual, and Pause II, the community concerns. Our nation and culture are currently at risk due to Freeze-up of social narrative in which the needs of the private individual’s Sense of Good and community collective virtue are in a rigid stand off rather than a dialogue that could allow conflict to instruct both parties at the grounding level of Pause I.

Worksheet for Sense of Community: Go up to the menu and click on Pause II to move to the Pause II worksheet that will guide you in identifying the roles you hold in your community and need to be negotiated with the basic tenets of your Sense of Good.