ENEMIES: From War to Wisdom Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D. and friends

In this final episode, Eleanor and Polly look back over their time together in doing the podcast and they assess where humanity seems to be standing in regard to war and wisdom. They reflect on the state of war and why humans return repeatedly to armed polarization, called “war.” And they talk about other options for polarization – being able to talk about our differences in a humanized way. Why is that still apparently unachievable? How does humane dialogue relate to mindfulness? Why are we stuck still in hostile enactments with other humans? In this final meeting, these two friends use humor and spiritual insight to look at where we are standing and how hard it is to travel, even in our minds, from War to Wisdom.d, “Instead, use your words.”

In this episode, we discuss the meaning of curiosity as a primary emotion and how it is expanded or restricted, throughout our development from infancy through old age, by conscious and unconscious factors. Curiosity or “interest” motivates us to engage with our experiences in ways that we can learn from them. The human infant is born with a primary motivation to investigate its experiences with curiosity, even when they are painful. Naturally, our curiosity help us survive by allowing us to discern the markers of pleasure and pain.What blocks our curiosity, then, when we are relating to each other as adults? How and why do we lose interest when we disagree or believe we “have heard it all, already”? Why do we close our ears to what we disagree with or find emotionally threatening? In this podcast, we talk about how we can retain our natural curiosity and the “Don’t Know Mind” even when we are in a difficult conversation.

Why is it so hard to hear and feel another person’s meaning when you are in difficult conversations? Even though you may love the other person, when they speak about something that “makes you angry,” you may find it’s impossible to hear anything except your own thoughts. When we feel emotionally threatened, we protect ourselves and promote our own points. This is universal. Everyone closes their ears to anything except their own thoughts when they feel insulted or emotionally threatened. The second rule of Real Dialogue is called “Listening Mindfully.” It teaches us how to open our ears and our minds during emotional pain or animosity in order not to not to create an enemy even before we hear what is being said.

In this podcast, we talk about how and why a speaker should LOWER emotional threat if that person wants to be seen, heard, and felt accurately. We don’t have to “be nice” or even “be kind,” be we have to limit ourselves to our own experience in speaking (not using “we” or “you” or claim to know “the facts”). Being able to speak subjectively (only for yourself) means that you do not speak for someone else’s reality, perceptions, or feelings. Listening to this podcast you will learn how to lower emotional threat, how to remain authentic and confident,  while cultivating an open space such as: “Here’s what it’s like for me, what’s it like for you?” This mindful space between our own experience and the experience of another person allows us to enter into conversation with people who are on a different side (of anything) without creating unnecessary hostility or making an enemy.

How do Homo Sapiens get and control power? What do we mean by power and how does it relate to influencing others or taking control? What is “true power” that can sustain us through our difficulties and “false power” that leads only to fears and misgivings? In this podcast, we will contemplate power and vulnerability, and how they function in our relationships, our aging, and our health.

What is death? Is it a flat-lining on the EEG in which the brain goes quiet? Is it cardiac arrest, the stopping of the heart? Is it the departing of consciousness from the body? Why does our definition of death change? If we cannot define death, how do we understand our fear of it? What’s the difference, for example, between what we feel about different kinds of death – e.g. “natural” death, murder, and accidental death? In this episode, we will explore the meanings of death in our own experiences, in the current science of Near Death Experience, and in the residues of the pandemic and our fears of contagious illness. Can we explore the meaning of death in the same way we explore the meaning of life?