I spent this past Sunday at two beautiful interfaith events. The first, a celebration of the ending of Tro i Harmoni, an association for which I’ve been a board member for the last couple of years. I moderated a panel with a Rabbi and an Imam, and we spoke about the difficulties of interfaith work, both collectively and in personal relationships. We explored the question of whether coming to the table with anyone is the right step, or whether there are boundaries to this work. We talked about the different conditions people have in coming to the table, and how these conditions can be both protectors and barriers. We also talked about the alternative to always pointing to the problem, the role of empathy and visionary thinking that can imagine a different way to live. We had music, meditation, food and a presentation of different organizations that continue the work of inclusion and interconnection. It was a beautiful way to honor the work that Tro i Harmoni has done for the last decade.
The second event was also an interfaith event at the Church of Scientology. This included a series of speakers who spoke about their work with interfaith, inclusion, democracy and peace education, etc.
In both events, I ended up on the microphone, the first one moderating the event, including the panel (in Danish!), and the second one as an invited speaker. Both events were uplifting and unifying, highlighting the importance of interfaith work.
And this is where the ‘outward’ part of my post ends. I would also like to share some of my own behind-the-scenes inward journey. Continue reading if that’s interesting to you, otherwise you could stop here
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I wasn’t always so comfortable on microphones. As a kid I had quite some stage fright. In the 8th grade Passover seder that our class had to lead for the whole school, I had one line: “We eat bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness that our ancestors had to endure while they were in Egypt”. Not only did I memorize it to the death, but I’m sure my close friends from then still remember that line on my behalf. There were a few other incidents of running to the bathroom to procrastinate giving a presentation. Or shakily delivering talks. Or wanting to be in the choir but not being able to stand the pressure of auditioning. A lot of stories that have turned into bedtime stories for my 5 year old
So the fact that I gave an improvised talk at the 2nd event was quite a feat. I challenged myself not to prepare anything and just speak from the heart. I did this last year, and I guess the church of Scientology is a comfortable enough place for me to practice this. I spoke about the need to meet each other’s pain, to be able to do that by meeting our own pain. I spoke about activism as something other than fighting the system. I spoke about the loud voices of power and the quieter movement happening in the background. And I spoke about peace. The peace that will really come to this planet. Imagining, feeling and knowing this, a crazy thing to say at this time.
I spent the previous day with my cacao sisters in a womb healing ceremony, where we connected with our womb centers and the deepest darkest parts of ourselves. Without going into too many details (too late?), I really experienced that it physically hurts not to be myself. Parts of my body are actually in pain from this. All those layers of shame and hiding from being exposed, when in fact all I was hiding is myself and a longing to live in a peaceful and loving world. What a world we live in that you can actually get slammed with critique for speaking this out. I talked about this in the Scientology church – not the womb cacao part – but the part where the need to be right and the seizing of power relies on another perspective being shut down. And beyond power, now we’re seeing that in the ‘high levels’, it’s also evil and very dark. And those people up there love to see us fighting among left and right politics, among different religions, different ideologies, we become their soldiers and let them work in the shadows.
But as those people in power come out of the shadows, so do the ones releasing their shame and daring to speak the truth. It’s an amazing combination. The microphones and the behind-the-scenes, working together. The performance being called out. The truth being spoken. Power doesn’t go down easy, so who knows what the next few months will bring. But I’m proud to be one of the many who are getting on the microphones, giving another voice to the peace calling us home.
In getting in touch with one’s gift, or contribution, to this world, there is no competition around it. It doesn’t matter whether you give to one person or one thousand, every person has their unique role in the journey. The role of marketing then becomes less about getting as many clients as possible but more about putting yourself out there so that people are aware of you, and if they are drawn to your services, they come. I’m often surprised in my cacao circles that we are a small group, considering what I’ve received from Munay Healing is world changing. But then I remember that it doesn’t matter how many worlds, because it’s my whole world. So a whole world has been transformed. For someone else, it might be a different teacher or experience.
The spiritual teacher Jeff Foster used to tell this story about a child who wanted to save all the thousands of starfish who were beached on the shore, and was throwing them back one by one into the water. Someone passed by and asked, “do you really think you’re gonna be able to save all the starfish? There are too many and it’s not gonna make a difference to the majority”. “It made a difference to that one!” the child said and carried on.
So if you’re in the ‘business’ of making a difference, and it really comes from the heart, there is of course action, and there is discipline, and there is hard work, but there is no competition to take the ‘best’ spot. Moreover, the ‘best’ spot is not necessarily the one that attracts the most people, or the most money. Imagine if this was our reality? The only reason it’s not our current reality is that the majority behaves in that competitive way, not accepting ourselves and our role in the world. What else could keep such a reality going? It’s another subtle battle that keeps us trapped in the fight against the current system instead of creating our own. Creating our own builds an alternative without having to destroy another. “If you build it, they will come”-style.
Sometimes I wonder when I’m giving a workshop or a training, whether there is an elephant in the room about me being originally from Israel, or the method being originally Israeli. With European audiences, it is often the case that they wondered about it, or even had some aversion to joining the training because of the Israeli label.
On the last day of the training that took place 24-29th October, 2025, I asked the participants if they wanted me to talk about that part, and there were a lot of nods. I shared a little bit about my own journey with how I think about the conflict, the occupation, the atrocities happening over there, how I was personally affected, etc. As we opened up the conversation, I realized this topic was indeed relevant for some people in the circle, and we started to have an honest sharing about it.
Someone said he was worried this would be Israeli propaganda. Another said she considered making the moral decision of not joining. Another said she had to do a bit of background research on me before coming.
I could have gotten defensive. I could have taken it personally, and I could have made myself into a victim of discrimination. I could probably even register it with the anti-semitism police.
But I didn’t. Because we were sitting in a circle, sharing our truths, and that was already doing the work. The work is not to convince each other what’s the right thing to do, because everyone has their own version. But to accept that everyone has their own version. That’s what people miss, and that’s what makes us even more divided.
I understand that people have boundaries in terms of what they can accept, but in my experience, not accepting someone’s version of truth does not make it go away. It actually means going to war. And war is what we are trying to stop (right?).
This is hard, and it’s controversial, because everyone wants the outside world to reflect their ideology. And many people want to show that their truth is THE truth. It just doesn’t work that way. We need to pay more attention to how we put our truths out there, because that ‘how’ is creating a lot of war. The whole political arena is one big battlefield.
Because we just spent the week looking at this ‘how’ over and over again, we actually were able to have a loving and connecting conversation about a very divisive topic. And this is the type of political education that I’m so happy to be a part of. It’s not always easy, at times in fact very challenging to one’s own sense of self, but it’s worth the effort to build the world we want to live in.
original article published in Danish in Udsyn magazine (see Danish version below)
One day, this war will end. No war lasts forever. But do we have to wait until then to have peace? I say no. Peace can begin at any moment because it starts within—by being at peace with the present moment. When we resist what is, we create war within ourselves.
Every day, we fight countless wars—not just on battlefields, but in our hearts and minds. We wage war against certain emotions, against opposing perspectives. Some people feel attacked when they hear “Free Palestine.” Others go to war when they see an Israeli flag. We sustain these wars, seeking refuge in those who agree with us, drawing lines, testing loyalties. “Will they condemn this side or that? Will they show sympathy here or there?” We measure people by where they stand, reinforcing the very divisions that fuel conflict. Inner wars very quickly fuel outer wars. But if our inner wars can shape the world, why wouldn’t our inner peace do the same?
Peace does not belong to a side. It is not a position, nor can it be imposed or defended. There is no such thing as “fighting for peace.” Yet, peace does require effort—not the effort of battle, but the courage to examine our own wars. To look beyond the resistance. To face the parts of ourselves we have pushed away. To see ourselves beyond our national and religious identities. National and religious identities are not the problem; they can offer meaning, belonging, and strength. But when they become shields—ways to avoid fear, loneliness, or uncertainty—they create division rather than connection. A sense of community built on fear will always be fragile, always seeking enemies to hold itself together. True belonging does not come at the expense of our shared humanity—it strengthens it.
Some people will resonate with what I have written so far, while for others, it may feel unrealistic or empty. Many have reminded me that peacemakers were among those killed on October 7th. That this approach doesn’t work when people want to kill you. That violence must be met with force, or it will only grow. And so, the cycle continues—violence to stop violence, destruction to prevent destruction. Maybe, at this moment, that feels like the only way. But is it the way we want things to be?
At some point, we have to ask ourselves how to break free from these cycles. In Israel and Palestine, those working for a different future are often the same people who have learned to hold multiple perspectives. Even in their grief, even after losing loved ones, they refuse to see each other as enemies. I believe they exist because they have done deep peace work within themselves. They have used their pain not to fuel more war but to plant the seeds of something new.
All of this is possible. If we give more attention and energy to our inner world, we can begin to shift the outer one. Peace does not have to wait for the war to end—it can begin wherever we are willing to create it.
Dansk
At finde fred i krigstid
En dag vil denne krig ende. Ingen krig varer evigt. Men behøver vi at vente indtil da for at finde fred? Jeg siger nej. Fred kan begynde når som helst, fordi den starter indenfor—ved at være i fred med det nuværende øjeblik. Når vi modstår det, der er, skaber vi krig i os selv.
Hver dag kæmper vi utallige krige—ikke kun på slagmarken, men i vores hjerter og sind. Vi fører krig mod bestemte følelser, mod modstridende perspektiver. Nogle mennesker føler sig angrebet, når de hører “Free Palestine.” Andre går i krig, når de ser et israelsk flag. Vi opretholder disse krige, søger tilflugt hos dem, der er enige med os, trækker linjer, tester loyaliteter. “Vil de fordømme denne side eller den? Vil de vise sympati her eller der?” Vi måler mennesker på, hvor de står, hvilket forstærker de samme opdelinger, der nærer konflikten. Indre krige nærer hurtigt ydre krige. Men hvis vores indre krige kan forme verden, hvorfor skulle vores indre fred så ikke gøre det samme?
Fred tilhører ikke nogen side. Det er ikke en position, og det kan ikke påtvinges eller forsvares. Der er ikke noget, der hedder at “kæmpe for fred.” Alligevel kræver fred indsats—ikke kampens indsats, men modet til at undersøge vores egne krige. At kigge forbi modstanden. At møde de dele af os selv, vi har skubbet væk. At se os selv ud over vores nationale og religiøse identiteter. Nationale og religiøse identiteter er ikke problemet; de kan give mening, tilhørsforhold og styrke. Men når de bliver skjold—måder at undgå frygt, ensomhed eller usikkerhed på—skaber de division snarere end forbindelse. Et fællesskab bygget på frygt vil altid være skrøbeligt, altid søge fjender for at holde sig selv sammen. Ægte tilhørsforhold kommer ikke på bekostning af vores fælles menneskelighed—det styrker den.
Nogle mennesker vil genkende det, jeg har skrevet indtil videre, mens det for andre kan føles urealistisk eller tomt. Mange har mindet mig om, at fredsarbejdere var blandt de dræbte den 7. oktober. At denne tilgang ikke virker, når folk vil dræbe dig. At vold skal mødes med magt, ellers vil den kun vokse. Og sådan fortsætter cyklussen—vold for at stoppe vold, ødelæggelse for at forhindre ødelæggelse. Måske føles det på dette tidspunkt som den eneste vej. Men er det den vej, vi ønsker, at tingene skal være?
På et tidspunkt må vi spørge os selv, hvordan vi bryder ud af disse cyklusser. I Israel og Palæstina er de, der arbejder for en anderledes fremtid, ofte de samme mennesker, der har lært at holde flere perspektiver. Selv i deres sorg, selv efter at have mistet kære, nægter de at se hinanden som fjender. Jeg tror, de eksisterer, fordi de har gjort dybt fredsarbejde med sig selv. De har brugt deres smerte, ikke til at næres krig, men til at plante frøene til noget nyt.
Alt dette er muligt. Hvis vi giver mere opmærksomhed og energi til vores indre verden, kan vi begynde at ændre den ydre. Fred behøver ikke vente på, at krigen slutter—den kan begynde, hvor vi er villige til at skabe den.
I want to share a slightly heavier experience from my week in Berlin, with the Youth4Peace exchange. Youth4Peace brought together 80 young people from 26 different countries from May 3-9, 2005, and I had the pleasure of co-moderating the group. On the third day of the program, after listening to witnesses from current or recent wars, we headed to a visit to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the afternoon. I used to work in the field of Holocaust Education, so I have been on these visits before, and I spent a lot of time engaging with young people about the story of Anne Frank and the Holocaust.
I didn’t think anything of this visit to Sachsenhausen, and in fact, I thought this would be a visit just for the group, one that perhaps I could even skip and go have a coffee instead. But I realized the expectations were different, so I went along. We started with testimony from Bogdan Bartnikowski, a non-Jewish Polish survivor of the camp, who was 12 years old at the time of his imprisonment. I won’t share all the cruelty, because we have enough stories like that going around right now. But he also shared that in addition to the day of liberation, he had another happy moment in his time there. This was the day that he had to go deliver some material to the women’s side of the camp, where he was briefly reunited with his mother. That memory, that small flicker of light in such a dark place, brought emotion to the whole group — myself included. It felt as though the pain of the past was meeting the pain of the present, and everything was beginning to mix.
We got into groups and entered the camp, and I immediately felt the heaviness. I didn’t want to be there but felt I had an obligation to the group. After some time, my feet just walked me out. I took a little walk in the nearby forest just outside the camp, and it was amazing how just outside the camp was freedom, and just inside was still, so many years later, a feeling of enslavement. I used to walk through camps like these with my Jewish identity front and center — this was the story I had inherited and for a long time carried in my body. But this time felt different. I wasn’t feeling my identity in the same way, but rather the burden of what had happened on this land. It was a kind of shared weight — not just of victimhood, but of human suffering passed down through generations. This is difficult to express, and I know it can be controversial, but I want to try: I felt the burden carried not only by victims, but also — differently — by perpetrators. It wasn’t about assigning blame. It was about the weight of unresolved history, how it imprints itself on all of us, regardless of which “side” we’re on.
I wondered why this hit me now after so many similar visits and experiences with Holocaust stories. Was it because I was now a mom? Was it October 7th and the present painful realities in Gaza and for hostage families? Was it because I had done some ancestral trauma work and could receive this heaviness not a condition of my identity but as an energy to feel through and release?
Whatever the reason, I didn’t feel the need to weaponize that heaviness — to turn it into outrage or slogans. Even the ‘never again’ slogan feels sometimes like an escape out of the heaviness. Committing ourselves to this moral stance makes it somehow easier to bear the burden of the past. But it still keeps the burden alive, entrapping us through identity, defining and confining our place in the world. Identity as a lens is only one of the many ways to see the world.
From the forest, I circled back to the steps just outside the camp and joined a fellow facilitator, who also could not stay inside for more than a few minutes. There we were, two moms, Iranian and Israeli, Muslim and Jewish, but so much more, sharing a moment of light in a deeply heavy place.
On the 26th of January, 2025, Mellem Education, in partnership with New Outlook, organized an event called ‘Personal peace activism in times of war: An evening of hope’. Billy and I wanted to use our personal stories as a foundation and inspiration for a different kind of peace activism – one that starts from within. Billy shared the complex emotions that came from growing up without a father, and his wish to find and form a masculine role model inside himself. In the most recent war in Lebanon, he lost four cousins, directly targeted by Israeli forces. Why, I asked him, did he contact me to continue our Salaam Shalom initiative after this tragic event? What motivates someone to seek peace in the face of such loss and grief? Billy shared that the anger was already familiar to him from the loss of his father, and he wanted to use that anger in a positive way. Not to ignore or reject the sorrow behind anger but to allow it to transform into something meaningful. For him, this was and still is the work of bridge building across religions and cultures.
Then I shared my story about moving to Denmark and finding myself in a painful and disoriented state after a relationship breakup. It was because I was so outside my comfort zone that I was able to see images that I could never see before, including the destruction of war and oppression. With this new perspective, I started to become a kind of activist, posting articles that I thought would help forward justice and peace in the world. But the opposite was happening. While I thought I was taking actions for peace, my family and I were getting into more and more conflict. I had to take a step back and ask the question – how could I be a force of peace when I’m a source of conflict? Something was not quite aligned in myself, and I realized that, similar to Billy, I had a lot of unprocessed anger and sorrow that I first needed to release before I could contribute to peace activism. I had to include rejected parts of myself before I could embody an inclusive stance towards peace work.
The audience asked meaningful and engaging questions and shared some of their own perspectives about peace work. One woman asked ‘how do we get this work more out in the world, so it impacts more people?’. It’s a question I’ve wrestled with in the past, but the more I turn inward, the more I realize that carrying the weight of this question is unnecessary—and even counterproductive. When one person works on themselves, it naturally creates a ripple effect that influences the world around them without force or effort. The question subtly suggests that we are responsible for creating peace in others. But we’re not. In fact, trying to “fix” others often leads to resistance and conflict. Another audience member referred to the ‘muscle of empathy’, which is an important muscle to train, as long as you are doing for yourself and not another. True peace begins with each individual taking responsibility for themselves, and it’s through this that we create a world in harmony.
We then had a break, where people could enjoy some hummus and knafeh (and jokingly argue over their origins), and then we came back into the room to participate in a short Betzavta activity about groups. We divided the bigger group into smaller groups, according to different categories (locals/migrants and later Jews/Muslims/other) and asked them whether they are a group and whether they wish to define themselves as a group. This sparked various conversations about the impact of groups, both as sources of inclusion and exclusion. It also brought up power dynamics and showed where the need for group definition can signal a power position. Another theme that came up was freedom, and where one person felt free being outside of a group, another person felt limited, while a third felt free inside a group and a fourth felt limited. This reflection mirrors the greater societal struggle with political wings, where one side argues that more rules can guarantee more freedom, and the other side stands for the opposite – fewer rules, more freedom. What Betzavta does is allow people to see this difference through individual experiences. Rather than it becoming a source of conflict, it allows us to understand these positions. Instead of making assumptions about how everyone else can feel free, you examine it for yourself within a group, strengthening that empathy muscle with every reflection.
In the end, we asked the group to share a few words about the evening and many used the word hope. It felt like the beginning of something very meaningful, and there is no question we are motivated to provide more of these spaces and continue this work. Thank you all for coming and supporting this work with your presence and openness.
photography: Sofie Rørdam
Personlig fredsaktivisme i krigstider: En aften i håbets tegn
Den 26. januar 2025 organiserede Mellem Education, i samarbejde med New Outlook, et arrangement kaldet “Personlig fredsaktivisme i krigstider: En aften i håbets tegn“. Billy og jeg ønskede at bruge vores personlige historier som fundament og inspiration til en anderledes form for fredsaktivisme – én, der begynder indefra.
Billy delte de komplekse følelser, der opstod ved at vokse op uden en far, og hans ønske om at finde og udvikle en maskulin rollemodel i sig selv. Under den seneste krig i Libanon mistede han fire fætre, som blev direkte mål for israelske styrker. Jeg spurgte ham, hvorfor han kontaktede mig for at fortsætte vores Salaam Shalom-initiativ efter denne tragiske begivenhed. Hvad motiverer nogen til at søge fred på trods af så stort et tab og sorg? Billy fortalte, at han allerede kendte til vreden fra tabet af sin far, og at han ønskede at bruge den vrede på en positiv måde. Ikke for at ignorere eller afvise sorgen bag vreden, men for at lade den forvandle sig til noget meningsfuldt. For ham var og er dette stadig arbejdet med at bygge broer på tværs af religioner og kulturer.
Derefter delte jeg min egen historie om at flytte til Danmark og finde mig selv i en smertefuld og forvirret tilstand efter et brud. Det var, fordi jeg befandt mig så langt uden for min komfortzone, at jeg begyndte at se billeder, jeg aldrig før havde set – herunder ødelæggelsen af krig og undertrykkelse. Med dette nye perspektiv begyndte jeg at blive en slags aktivist og skrive artikler, som jeg håbede kunne fremme retfærdighed og fred i verden. Men det modsatte skete. Mens jeg troede, at jeg arbejdede for fred, skabte det kun flere konflikter mellem mig og min familie. Jeg måtte tage et skridt tilbage og stille mig selv spørgsmålet: Hvordan kan jeg være en kraft for fred, når jeg selv er en kilde til konflikt? Noget var ikke helt på plads i mig selv, og jeg indså, at jeg – ligesom Billy – havde en masse ubearbejdet vrede og sorg, som jeg først skulle give slip på, før jeg kunne bidrage til fredsarbejde. Jeg måtte inkludere de afviste dele af mig selv, før jeg kunne indtage en inkluderende holdning til fredsarbejde.
Publikum stillede meningsfulde og engagerede spørgsmål og delte deres egne perspektiver på fredsarbejde. En kvinde spurgte: “Hvordan kan vi få dette arbejde mere ud i verden, så det påvirker flere mennesker?” Det er et spørgsmål, jeg har tumlet med tidligere, men jo mere jeg vender blikket indad, jo mere indser jeg, at det er unødvendigt – og endda kontraproduktivt – at bære vægten af dette spørgsmål. Når én person arbejder med sig selv, skaber det naturligt ringe i vandet, som påvirker verden omkring dem uden tvang eller anstrengelse. Spørgsmålet antyder subtilt, at vi er ansvarlige for at skabe fred i andre. Men det er vi ikke. Faktisk fører forsøg på at “fikse” andre ofte til modstand og konflikt. En anden deltager nævnte “empati-musklen”, en vigtig muskel at træne – men kun hvis du gør det for din egen skyld og ikke for andres. Ægte fred begynder med, at hver enkelt tager ansvar for sig selv, og det er gennem dette, at vi skaber en harmonisk verden.
Vi holdt derefter en pause, hvor folk kunne nyde lidt hummus og knafeh (og skændes om deres oprindelse). Herefter gik vi tilbage til rummet og deltog i en kort Betzavta-øvelse om grupper. Vi delte den større gruppe op i mindre grupper baseret på forskellige kategorier (lokale/indvandrere og senere jøder/muslimer/andre) og spurgte, om de følte sig som en gruppe, og om de ønskede at definere sig som en gruppe. Dette udløste forskellige samtaler om gruppers betydning som både inkluderende og ekskluderende. Det bragte også magtdynamikker frem og viste, hvor behovet for gruppedefinition kan signalere en magtposition. Et andet tema, der kom op, var frihed. Hvor én person følte sig fri udenfor en gruppe, følte en anden sig begrænset, mens en tredje følte sig fri indenfor en gruppe, og en fjerde følte sig begrænset. Denne refleksion afspejler samfundets større kamp med politiske fløje, hvor den ene side argumenterer for, at flere regler kan garantere mere frihed, mens den anden side står for det modsatte – færre regler, mere frihed. Hvad Betzavta gør, er at lade folk se denne forskel gennem individuelle erfaringer. I stedet for at det bliver en kilde til konflikt, giver det os mulighed for at forstå disse positioner. I stedet for at antage, hvordan alle andre kan føle sig frie, undersøger du det for dig selv i en gruppe og styrker empati-musklen med hver refleksion.
Til sidst bad vi gruppen dele et par ord om aftenen, og mange brugte ordet håb. Det føltes som begyndelsen på noget meget meningsfuldt, og der er ingen tvivl om, at vi er motiverede til at skabe flere af disse rum og fortsætte dette arbejde. Tak til jer alle for at komme og støtte dette arbejde med jeres nærvær og åbenhed.
I decided to launch into the video world with a YouTube channel! These videos will accompany the writings here, reflecting on topics like personal peace activism, dissonance, polarization, and other relevant topics to societal healing. The first video in this series, Make Peace Great Again, talks about a force of peace that does not have to compete with war, or even come after war, but it can be its own powerful impactful practice in the world. Other videos talk about dissonance as an opposite energy to polarization, as well as thoughts on the need to belong, or the call to drop critiquing the world towards a more powerful type of activism. Later videos will also include bridging the gaps of polarization in relationships, work teams and societally.
The spiritual seems to have no place in the political, as the way it looks now. But what does it mean to be spiritual? It’s not necessarily to believe in a greater force, or even to have long hours of meditation. For me, spirituality is simply the process of self-awareness, of being aware of yourself. This includes becoming aware of the parts of you that have been there all along, as well as the parts of you that have been conditioned through culture and upbringing. The process of self-awareness also includes releasing parts of yourself that no longer serve the version of you that you’ve grown into. Releasing old patterns and protective habits.
I have always been immensely interested in self awareness, but I became especially engaged in this work after some disruptive events that launched me into a process of self-reflection, as they often do. Interestingly enough, it was a political education program (Betzavta), that combined these worlds for me. This is because Betzavta deals with the relationship between the individual and the group and turns the reflection into an examination of your role in a group process.
In that first training back in 2013, in a particularly intense moment when we were examining how free people are in the group, I had assumption that everyone has the same freedom as I do to participate. This assumption was quickly shattered when my trainer pointed out that my English was on a native level, while most others had to first translate in their heads what they want to say. If you’ve ever lived in a country with a different language than your native one, you know how huge this limitation is, both in professional and social circles. I had to rethink my idea of equality in the group, because I realized that I was projecting my own experience of equality onto everyone else. From there, I had to decide what steps I could take to make the group more equal, given that I had this advantage. This is where the self-awareness turns into political activism, and how the spiritual and the political connect.
Our politics is not used to this type of reflecting, which is why there are so many dilemmas (or some would say hypocrisies) in the political world. Politicians that aim to create more equality also use oppressive tactics in their work. Freedom of speech advocates suppress opposing viewpoints. The means through which political activists aim to achieve their goals is often exactly the opposite of the goal itself. As I see it, this is because we have externalized politics into a series of strategic efforts, instead of including ourselves in the process. The spiritual must come into the political process.
And equally, the political must come into the spiritual process. I have met some spiritual beings who consider their spiritual work separate from their working lives. They might even hide their spiritual practice, for fear of judgement. But I also see that these worlds are coming together more and more. We have more and more people willing to speak up and contribute their holistic perspectives to our fragmented societies. In fact, we need the spiritual ‘types’ to be more bold in their demand for the peace that they know we are all made of.
The spiritual and the political, or maybe from the spiritual lens – the feminine and the masculine – have gotten so far away from each other that it is hard to see how they can in fact support each other. Spiritual – the being. Political – the doing. We need both in order to create a society that guarantees equality, safety, freedom for all.
Mellem Education is an organization that works in this in between space.
Joining a movement, especially one that aims to defend human rights and make the world more fair and balanced, is a defining action in our times. Defining or confining? This is the question I have been exploring as I watch movements strengthen, especially movements that seem to oppose one another. Having two separate movements, pro-Palestine and pro-Israel, means that these two movements somehow oppose each other. Their very existence defines and solidifies the other. The many Jews or Israelis that join pro-Palestine movements are immediately coded as anti-Israel. And the opposite is true as well. Is it not possible to be both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel? Is it not possible to be pro freedom and safety for all? If you go and ask people of these two movements if they are for freedom and safety for all, most people will say yes. The problem is, each side believes that the other said will say no, that only one side deserves this freedom and security.
Because of this belief, the border between the movements becomes more defined. People demand to know who do you align with? Which movement are you a part of? If you speak up for the other’s freedom, you must be against ours. This divide is further driven by the urgency of the war, where people die or are threatened on a daily basis, and the imbalance of this scenario – being killed versus being threatened. And even now you must be trying to figure out which side I am aligning with, or perhaps you believe you have already figured it out. That is exactly the phenomenon I wish to point out – our need to figure out one’s alignment is a divisive force in itself. It means you will put me in a box and then confirm what you already believe, whether in agreement or disagreement with me. And nothing actually can change in that dynamic. And is it not change we are desperate for?
So how do we come out of the vicious cycle of division, separation and war? If even solidarity against war makes more war, how is change possible? This is the question not to be answered through a list of dos and don’ts. To get to a possible right answer, we have to first wipe off layers of wrong answers. How is change made impossible? What is my responsibility in making this change impossible? Where does my own fixed belief come from? Is there any flexibility around that fixation?
When I was working a lot with Erasmus+ youth mobility projects, there was an understanding that when people travel, they transform. A lot of people can remember their exchange periods in university times as the period that changed them, opened them up to a whole new world. Travel does that. Traveling helps us see that our own culture is not the only reality, and we can open up to new ways of seeing the world. This physical traveling can be done mentally as well – let’s travel to other belief systems. Why not travel to a different demonstration? Leave luggage behind. Find out what motivates ‘the other’ – it may not be what you think. Leaving luggage behind means leaving aside the assumptions you make about why people have aligned with that movement. Doing that gives the other person permission to do the same. We travel to each other’s movements, luggage free. In my view, this is the change that allows solidarity to fulfill its purpose. Solidarity needs wings to fly.
I have recently been reflecting on the belief that learning has to be counter-intuitive. I go back to my assessment committee’s statement of not being able to learn anything new from my work. In a previous blog post, I questioned this premise based on the lens through which the learning was taking place. How can we learn anything new when we have fixed ideas of what learning looks like? In the academic world but also more generally in what we perceive as learning, there is a popular idea that learning has to be counter-intuitive, that it has to shake up a belief in favor of a different belief. What we thought was X is actually Y. The learning that I examine in my own work is intuitive learning, which is in fact a type of learning that reveals what you always already knew but was hidden. The belief shake up takes place but does not get replaced by a different belief. What we thought was X is questioned, and that unlearning process dusts off an inherent intuition. In this way, the assessment committee’s claim of not learning anything new is true – no new belief was offered in this work, no new strategy. Even my concluding idea that dissonance can be a trigger for a learning process was not outlined in a clean 10-step program. In fact I did the opposite, nuancing each learning experience to show that this is one of many paths, preventing from privileging one belief system as the desired learning outcome and keeping the focus on the (un)learning process.
I am just one of many people who are shining a light on intuitive knowledge. While the insights from counter-intuitive learning are interesting, they risk promoting a dependence on a belief system. This is because one belief is countered with another, which presents itself as a higher truth. This makes it tempting to give more power to the belief than to your own powers of investigation. Maybe that is why this has gotten so popular and prevalent in academia – the knowledge is attached to the person who delivers it. This is played out in the citation game, where academics get points every time someone else cites their work. I am not denying the impact that scholars have made through their research, but as with so many things in the world these days, we have gone too extreme to the side of knowledge ownership, in my case being powers that decide what learning should look like or feel like. The trend of counter-intuitive knowledge, interesting as it may be, perpetuates this power dynamic. It allows for knowledge (and therefore power) to be concentrated in the minds of the few.
And just like other concentrated power structures currently in the process of being dismantled, this one is being shaken up as well, or at-least it has in my world. Ironically, by not receiving the acceptance of the power structures as to what constitutes knowledge, I grew empowered to share my work even more. This is not an act of revenge but of rewriting the script. Even though the assessment committee would have preferred a different narrative, I could not give them that storyline. It was my intuitive knowledge, the very thing I was writing about, that I trusted the most. My own experience transforming dissonance and being a facilitator of that process for others guided my way. This, I felt, was the truest form of empirical research that I could offer. As it turns out, it was also the way to call back my own power. And this is not just my own experience, but I saw this in my students as well. After they cleared the fog of the dissonance reduction strategies, they were able to feel their feelings and connect to their own intuitive knowledge. The learning process was revealing and unveiling, instead of adding more knowledge.
This of course is not an easy learning process, because we have years of conditioning in school where the teacher tells you what you should learn and how you should learn it. This works in technical subjects, but social dynamics, group processes, reflections on democratic decision-making are not traditionally a classroom focus. The students who come into my classroom have to swim in the uncertainty of not getting their knowledge from a perceived authority, a challenging process because it requires questioning the conditioning around learning. Those who manage to do so go through a process of detaching from a knowledge dependency. They are in fact learning how to be responsible, without strategies or moral guidelines, but the responsibility that comes with connecting with your own thoughts and feelings, rather than depending on external belief systems. This is the power that is being called back, the power to know and trust our own intuitive learning processes. By becoming aware of our habits and conditioning, we are less likely to be manipulated, tempted by conditioned notions of success or happiness. We become less dependent on learning counter-truths in order to gain knowledge and start to give more power to our own intuition, our own knowing. As I see it, this is the shift from ‘power over’ to ‘power within’ that has a great potential in changing how we relate to each other in the classroom and beyond.
– but the part where the need to be right and the seizing of power relies on another perspective being shut down. And beyond power, now we’re seeing that in the ‘high levels’, it’s also evil and very dark. And those people up there love to see us fighting among left and right politics, among different religions, different ideologies, we become their soldiers and let them work in the shadows.
