The Work of Trust

This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes Priyanka Sharma – all the way from India! Priyanka is a lecturer, facilitator and coach and she joins Michael and Stephanie in a wide-reaching conversation about the nature and strengths of matriarchal societies, systems theory, her own path to nonviolence, Internal Family Systems and more. Priyanka speaks candidly about the profound challenge of practicing and living nonviolently; though nonviolence is natural to human beings, it is not always a way of being with others and in the world that is supported by our institutions. Given this, she emphasizes the power of trust in oneself. With deep and enduring trust, Priyanka suggests that we can fortify our strength as we work to embody and manifest nonviolent principles as effective means of responding to and overcoming violence in our world today:

"I think if we have trust in life and in our own creativity and intelligence, we can do beautiful things. But the problem is that we live in violent systems. So, these violent systems teach us first, don't trust yourself. Trust the authority figure. The first thing is to program us to stop trusting our only inner wisdom. So, a lot of the work that I'm doing in systems thinking is to encourage people to trust your own inner wisdom. Like even Mahatma Gandhi said, the change has to happen with yourself first."

Transcript

Stephanie: Greetings and good morning, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Nonviolence Radio.

I'm your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I'm here in the studio with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler. And we are also joined by my [14]-year-old nephew, Liam, who is here in the radio studio for the first time. And my sister is outside. So, it's nice to have some guests here today on Nonviolence Radio and to be back in the studio live again.

On Nonviolence Radio, we look at nonviolence from angles of academics, activism, research, science, trying to help people understand that nonviolence is really a full culture, a field of practice, and a force that we can all tap into.

On today's show, we're going to be thinking a little bit more about effective action in nonviolence, how one person can make a big difference and that you don't have to feel hopeless in the face of some overwhelming odds and overwhelming challenges.

Later in the show, I'm going to bring on our guest, Priyanka Sharma, who is a facilitator and coach and systems thinker who's done a lot of interesting work with both NVC, which is Nonviolent Communication, the Work That Reconnects, empathy circles, and she's a lecturer in matriarchy studies. She's an amazing person, and we look forward to having her on.

So, before we bring her on, let's get into a little bit of nonviolence news for our Nonviolence Report, Michael. And then as that starts to unfold, we'll bring Priyanka in to talk to us too. 

Michael: Well, as you may imagine, there's a lot of news. A lot of things are going on around the world. I'm going to start with a group that I like to cover all the time and start with anyway, and that's Nonviolent Peaceforce.

Actually, though, I need to correct myself. I said last time that Nonviolent Peaceforce is doing a major intervention in Palestine. I always think it's NP doing everything, but in fact it's a different organization. This time it's UCPIP, that is Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine.

Many years ago, I remember being challenged when we were just starting the idea of unarmed civilian protection. “You'll never get any volunteers. Nobody will volunteer for dangerous work like this. And anyhow, the first time anyone gets killed or injured, the whole thing will collapse.”

Well, history has proven them wrong. As far as people being injured is concerned, that has happened. It has not deterred anyone. In terms of volunteers, just look at this recent event that's being prepared in Palestine.

There are over 100 trained veterans of unarmed civilian protection ready to deploy to Palestine. These protectors have decades of experience behind them. And we're not talking about, you know, just a little neighborhood fracas. This is in violent conflict zones from South Sudan to Colombia. And now they are ready to stand in solidarity with Palestinian communities under siege.

They send in an assessment team – they've literally learned how to do this stuff now, they’re not reinventing the wheel. They send in an assessment team to spend a good bit of time interviewing people, looking at structures, looking at all kinds of details that would never occur to me. You know how to get out of there. What kind of connections are there? And they never go in without the invitation of at least one group on the ground.

So, this assessment team completed their work in Palestine, produced a set of recommendations which I have read over. They are very impressive – a 26-page document, if I remember.

And then they had an advocacy team that spent October in New York and Washington, DC, trying to drum up support for unarmed civilian protection in general and UCP in Palestine, specifically.

So, this training team has now completed their training design, and the recruiting team has built a roster, as I was saying, of more than 100 UCP veterans who were willing to participate. And they have hired a local whom I had the pleasure of meeting online recently, Amira Musallam –

Stephanie: She was a guest on Nonviolence Radio.

Michael: -who was a guest on our program, who is a member of the assessment team, and she's going to lead an advance team in Palestine when these efforts really get underway in January.

Well, people, we have a lot of opportunities if we want to get involved in something. For example, this November, from November 3-11, you can join a very dear friend of ours who visited us at the Metta Center some years ago. Anna Zaros, of Nonviolent Peaceforce. Now, we’re talking about the Philippines. And we can go with her to witness how nonviolence is creating lasting change. And she adds, “While enjoying breathtaking scenery, warm hospitality, and delicious food.” I wouldn't want to go anywhere without that.

Now, we had a distressing episode in the world of peace not too long ago because we have one institution at a national level that is set up in Washington, the US Institute of Peace. And the administration did a takeover. And unfortunately, they just, you know, marched in. They took away records and things like that.

So, a couple of weeks ago, a US District Judge, Beryl Howell, ruled that the administration takeover was unlawful and has to be undone. The court blocked all the actions of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which we’ve heard much about, including the removal of USIP’s board and the transfer of its headquarters to the General Services Administration. That was a nasty little maneuver, and I'm happy to say that it has been nonviolently neutralized.

Passing on now, one of the people that I look to often for news and inspiration is Jessica Craven. She has an online presence. She is delightful to watch. And everyone these days has one question. That is, every progressive person has one question in their mind: “What do I do?”

And she now has a list available that you can get through her website. And this is a quote from Jessica. “I know it feels overwhelming right now, but history shows us that even the most crooked governments can be brought down eventually, if the populace bands together and peacefully resists. The trick is not to give up, even though they want us to do exactly that. One day at a time. We'll keep doing this work. In time, we will prevail, I promise.”

Stephanie: That's somewhat of a hopeful note, but I think a lot of people are feeling quite overwhelmed these days with not only just trying to make ends meet and working at their jobs and trying to reconnect post-pandemic – you know, in terms of their regular lives – but in terms of all of the social unrest happening all over the world. And how we can create more democratic, more transparent systems, and what the role of the individual really is in all of that. Because it can feel quite hopeless and overwhelming.

So, we have our friend here today, Priyanka Sharma, actually joining us all the way from India. We're really grateful that she's up so late to join us here.

Priyanka has been thinking a lot about systems, and the role of the individual, and the effectiveness of an individual within systems. I think her voice on this show today is going to be really interesting and fun. So welcome to Nonviolence Radio, Priyanka.

Priyanka: Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie.

Stephanie: It's great to have you, Priyanka. And we really look forward to this conversation with you.

Priyanka: Same here.

Stephanie: I think to get started, you know, I have my nephew here in the studio with me, and he's visiting all the way from the east coast of the US, in Virginia.

And so, I think to get started, I might like us to just give an overview of what nonviolence means to you. When you hear of nonviolence, how did you get involved in this work, and why does it matter?

Priyanka: So, how I got involved in this work is that I come from a trauma background. I have seen a lot of violence growing up, which I don't think any child should see.

I saw a lot of violence in my society, my culture, and I was – I don't know why, but from a very young age, I was a big fan of Mahatma Gandhi and of his principles of nonviolence. And I remember even in school having these debates with my friends who said, “Oh, yeah, we need to fight.”

And I was always promoting nonviolence, and I still don't know why. I still don't know why it resonates so much. But now, as I'm getting older, I realize that it's a very big value of mine. And consciously or unconsciously, I've been trying to live it, although, it's a very difficult thing to do.

My definition of nonviolence, ahimsa. It's very complicated because ahimsa in English, it means like, an absence of violence, if we just look at it from a linguistic perspective.

And for me, ahimsa is not just absence of violence, but it's the presence of compassion. When I approach the world with the sense of non-harmfulness, I become a safe person for everyone. Including my sentient beings, brothers and sisters of other species. When I can be so safe for everyone, that's my dream. Although I don't think I'm there yet.

And where I fill that space with the non-harmfulness, I fill it with compassion. And I recently had the great honor of asking Roshi Joan Halifax this question. She said for her, nonviolence means interdependence and non-duality, which means, you know, in Buddhism we call this exchanging the self for another. So, I can look at another person and see myself in that person and see no difference in our humanity. I resonate with that a lot.

Stephanie: That’s a beautiful explanation of your understanding of nonviolence, about how we create a harmlessness in ourselves that makes us safer to other beings. Whether human beings, animals, all of life in some way. And in making safe, we also become a force for change, for powerful transformation when we're working on that inner transformation ourselves, too.

Priyanka: Yes, exactly.

Michael: Hi, Priyanka.

Priyanka: Hi, Michael.

Michael: You know, I always weigh in from my academic background – not always, but sometimes. And I like to point out that this word, himsa, it’s very interesting. It's what linguists would call a desiderative, which means ahimsa actually means the absence of any desire to harm.

And I think that's very helpful. It's not just action, but it's in thoughts and words. It's in how we live our life. So, it really is a very deep concept. And of course, Gandhiji latched on to it and others did. To the extent that they understand it, they mean acting without injury. And that’s well and good. That's a terrific start. But I think it's good to know that the word really, really has a deep impact on the human psyche when properly understood.

Priyanka: Yes. I also asked my teacher, from whom I'm studying Buddhism. And he told me that non-harmfulness in the scriptures, it's a mental factor. Ahimsa is like non-harmfulness. It's described as the absence of malice. It's an absence of malice with the wish to be compassionate toward others. And every morning as we take a vow, “May I never harm anyone, through my body, speech, or mind,” so, it's an intention.

Michael: Beautiful.

Priyanka: So, it aligns with what you were saying, Michael.

Michael: Exactly. Yes. Beautiful.

Stephanie: And Priyanka, I'd like to know a little bit more about you as well. So, you've studied, and you work with Nonviolent Communication, the Work That Reconnects, empathy circles, matriarchy studies. That sounds amazing. I'd love to hear more about you and where you're bringing your energy into this work these days.

Priyanka: Yeah. It all started with a dream, actually. I was going through a very rough period during Covid. I had some personal things that, you know, a lot of my dreams went shattered. And because of Covid, I lost a lot of stuff. I was so miserable. And I had a dream – this woman, she was dressed all in white, she said, “Don't worry, don't be sad. Look.”

In my dream, she showed me that I would be part of this community of people who are meditating, who are studying. I would be in all of these classes. After I woke up, I was not so sad anymore. And it really happened. So, I do believe, like, you know – I'm also a big fan of Carl Jung and I do active imagination and study my dreams. I think it was a very symbolic dream for me. And it really came true.

After that, I discovered Marshall’s work, I discovered Work That Reconnects. And all of this saved my life because I was going into this misery spiral and not being a very productive person in the world because of how things were, what I saw around me. And Covid made it even worse because it really showed the flaws of our society, of the way of our economic system, of what they're doing to our ecology. 

Stephanie: Yeah, it seems like that was a turning point. We all have this sort of moment where we, you know – for me, it was 9/ 11 here in the US when I started to get more active and get more involved. And so, I have a feeling that Covid was a big motivator for a lot of people because of the depth of despair and frustration people felt at that time, too, that as people were spiraling, they were looking for ways out, too.

Priyanka: Yeah. And, you know, I remember Gandhiji saved my life in those days. I had this quote from Gandhiji that said, “I feel your feelings. I share your…” there’s this very beautiful quote which is very emphatic. I don’t know if I can quote it exactly. Michael, can you help me? I feel your feelings – 

Michael: I'm eager to hear this.

Stephanie: Yeah, I think I know the one what you're talking about, it's about being interconnected. It's like, let's feel our feelings together. Let's see our humanity together, kind of. We're not saying –

Priyanka: I feel your feelings. I see your beautiful heart. And let's work together for the service of the world. I always had that as my computer screensaver. And then I started searching more about nonviolence because I wanted to learn more about Gandhi. And so, I did a search, “Free course in Gandhian study” and I discovered Marshall’s work. That's when everything began to transform for me. Because I read a lot of academic papers. I read a lot of books, but nothing was transforming inside because I didn't have a community. I knew what is empathy, but I didn't really understand it at an embodied level.

And NVC workshops, NVC practice really helped me to do that. It's a radical way of transforming, of seeing the world from a perspective of needs. I was told maybe by society or by people, every time I would share something that was sad for me, people would jump up and say, “Oh, don't worry. It’ll be okay.” Or, “Don't be so sensitive.” Or, “Oh, you poor thing.” All this is sympathy. None of it is empathy.

In NVC spaces and Work That Reconnects spaces, I was just allowed to share my grief. I was welcomed the way I was, whatever I was feeling. One day it was anger, the other day it was sadness, the other day it was something else. I was welcomed and that was very healing. That gave me the resourcefulness to face all the chaos and mess that was happening at the time of Covid.

Michael: A little personal note, Priyanka, I met Marshall, back in the day.

Priyanka: Wow.

Michael: Yeah. I was just starting to develop some of the major concepts that are now kind of the bedrock of the Metta Centers proposals of our are offering, what we can offer to the world. And he was so encouraging. He was so helpful. And to get encouragement from Marshall Rosenberg, that was a big boost.

So, I've always been very, very grateful to Marshall and to you people who do nonviolent communication. End of personal note.

Stephanie: End of personal note. Priyanka, you're also involved in matriarchal studies, too.

Priyanka: Yes.

Stephanie: I was curious what that means and what kind of questions are answered in that field, too.

Priyanka: Yeah. So, firstly, I want to also empathize with people who get triggered by this term because, yeah, we've been conditioned. We live in a very violent society. Even our language is violent. And so, when I say “matriarchal society,” a lot of people get triggered because of the assumption that it's matriarchies – you know, women trying to rule over men. And this is not the case. This is not what it is. So, I invite everybody who's listening to really listen with just an open heart. Give me a hearing. And after that, if you have any opposition, I'm happy to – you know, I'm happy to sort it out with you.

Modern Matriarchal Studies is what I study with Dr. Heidi Abendroth. She's in Germany. She founded the Academy Hagia, through which she does this work. She spent 30 years traveling around the world studying matriarchal societies and she created a framework and a definition.

So, all of this talk actually started with Bachofen’s book called, Das Mutterrecht, in Germany. And she was very frustrated because everybody was talking about matriarchy, but there was no definition. There was no clear definition. And in those days, a lot of these archeologists were coming from a patriarchal, very colonial mindset. And they misrepresented what was happening here.

Also, I give you an example. When Maria Gimbutas put forth her research where she found this – in Old Europe, this excavation – around the civilization she called Old Europe. She found this tiny goddess figurine, and the archeologists thought they were just pornographic dolls or something like that, but they were actually goddesses, right?

So, this is how they were so grossly misrepresented. When people say, “Oh, there was a civilization where women ruled over men,” Matriarchal societies are not about domination. They are the opposite. They are the complete opposite.

Heidi chose to reclaim that word “matriarchy” in her definition of matriarchal societies because she said she wanted to honor all the women who came before us, our women ancestors, who created all these beautiful cultures which we are living in today. And they were not honored. So, she wanted to reclaim the term.

There are a lot of people who use the term “the gynocritic,” and all of this. And she says it's too confusing for people. So, she chose to use that and reclaim it. What it basically means, in order for a society to be a matriarchy, it has to fulfill two very important conditions.

One is that women have to have the economic power of distribution of goods and services. That means economic power, and matriarch lineage. That means the lineage is followed through the line of the mother. And you could have matrilocality, where women live together in a clan house. All the generations of women live in one house. That's possible, but it's not true in all the societies.

Her definition is that they need to have economic power of distribution and matrilineage. I was very attracted to this because I was feeling very disappointed because I was going into these circles and people were talking about creating a new world based on a needs perspective.

I was wondering if that's even possible and to know that such societies have existed for centuries, it's very heartening. It gives me hope that we can build societies which are need-based, which are focused on nurture, care, compassion rather than competition and violence.

The way they are structured is, politically they are consensus-based. So, it's a true grassroots democracy. All decisions are made unanimously and they take very long to make decisions because every vote counts. Even the smallest child will have a vote to the mother. They respect women as the creator of culture, so women are highly revered. It doesn't mean that men don't have a – it’s complementarity. Men have other roles.

One example which I was very impressed with was an African tribe, where they have, you know, two different codes – one for men and one for women. And the men go to the men's court. Women's issues are heard in the women's court, which, I think, is really beautiful. And they don't glorify violence. All the decisions are made nonviolently. So, it's a truly nonviolent society.

Stephanie: That is really interesting. I can definitely hear your passion about matriarchal studies and that your interest in it is probably, for our listeners, opening up new ideas and pathways for people to start thinking about different possibilities. I have a feeling that this idea probably resonates with a lot of listeners of Nonviolence Radio.

Okay, so for those of you just tuning in, you're here at Nonviolence Radio. I'm Stephanie, here with my co-host Michael, and we're talking with our friend Priyanka, who is currently in India.  

Right now, we are exploring some different ways that Priyanka has come into the study and practice of nonviolence from being activated, especially during Covid, to getting involved in better understanding empathy, her practice of Buddhism and getting into matriarchal – being a lecturer in matriarchal studies and helping the world to better understand a whole new paradigm of an approach to understanding how societies can function nonviolently. These are keyholes into the world of nonviolence.

And, Priyanka, I want to bring us back into the conversation around effective action and systems thinking. Because you also have done deep study of systems thinking, and you're looking at how to incorporate that into the other areas that you work in. So, tell us a little bit about what systems theory is and let's go from there.

Priyanka: In most of the ancient cultures of the world, Indigenous traditions, Buddhist philosophy, interdependence is the fact that it's not something new. Systems thinking is not something new. It's just that science has, you know, come to it newly. So, it all started with René Descartes who divided the mind and body as separate, and this reductionist approach to science where we can break up things to understand.

And also, there was this movement where nature was seen – before that, nature was sacred, like it was in matriarchal societies, earlier societies, Indigenous societies. But after these scientists, like René Descartes and those who followed him, they started seeing the world in a very, very reductionist way, in a materialistic way.

Suddenly, nothing was sacred. Everything was to be used. Everything was seen from a materialistic perspective. And of course, over the years, this kind of shaped physics. It shaped economics. It shaped a lot of the way we see the world. It shaped education which has caused all the harm we see around today.

By contrast, in matriarchal societies, everything is sacred. We depend on Mother Nature and so, we keep Her with respect. But this was not there during and after the Enlightenment.

So, all to say, Fritjof Capra’s book, The Systems View of Life, I did the course and that's where I was able to deepen my understanding.

I wanted to really understand how to make sense using systems thinking, how to create deep change through compassion and empathy. According to Capra, all systems are intelligent, okay? I think it's at its core, all life systems are intelligent. And we don’t realize that, you know – we don’t realize that or give – think about how the earth or Mother Nature’s functioning. It's all based on systems. We are all part of this web of life, and it's all happening on its own.

The second principle is that it's regenerative. So, systems keep changing constantly. When there is a trigger in some systems, something happens internally in the system and then they change. So many scientists are studying the complexity of systems, but nobody can see when there is a trigger, how the system is going to change. Nobody knows.

And we are here because of the creative emergence of systems. That means systems are always looking for novelty. We are conscious we are alive. We have creative ways to make sense of life. And that gives me a lot of hope. Because when I feel hopeless, and I see all the things that are happening in the world, I think: Over millions of years of evolution, we can see how this creative emergence has – how we evolved from, even single-celled organisms had this creative emergence. We emerged from single-celled organisms, we all managed to emerge from a small, tiny creature called a tissue. We didn't have to do anything. It's just that life that propelled us forward.

And so, I think if we have trust in life and in our own creativity and intelligence, we can do beautiful things. But the problem is that we live in violent systems. So, these violent systems teach us first, don't trust yourself. Trust the authority figure. The first thing is to program us to stop trusting our only inner wisdom. So, a lot of the work that I'm doing in systems thinking is to encourage people to trust your own inner wisdom. Like even Mahatma Gandhi said, the change has to happen with yourself first. Right?

And when we understand this about systems, that I am an integral part of all the systems to which I belong, I belong to the web of life, and I am a product of this creative emergence. If you think about it, it's so beautiful. Some people call it God. You know, what is this force? What happens, like scientists say, “Oh, hydrogen and oxygen, they collided together, and water came out.” But what made hydrogen and oxygen come together and make water? Nobody knows. Some people call it God, some people call it a higher power. And that's why even nobody knows. And systems are so complex that nobody really understands them either. And so, that gives me trust that life is beautiful, like we are a collective. We are alive. We are creative. We are intelligent. We have the power to overcome any obstacle. The only thing we need is trust in our own wisdom. That's what we need.

Stephanie: It makes me think about this idea in nonviolence that we often say that conflict is inevitable, violence isn't. So, as we're growing in these systems and listening to our inner wisdom, our truths might contradict each other.

They might come into conflict in some way. What's one thing speaking to me, might speak to you in a different way. Like we're all looking at truth and that kind of growth in the same way. There's conflict in systems, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there has to be violence in systems. What do you think of that? And I'd like to invite Michael on that idea too – conflict versus violence within systems.

Michael: Yeah. We often say that there's a simple key for making that transformation in your outlook. And that is if someone is causing you a difficulty of some kind, any kind, the person is not the problem. They are simply looking for happiness and fulfillment, just as you are. But as Marshall Rosenberg would say, our strategies are different for getting there. 

And so, it's the strategies, and not the deep underlying values, that are really colliding. So, that's the first step in understanding and in liberating your innate feeling, which is often smothered in our “civilization,”, that our welfare is deeply intertwined with one another, that I really, really – and Buddha said this very clearly, “I cannot be happy, I will not enter Nirvana until every single creature is free.” Now, that is an extreme form.

But for someone like me, it's just a question of the key term of service that you used earlier in connection with Gandhiji, Priyanka, that I want to find a way to serve the well-being of the broadest number of my fellow creatures that I possibly can. And in my case, it does include non-human life. 

Having that mental attitude is very health-giving for the person having it – and I’m testifying for my own experience. And it also means that it's much easier to pilot your way to this sometimes subtle distinction between conflict and violence. Namely, that you are starting with the faith, with the confidence that there is a solution to every problem such that all parties will be gratified.

And even if one party has to sacrifice something, that very act of sacrificing for another person is a very human thing to do, a very humane thing to do. So, the world has been constructed beautifully. It makes perfect sense as Anandamayi Ma, a brilliant woman from Bengal in the last century said, “In God's creation, there is perfect justice. But not in man's institutionalization of that creation.”

But it is very helpful to know that there is that lodestar. There is that nonviolent reality to which we can always guide our efforts.

Stephanie: Priyanka, do you have a response to that?

Priyanka: Yes. What Michael said resonated so much with me. That's true in my own practice. Although I have to say it's very hard, very hard to put it into practice. And that's why, you know, Mahatma Gandhi said nonviolence is not for cowards. It's really true. I saw that proven true in my own experience because in order to be nonviolent, I have to face my own pain. 

Which means, let's say, someone does something that hurts my feelings, doesn't meet my needs, I first have to deal with my pain. Violence comes from the inability to empathize with myself, to stay with my pain. And this perspective – what Michael was saying, that this other person is – I'm in pain because of this person. So, what's the solution to come out of my pain? I blame this person. I harm this person.

And of course, that's not really the case because the real truth is I'm in pain because of my own unmet needs. And often people who are the most violent are people who've been through trauma. And what that means in nonviolence language is that these are people who throughout their lives have chronically unmet needs for respect.

I think I heard this story from Marshall, or – I don't know where I heard this story. But once there was this woman, who was running a store, and this man came into her store, and he held a gun at her. You know, he held her at gunpoint, and he was trying to, like, molest her.

And she kept, empathizing with him and speaking to him in a very respectful way. And he let her go. Because she had met his needs for respect. Often when people are doing violent acts, it's it's just to meet needs. If we look at it in a very nonviolent way, it’s to meet needs.

And when we can work through our own pain, when I can say, “Ouch, I'm hurt,” and I can express my vulnerability, then I become nonviolent. And Marshall says the moment I make a judgment of another person, I'm already violent. Because I’ve dehumanized that person through my judgment. “Oh, this person is mean.” “This person is rude.” “This person is x, y, z,” I've already become violent.

Stephanie: It's a lot of work. Nonviolence is an ongoing practice. It's not like you just take it on one day and become nonviolent. It's like discovering parts of the practice of, “Oh, wow, look at my look at my judgment. Where is that coming from? Wow, I have pain. How can I meet the need that this pain is trying to signal to me?”

I want to bring up another idea, which I think has been addressed, but to make it even more concrete. So, when we're talking about systems, somehow on the one hand, we're talking about this kind of deep evolutionary path of humanity, and all beings. That we can tap into through our inner wisdom that we have access to, that nonviolence is a part of it.

And then we have systems like our institutions, and they seem to be at odds sometimes. So, if we have a kind of a system of nonviolent evolution before us, that we're becoming more peaceful human beings, we're growing in our awareness, in our consciousness of others, and that's part of our human destiny and ourselves, that we're interconnected.

Okay. This grand, grandiose vision. But then we feel hurt. Something happens, and our institutions then offer us a violent solution, “You don't have to listen to that inner wisdom. Here's a solution: Why don't we put these people away, separate them, dehumanize them, make them an other?” Let's create an us and them. You know, when the tools that we reach for are not always nonviolent tools. 

And that's where I see the importance of the work of nonviolence today, is really in terms of that institution building. So that we have institutions available for when we do get into conflict with one another, or we're dealing with deep pain that when we reach for something, we don't have to reach for the violent tool. We have nonviolent tools – which Michael started to show talking about unarmed civilian protection, which is really, a long-term solution to war because it's unarmed intervention that is looking to de-escalate conflict, as we know violence will escalate violence and dehumanization.

So, yeah, let's bring this out a bit. Let’s tease this out – the institutions, the path of our evolution and those kinds of systems versus the being in conflict with the institutions that exist. And how do we reconcile the need for more nonviolent institutions with that deep inner wisdom? 

Priyanka: So, what I want to say is that, for me, I'm only sharing my own personal experience. I'm not an academic like Michael. And maybe he can, you know, help me with the research or whatever but I'm just sharing my own personal experience. And maybe a lot of it is just my own opinion. But I want to be able to trust that. I trust my own experience and my own wisdom because it's been a hard battle for me to get to that point. And I'm happy to be, you know, proven wrong as well.

But when it comes to institutions, I remember the first day I walked into school and I was told, “Don't sit like that. Don't stand like that. Don't eat like that. Don't talk like that.” And, you know, “Don't draw a pink elephant. Don't interpret poetry the way you want to. This is the way to do it if you want good marks.” So, I was being made into a good soldier, a good soldier for the business as usual.

So, it's such that people have a very huge, deep need to belong. Belonging is connected to survival, right? It's almost – so when we are threatened, there's this amygdala that gets activated which triggers a fight or flight response, which is really a survival response. So, belonging is a very, very important need.

And I think people participate in these violent institutions, firstly because they have not done the work of awareness. Look at our education. What are we learning? I remember sitting in business school learning how to manipulate customers to buy into things they don't need, right? We are not learning ethics. We are not emphasizing ethics. We are teaching – at least in India, we are torturing our students like every day. I heard things, like one of the best universities in India, and we have suicides there more often than I would – I mean, we had so many suicides happening there. It's because students are traumatized by this culture. There's no care. There's only competition, competition.

And so, in order to belong, people comply. But it takes a lot of courage to step away and say, “This is not it's not working for me. I don't want to participate in this.” And that's when that comes from spiritual practice, from awakening like I had during Covid and many others who I'm working with.

And we have to work on ourselves first and have the courage to walk away. Like even Gandhiji said, courage is so important. And I think that's true. But we can't do it alone. And this misconception people have that we have to do it alone, it's not true. If you apply systems thinking, we know we need to radically collaborate. And that's why I reached out to you all, to you, and I'm so happy because I got connected to so many beautiful people who are doing the same work. I have so many people in the NVC community. I have so many people so I’m radically collaborating with people all over the globe. Because it's not a work you were meant to do alone. Get together with other people who – at first, you need that courage to see the truth. Because the business as usual will tell you, “Oh, don't see the truth, you know, go buy a new pair of shoes or buy the 100th pair of T-shirt,” you know? 

Stephanie: Part of the problem is our brains do respond to shopping. You know, like that can be – you can get a little dopamine from making a purchase of something that you really like. So, we have to be able to step back and look at the long-term impact on systems for every choice that we make, which isn't easy. And it's not something that's always fun to do. 

Priyanka: Exactly. Not fun.

Stephanie: There is a benefit in the end. Michael, one more question from you. And then I want to ask one more question of Priyanka. 

Michael: Sure. Thank you. Gosh, there's so many different things I'd like to tie in on. If you could just see the piece of paper in front of me. But I think I'll pick this one.

I'm embarrassed to say, as your local academic, that I'm forgetting the name of the criminologist that I'm citing here, but this is a man who studied inmates who had committed capital crimes.

I mean, this is not like Mr. Nice guys. For 25 years, he immersed himself in the psychology of these people who, as I say, had committed very violent crimes. And he came out with one overwhelming lesson that was unavoidable — and also, it was very interesting and useful. And that is every single act of violence arises from the need for respect.

And there's something that you just touched on, Priyanka. And it's something that makes me think very urgently, what if we all had more respect for ourselves and consequently for others? That would be the most effective way of reducing and eventually eliminating violence. So, if our educational systems would give us a sense of who we really are, that would solve it.

I remember in school I was told that I am a primate with flat fingernails. I mean, thanks a lot! There's a lot more going on in my body, mind, and spirit than my flat fingernails. So, we really need a deep readjustment in our educational system and our media.

Priyanka: Yes, Michael. I totally agree with you. A lot of traumatized people don't have self-respect. They actually – okay, when they do – there's this work, which I'm doing a lot, called, Internal Family Systems, which is based on the work of Dr. Richard Schwartz. So, what happens when we are traumatized, for example, in childhood, when I am sure, like, if I take my – Michael, is it okay if I take your example?

Michael: Of course.

Priyanka: You know, there was this child who heard somebody say, you have flat fingernails. And when we don't have a healthy way of processing that trauma, it becomes locked in our body, and it becomes a part that then goes into our unconscious and makes us behave in ways that other parts might not agree with.

So, I mean, I often hear people say, I don't know what happened. I was not even in my right mind. It's just something just happened, you know, that's why I blew up on this person. And that's a trauma reaction. That’s this little child wanting attention because these traumatic events get stored in our amygdala and the amygdala reacts when that is triggered.

We react as if that situation is happening right now, even though it's happened in the past. And this is how CPTSD – when you talk about, post-traumatic stress, is exactly how it works. And so, The Body Keeps The Score, it’s an excellent book. If your listeners want to pursue this.

So, healing the trauma is very important. And that's when that part gets another job, like to the part whose job is to protect Michael. So, Michael might develop a habit of hiding his nails or overcompensating or, I don't know, like there's so many things one can react to trauma. But then when that part is healed, it takes over another role. So, that role could be more life-affirming, more meeting needs.

And all these parts are trying to protect us. It sounds very counter-intuitive that someone who is murdering a person might think that's a good thing to do, but in their mind, for their attitude, they might be missing the need for safety. And not to say that we shouldn't protect ourselves, but unless we can see the violence in ourselves, we can't create a nonviolent world. Because I see every day the ways in which I am not violent.

I hope my neighbor is not listening to this, but – she keeps her dustbin in the middle of this staircase. And every day I see that dustbin and I have very bad judgments about her. And then I have a judgment about myself. Oh, my God, I am a nonviolent practitioner. And I'm so – it's so hard. This work is so hard. It's not easy.

Stephanie: Thanks for recommending the Internal Family Systems. I've heard a lot about it and there's a lot of people in the network that we're part of that have been looking into it. So that's a good mention on the show and a good follow-up resource.

My nephew here in the studio, Liam, actually has a question, so I want to bring him on. He's not been on the radio before. So, this is his radio debut. Liam, what's your question?

Liam: How do you think that we could solve the corruption of youth, in the sense that the education system breeds?

Priyanka: Wow. I feel very incompetent to answer this question because it's such a huge problem, Liam. I feel overwhelmed. I really feel overwhelmed. I think, from my perspective, when I was studying – you know, I love poetry, and I'm a poet. I published a lot of my poetry. So, when I was in my English class and I interpreted a poem by – we were studying, I think, Wordsworth – and I interpreted that poem in a creative way, which resonated with me. And the teacher just gave me very low marks because she had this grading rubric and I had to parrot whatever she thought. I did not have the space to be more creative, to express myself. I think that's the biggest thing that’s harming kids these days: in the education system we are creating factories. And this is a remnant of, like, the Industrial Revolution, right?

In the Industrial Revolution, they just wanted to train people to work in factories to become like a factory robot, a factory laborer, which didn't require much. But today, we need people who are good at conflict resolution. We need people who are creative. We need people who can take initiative. And the education system is not offering that anywhere, I think.

But how to solve that? We have to get together. And if you look at it from a systems perspective, we need to get together with all sorts of people and solve this collaboratively together. We need to talk to astronauts. We need to talk to biologists. We need to talk to people who are nonviolent. You know, we need to talk to people who are chemists. You need to talk to people who are from Indigenous traditions and make a council and ask them. I think that would be great.

Michael: Liam, that is a great question. And I have actually thought about it a lot since, you know, my whole career in education and my parents were educators, and even one of my grandparents.

So, the answer that I've come up with is we've got to take our own education in hand. And not necessarily just off the internet either, but learn the things that we're interested in. And information isn't that hard to come by nowadays. And people who can help you would be willing to help you. It's a shame – it would be so much more efficient if we could just sit in the classroom and have them put all this good stuff in our heads. But you know, intimate human values don't work in big, big systems. I mean, we see this even in healthcare. You know, we have these excellent physicians, but you try and go through one of the big operations, and then you see their flaws.

So, what I'm just going to do, Liam, is encourage you to, just follow your own star and do all your own education.

Stephanie: That's really interesting because I've heard Priyanka say something similar, that when we, you know, develop ourselves in the way that we feel most called. Priyanka, I'm going to give the last word to you, about the importance of following our own star, and why.

Priyanka: Yeah. I just want to end with Gandhi's quote. And I want all your listeners to really hear this. “I see your beauty. I feel your need. I feel your feeling. My wisdom flows from the highest source. I salute that source in you. Let us work together for harmony and peace.”

Stephanie: Thank you so much, Priyanka, for joining us today. It's been great to have you.

Priyanka: Thank you for having me.

Stephanie: So, we want to thank everybody who made this show possible, our mother station KWMR, our friends over at KPCA as well. We're really grateful that you help share the show. To Pacifica Network, who syndicates the show, to our friends at Waging Nonviolence who syndicate the show, then to our Metta Center team, Matt Watrous, who helps make the transcript of the show and with his partner, Robin. Sophia, who shares the show on social media. You can find the show at Metta Center's website, MettaCenter.org. NonviolenceRadio.org with the transcript. And, we want to also thank the Peaceful World Foundation for supporting Nonviolence Radio. It's great to partner with you. And yeah. So, everybody, until the next time, we'll be back in two weeks. So please take care of one another.

 [Music – “We Are One” by Emma’s Revolution]