United Nations Panel Discussion On Inner and Outer Peace by Robert Strock

I'm asking for all of you to participate right from the beginning with. What I'm saying is, it's all about all of us. So it starts with being aware of what your greatest challenges are emotionally, what emotions are most difficult for you. So I'm asking you to contemplate right now in your life. It may be what emotions are most difficult for you, where you get frozen. Or it may be what challenges in the outer world freeze you and lead you to emotional experiences. But we need to be able to embrace ourselves with what we're experiencing. And we're so driven to have a perspective, Persona, or a success or reputation that doesn't matter as much as our experience. So what is your greatest challenge? And if you identify it, congratulate yourself. Because most of us spend our lives trying to get one step ahead of our challenges. And the whole point is first to embrace what your challenge is. So see if you can get there. And so fine if you have two or three. So it may be sadness, it may be fear, it may be anger, it may be grief, maybe alienation, it may be withdrawal. I don't feel. But whatever your challenge is, the first step is really just being aware and embracing yourself. So try to just tune into that. And then the second step, which is a lot of ways of saying it, is finding a place inside you that wants to be compassionate towards it, that wants to be healing towards it, that wants to be opening up your heart to it and trying to experience both at the same time. It's an act of magic. You're not only experiencing your challenge, but you're also experiencing your wish to care for the challenge. Now, that is really hard. Most of us don't even experience fully our challenges because we think we're supposed to be beyond that, but none of us are. We're all challenged. And so being aware is a congratulatory event. And embracing a wish or desire to heal starts to catalyze your awareness. How can I support myself? Can I go to a friend? Can I say kinder thoughts to myself? How am I going to do that? And what you're going to discover if you stay long enough with those two questions? Well, first of all, how many of you think it's easy? Is there anybody in this room that thinks it's easy to be aware of your challenges when you're in it and activate a part of you that wants to heal it and have both going on at once? Any takers? That's the point. That's the point. Because we're not taught this Needs to be taught in elementary school, that's where it would be. Most easily absorbed kids know what they feel, and they know, gee, it's kind of nice to be nice to yourself or others. And what ultimately is led to, if you go from your greatest challenge to your wish to heal it is you discover your needs or what is needed. So it may be a need for communication, it may be a need for inner acceptance, it may be a concrete step that you have to take. It may be an action that you have to take. So that is a really big deal. So if you can try to stay with just the awareness that the awareness itself is almost a beginning of a miracle. Intention to heal, the wish to help yourself, the wish to help another is absolutely as true to wish to help another in the same thing. And that's the basis of deep friendship. That's the basis of a deep therapeutic relationship. I'm a psychotherapist and I love doing what I'm doing. I love doing what I'm doing because I get to be with people's challenges and what they're experiencing. And they want to share it and they want to heal it. They want to. I don't mean heal it like make it go away. I mean heal it, being kind with it. My main message is you're aware of a challenge, some challenges. If you have anxiety that might be lifelong, it's not a matter of getting over it, It's a matter of engaging in it. Engaging it, Engaging and engaging in it. And there are some that are lifelong. Now, there's some that you can, let's say, possibly take care of in five minutes. But keep looking, just keep looking at the challenge and the intention to heal it. Okay, so that's the first thing. And then ultimately leading towards your needs. You'll see a sheet in there that's listing some needs and some emotions that you can look at later. But hopefully the understanding. I hope it's clear what I'm talking about. Being aware of your challenge and what it means to want to heal. The second major area is to do with what I call containment. It basically has to do with anger, impatience, intolerance, all the aggressive emotions, and learning that it's important to feel them. Just like the first step of being aware. It's not only being aware, it's allowing yourself to experience it by the way. And in containment, you're dealing with your aggressive emotions. And when that's happening, you're letting yourself feel it as intensely as possible. And you're looking for instead of what I'M against. I'm impatient because I don't like the way you're talking to me. I'm angry because you don't communicate with me. You're then looking for what is it you want, what is it you need, rather than what is it you're against. So you're pivoting from what it is that you're angry and fighting against to what it is you really need and are for. And that's what individually is hard for us to do. And it's also what's hard for the world to do, which is why we're in the mess we're in. Because the world isn't dealing with when it's angry that they're sure that their story's right. It's because this other nation did this to us. They're not aware. You know what? I'm really angry and I'm in kind of a balanced state. I've got to learn how to deal with this, how to heal this, how to work with this, staying present with being angry. So in the containment place, you may need to go away from where you are and let yourself feel it and then ask yourself, how can I move to the next level of moving towards some kind of understanding of what my needs are Now? If we look at the world situation and go back in history, we'll see that nations forever have always been much more interested, as have we, for that matter. With us, I think it's a little bit more innocent individually, but of course we favor ourselves more than we favor helping the world. Of course we're self focused, but as a nation, when we're self focused, and it's been that way in the old days, it didn't mean we were going to have a nuclear disaster. Now if all the nations stay self focused, we have multiple threats of nuclear disaster, terrorism, global warming, and what's the root of it? The root of it is power wants more power. And that leaves more and more people disenfranchised. And that basic understanding needs to be taught through the Internet, through social media, through education, that power wanting more power is always going to be a breeding ground for the other three challenges that are in the world. If we don't understand the dangers of power, how are we possibly going to be able to even address and begin to address the challenges that are facing us on an international level? And then finally, one of my favorite shows, which maybe you know or maybe you don't know, it was an episode in Game of Thrones and basically it was the climax, okay, it was a climax where, even though it's not the last season climax is I will not blame the children for their father's mistakes, which is what is happening forever. So if we start to see that if the children are playable, if they're decent people, then we need to be able to negotiate in present time and not be caught in thousands and thousands of years of world history and understand that the power, the leaders need to be guided, led by individuals from the ground up, to be aware of the power and to be able to see that. Until we deal with that and we're not right, we're half right. Maybe we're two thirds right. But we still need to find a way to move towards some kind of peace and not stay addicted or frozen in our power. SA.