Elizabeth Bader presents "The Self of Peace" at the 2012 Self and Duality Conference (SAND) and describes how the issues of the self and identity are "front and center" in the mediation process. Over the course of her legal career, she observed the worst in people: greed, envy, destruction, entrapment in patterns of perpetuation of what people saw as "necessary" in the service of "the self." This coincided with a crisis in her own personal and professional life. She reflected on a prayer she had read: "Bless me into usefulness."
Ms. Bader began to study the work of others, including Peter Levine (in his work on the trauma of people) and Stephen Porges (in his work on neuroscience.) She learned that through disappointment, the human sense of "self" and "identity" shift in a definable, predictable manner. Disappointment creates the doorway in order to move past the "ego," (which is the limited sense of the self) in order to ever be able to come to any sense of compromise and resolution. "This cycle is what I eventually called the IDR cycle." (Inflation-Deflation-Resolution)
In the first stage, people are inflated (in parallel with the involuntary neurological response to danger "the optimism bias," which is the psychological correlate of the biological shift.) The second phase is one of deflation. The third phase is realistic resolution and recognition of truth. Impasse is the point at which both sides know that unless they get past this point, there will be no resolution (and what they ultimately seek; which is peace.) "Peace never happens because of another person." It happens when one surrenders to the truth of the situation and says to oneself "yes, the war is over. I finally have resolution." What a beautiful video. The video clip containing "Blessed Are the Peacemakers" by medicine music.com.au is the cherry on top! Thank you, Ms. Bader.
