Working with Images

Chapter Four

WORKING WITH IMAGES

At the time of the Falkland Islands war between Britain and Argentina, my son, Martin, was ten. The war issues were discussed at his primary school, and I was impressed when he came home and gave his judgment, that the war was rather like two kids in the school playground having an argument about whose ball it was. For all the obvious differences, it still seems to me that this image captures something essential about that particular international confrontation. Images can suggest new ways of seeing, which make new actions and reactions possible; they seem able to connect very directly with the less rational aspects of our being. Provided we do not forget that images inevitably simplify genuine complexity, we can welcome the illuminating ways in which images link the various levels of our experience.

One activity that I have frequently used with classes on peace education has been to invite everyone, myself included, to draw our own image of peace. I have found that virtually everyone can do this with a minimum of further instructions. It has proved an excellent basis for sharing our different perceptions of the issues of peace and war. Each person talks about what they have drawn, and why, and there is room for questions and observations by others. Images provide a way of seeing overall patterns as well as particular features of experience; they tend to be positive because they are definite, and not structured by negation.

There were some persistent themes in the pictures produced. One common picture expressed a vision of multi-racial unity, showing a circle (earth) with a motley collection of stick people holding hands all around the circle. A variant on this theme was the image of two different people embracing or shaking hands. Another common picture was of a landscape without people, suggesting the despondent perception that people inevitably fail in the centrally human task of living in peace. Alternatively, some landscapes included a few people who were living a dramatically simplified lifestyle. While most Australian people live in cities, the city frequently appeared as a place of un-peace, with a stultifying and dehumanizing kind of order. A third kind of picture typical of politically involved people contained traditional symbols of

the peace movement, such as ban-the-bomb signs, doves with olive branches in their mouths, and various ways of turning swords into ploughshares.

A somewhat different theme was that of the harmony that can be achieved by the exquisite balancing of natural forces. One such picture showed an arrow in mid-flight, perfectly balanced, and speeding on into infinity. Another was of a person sailing a small sailboat in a stiff breeze, and having to lean overboard to maintain the balance of the craft. Christian people sometimes drew a picture of Jesus on the cross, referring to the associated biblical statement that Christ is our peace. This picture raises the difficult themes of innocent suffering by a righteous person, of atonement between God and humanity, of sacrifice as the price of peace, and of the power of non-violent confrontation with evil and irresponsible powers, although there can also be a smugness of conventional piety here when the more difficult aspects of this picture are not welcomed.

I am interested that my own images from these sessions were concentrated on two themes. The first was that of the natural landscape, and I started with one that contained only myself and my family on a picnic. Later versions showed a scene with lake and hills and scattered houses, with a few grazing animals, or with houses built underground. The most recent in this series also had a military blockhouse in the foreground with a sentry on guard outside, and a person offering this soldier a flower. The other main image was that of the calm at the centre of the cyclone, where the calm relates to, and coordinates, the violent energy of the destructive winds. In another version of this image, I had a tree of peace in the centre, with weapons of war whirling about outside.

It will be apparent that there is an incredible wealth of symbolic material available to us in exercises of this sort, and that this kind of work engages the creative imagination. I find that a rational, analytic approach to problems such as the nuclear nightmare tends to convince us that there are no viable solutions, so that feelings of depression and even despair tend to predominate. When these same problems are approached in terms of the creative imagination, we seem to become more hopeful and less stuck in perceptions of our own hopelessness and powerlessness. This is not to deny the importance of an accurate knowledge of facts and figures; it is to deny that a purely analytical approach to the study of peace is sufficient. Facts supply realism, which we need; image-based ways of studying peace can supply vision, which we need more.

A People-Sculpture of Peace

The sculpture was something entirely new for me, – as I mentioned to you, one of the lasting impressions for me was the integrity contained in the presentation of one person's understanding and vision of

peace. The exercise engendered a respect for a person’s position/point of view much more so than any verbal or written presentation would have achieved. Why? (John Adams)¹.

I was recently invited to a local parish family camp to contribute to their study of the theme of peace by assisting the group to produce a "people-sculpture" The method involves working with one person to place other people in positions and roles that make up a sculpture that expresses that person's concept. The sculpture can then be explored in ways that bring out some less obvious aspects of this person's image, by inviting comment and response from those involved. We have a tendency to dismiss such images as subjective (and therefore worthless); such dismissal seriously undervalues the validity of what each of us already knows.

I went down to Phillip Island, where the camp was, and participated in a discussion on peace issues, which enabled me to join the group and get some idea of their concerns. I wrote up my reflections on what happened after I left the camp site to go home, and this account is based on these notes. My account lacks the ease, immediacy and spontaneity with which this process can flow, and so I have attempted a fairly full description to convey something of the intellectual and emotional impact that the linkage between bodily postures and explicit meanings can achieve.

We met in a large room, and the group sat around the edges of the room, creating a large working space in the centre. I gave a very sketchy account of what we were going to do and I asked people to say, in two or three words, what they found hard about peace-making. Answers given included: "Where to start?", "Feeling powerless", "Feeling angry with people who don't have peace as an issue", "When people don't respond to overtures", "Feeling insignificant", "People don't want peace until they have got some security and position", and "Confused by complexity".

I then asked for someone to volunteer to be the protagonist, and present their concerns about peace so that we could make a sculpture. This invitation is a bit of a trap question, however it is phrased, because the first person who talks thereafter is assumed to be the volunteer, even if they are simply wanting further clarification. Richard (not his actual name) volunteered, but he thought he was volunteering to be put into a role within a sculpture that I would create, which was not what I had in mind. After this was clarified, he agreed to continue.

I then asked Richard to talk a bit about what he saw as the difficulty with peace-making. He spoke about feeling powerless to make peace with respect to all the violent and confusing things that happen in the wider world. When I asked for some specific examples, he came up with terrorism and Ronald Reagan's response to it (e.g. the then recent US raid on Libya). I then asked how he was related to all that, and he said through the media. So that gave four characters.

I asked him to invite someone to play the role of himself, which he did, and then to give three or four words and a physical posture to describe himself in this role. The words were "confused, insignificant, weighed down, and powerless". The posture was standing, a little slumped, hunched forward, head down, arms by his side, in the centre of the room. The next character was Ronald Reagan, played by a teenage girl. The words for Reagan were "senile, macho, super powerful, and overbearing". He was up in front of Richard, standing on a stool, with one arm raised, fist clenched, ready to strike. He did indeed look overbearing. Terrorism, "unpredictable, violent, threatening to break out destructively", was placed on one knee on the floor to Reagan's right, and facing towards Richard. He had his arms out, almost in the act of striking. Next to be placed was Media, up on a table a little way behind Richard's right shoulder, marginally higher even than Reagan. Her words were "beaming out a confusing mass of information, manipulative, sensationalist". She stood up tall, arms raised, palms out, beaming out the messages.

I then asked what else was needed for this sculpture, and heard about ordinary people, politicians and church people. Other suggestions contributed by the group were victims and dead people, but Richard did not take up these suggestions. He picked three politicians. The first was a US Senator, “corrupt, jingoistic, powerful” He stood slightly behind Reagan's right side, facing Richard, with one hand holding an American flag, and the other hand extended with a" thumbs up" sign, clearly in support of Reagan. The second was Australian Politicians, "fence-sitting, concerned about, but caught between, the western alliance and the craziness of the arms race, and lazy". She stood somewhat behind Richard, facing towards him; she had to rock from one leg to the other. The third was Russia, "defensive, vast, mysterious". He was standing behind Richard and facing towards Reagan, with his arms extended into a protective half-circle in front of him. Ordinary People, who can also be victims, "oppressed, weighed down, a bit fearful" was placed next to Richard, on his left and facing the same way, kneeling on the floor. Finally, there was Church People, "do-gooding, with a conscience, feeling superior to other people". She was standing facing Richard, slightly in front and on his right, between Reagan and Media, with one hand on her heart and the other flung out in a gesture of greeting and good-will.

The sculpture, now completed, has the form of a circle of people facing inward, with Richard, flanked by Ordinary People, in the centre. One point of interest is that, with the partial exception of Russia, all of the characters in the circle seem to be primarily oriented on Richard and Ordinary People. Russia is oriented defensively on Reagan. Reagan is threatening in the direction of Richard and Russia, not Terrorism. The "up-front roles", from Richard's perspective, are Reagan, US Senator, Terrorism, and Church People, with a strong sense of identity with Ordinary People, Out of sight are Australian Politicians, Russia and Media.

When we had finished setting this up, and the characters had had time to feel what it was like to be in their place in the sculpture, I asked Richard to go around and ask them what it was like to be where they were. He did this, and the feedback was quite rich, although I was later able to record only main points. The character playing Richard felt confused and powerless, unaware of Media, Russia and Australian Politicians, and threatened by Reagan and Terrorism. Reagan felt above things, powerful, but with sore biceps. Terrorism also had sore biceps, and felt the need to concentrate on hating, in order to be able to lash out. He was aware of being able to scare Ordinary People and Australian Politicians, and maybe even nip Reagan's ankle. He also felt isolated and out of it.

Media felt detached, not an actor. She did not seem to feel particularly powerful, in spite of her dominant position. US Senator felt good, being in support of a strong President. He said that he did not feel threatened by Terrorism. Australian Politicians felt comfortable standing still, uncomfortable when moving onto one leg or the other. She really felt the significance of the fact that Richard and Ordinary People had their backs to her. Russia had sore arms and said that he felt like someone was trying to "dis-arm" him. He also felt threatened by Reagan, and isolated, and a bit apprehensive about this. Ordinary People felt low, heavy in the shoulders, vulnerable to Terrorism, awed but also threatened by Reagan, whom he saw as a" hero',' but too aggressive. He liked being next to Richard. Church People felt ineffective, a bit isolated, with nobody hearing her message. She also mentioned having sore biceps in the gesturing arm.

These reports on feelings include some very specific physical sensations, and these provide "realistic" comment on the consequences of the posture originally given. Soreness indicates that energy is needed to maintain some postures. It is interesting that the threatening gestures of Reagan and Terrorism produce a similar report to the generous gesture of Church People, in terms of sore biceps, indicating the expenditure of energy in maintaining both forms of gesture.

At this point, there were various things that could have been done to work on this picture. One would have been to ask Richard to stand in for himself, and see what it felt like to have everything coming back at him from outside. Another would have been to add another role, perhaps that of Richard's Confusion, or his Powerlessness; it is good to engage in conversation with people playing roles such as these, as this can often lead to a clarification of what the confusion, or the powerlessness, is about. What I actually did was also a good option, and that was to ask Richard how he would like to see this picture change for the better.

The actual Richard picked up this invitation with alacrity, and he directed a number of changes. Ordinary People stood up, without any outside help, and became more powerful. Church People then moved in to shake the hand of Ordinary People, in support. Australian Politicians moved in behind, right hand under Ordinary People's right

elbow, in further support. Russia moved over much closer to the US characters, with arms relaxed. Media lowered her hands a bit, signifying a reduction in tension. US Senator dropped his flag, and his thumbs-up gesture, and put up one hand to restrain Reagan from striking. Terrorism rose a little, and had a less aggressive posture though it was still ambiguous. Reagan became less tense, and slumped down a little.

After these changes, Richard asked for further feedback The character playing Richard said that it was a much better feeling The girl playing Reagan said that she felt less powerful, though still dominating. Terrorism still felt isolated and down, though with a few

more options. Media felt a bit less powerful, perhaps because the others knew more than formerly about what she had to tell them, or perhaps because with reduced tensions they felt less need to be informed. US Senator felt much the same, and still felt close to President Reagan. His change appeared very major from outside, but did not seem so important from his perspective. Australian Politicians found it more work, less comfortable, and a strain in the right arm to offer support to Ordinary People. Russia found it more comfortable to be inside the circle, and closer to the US, though Reagan was still a bit threatening. Ordinary People found it very much better; it was a more comfortable stance, and he had support from Church People, Australian Politicians, and from Richard, which felt good. Church People found it much more pleasant and fulfilling; shaking hands was both more comfortable physically, and more involved and relevant, than her former stance.

The overall effect of these changes was a slight evening out of height (though there was still a way to go there), and a consolidation around Richard and Ordinary People, strengthening their position. I enjoyed the fact that the first thing to happen was that Ordinary People simply stood up, without help. I also noted that Russia did all the changing, and had much the less aggressive role, vis-à-vis the superpower relationship. The positions of Reagan, Terrorism and Media were the only ones to remain in the" too-hard" basket, even in the ideal state. We stopped the sculpture after this round of feedback, when Richard commented that it seemed about right. Under some pressure of time, I then invited the actors to de-role, by saying," I am no longer X, I am... (own name)", and to offer any further comments. Following this, I invited the patient watchers to offer comments, which they did.

This was a relatively public sculpture, even though it was one person's images that went into it; it was an image of a worldwide situation that affects us all, and not a more private situation whose actual reality would be largely unknown to the rest of the group. This meant that comments expressing divergent perceptions of these realities were very much to be expected. In fact, there was not much strong disagreement expressed. I do remember comments such as," I have a different view of Australian Politicians from you"; but there was also "I tended to agree with your picture of Russia". Then there were comments such as, "I really didn't like the original picture of Church People", "Why didn't you include dead people, the victims of all this mayhem?", "I would have shown more pain", and "I would have brought in more help before Ordinary People could stand up". All these comments highlight the individuality of Richard's picture.

There were further comments on the session that are worth recording. One person said that it left her feeling that peace involved lots of small, harmonizing changes in many different areas of life, and that it was a recipe for powerlessness to hanker after one overall change that will solve everything. Another person said that, for him, the sculpture showed how peace came from the relationships between

different people and ideologies, when there is success in living with the differences. Another person identified the attempt to impose values on others as a part of the problem. Another person commented that the sculpture had brought home to him that his own relationship of faith in Jesus was not an answer to all questions, as he had previously tended to think. Another comment was that the sculpture method developed a clarity and an impact (for the older children, as well as for the adults), that would have been very hard to achieve by means of a more purely verbal presentation. These comments suggest the wide range of perceptions opened up by this shared experience.

For myself, I enjoyed listening to Richard’s perceptions, and helping him to listen to them himself. The most central issue seemed to be that of our own powerlessness in the face of the threat of violence, both from those who seek to dominate others (Reagan, but also Media), and from the dispossessed (terrorist). In the move from confusion and powerlessness to hope, there was the emergence of a non-dominating form of power, which began with Ordinary people who stand up. People feel a need for support, and the suggestion is that violence flourishes where people feel isolated and un-supported. It may be useful to review the sculpture in terms of this theme.

At the start, Richard is feeling powerless and vulnerable to the threat of violence in the indirect confrontation between Reagan and Terrorism. This confrontation is moving towards a pure form of conflict, where the party with the bigger and better weapons threatens to destroy its enemy. The enemy lurks in hiding, feeling isolated, and needing to maintain hate to maintain power. Media, cool but manipulative, exercises the different power of influence. Russia is defensive, withdrawn and isolated, poised to retaliate against attack with counter-violence. The only supportive character at this stage is the US Senator, who is supporting Reagan. The other characters feel powerless and ineffective, particularly Ordinary People, Church People and Richard. Australian Politicians is more calm and self-possessed, perhaps feeling safely on the sidelines. So at this stage, the effective power portrayed is that of threat and attempted destruction or domination, in a frozen, locked-in state.

The ideal change introduced by Richard can be seen as the emergence of another form of power, which is peace-making, and which introduces a new dynamic into the picture. There is a mystery about how this form of power arises; in the sculpture, it starts with Ordinary People standing up and claiming their own power to live their own lives. The integrity of this stance attracts support from Church People, who feels quite fulfilled through this relationship, and from Australian Politicians. Effects of this change can be seen in the comment from Media, that she felt somehow less powerful, with less notice being taken of her. The changes around Terrorism, Russia, Reagan and the US Senator can perhaps be seen in terms of a softening of the struggle for mastery; whether there is more fundamental change in these relationships seems doubtful.

This final state of the sculpture suggests a growing tension between power-struggle conflicts as usual, and the self-affirming power displayed by Ordinary People, which is not based in denying others. The power of domination defines its own power in terms of whom it controls. The will of those who are controlled must be somehow curbed by the controlling power, at least in areas defined as crucial by that power. The significant shift is therefore in the definition of power; self-affirming power need not be other-denying. This non-dominating, non-dominated form of power makes peace through its own being, and through reaching out to the isolated and hurting people to whom violence beckons as a dubious but available remedy.

This nurturing and peace-making form of power is available to us, whether we refer to it as divine love, as the truth-force, soul-force or satya-graha of Mahatma Gandhi, as the compassion of the Buddha, or as that friendship that we receive from someone who really listens to us. We may be at a critical juncture in the history of our world, where we either learn to live in love from the personal to the planetary level, or, barring unexpectedly good fortune, we perish.

Images suggest and invite; they do not coerce or prove. This method of exploring images assumes that we can co-operate and that we are free to listen to each other and to ourselves; one result is that we find that we are listening to our world as well.

Facing the Nuclear Nightmare

Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of non-being upon itself by affirming itself.... Courage needs the power of being, a power transcending the non-being which is experienced in the anxiety of fate and death, which is present in the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness, which is effective in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. The courage which takes this threefold anxiety into itself must be rooted in a power of being that is greater than the power of oneself and the power of one's world. (Paul Tillich)²

In order to live, we all take up space in the world, and this requires a continuing act of self-affirmation. I can remember the comfort that I derived from Tillich's phrase "the courage to be" when I first came across it. Under the influence of a protestant ethic of altruism, I was very unsure of my justification for taking up space in the world; if someone came asking for my life, what could I seriously give as a reason for refusing to part with it? There is a wonderfully gratuitous self-affirmation in Tillich's phrase, which denies the need for elaborate justification, and which invites us to set our own definition, presumably non-imperialistic, on the space that we choose to occupy.

The nuclear nightmare, raising as it does the threat of non-being for our civilization, and possibly for life on earth, is a particularly

massive irruption of the threat of non-being within our experience. It includes within it all the elements listed by Tillich. In the nuclear nightmare, there is the reality of fate and death, grossly expanded beyond the confines of my individual death: there is the emptiness and meaninglessness of our historical achievements, when we are collectively prepared to consign them to oblivion in a self-inflicted holocaust: and there is guilt and condemnation in the fact that, collectively, we could have prevented it and we did not. I find this conception of a metaphysical power-struggle between being and non-being to be helpful in clarifying what so much of our struggles are about.

Tillich offers us two central pointers for coming to terms with the nuclear nightmare. The first is that we cannot overcome the anxiety and the despair that is here without taking the threat into ourselves. This may seem overwhelmingly difficult when we believe that we have no way of emotionally surviving this nightmare, but however difficult, it is the way forward. The second pointer is that there is nothing in ourselves or our world, nothing that might disappear in a nuclear holocaust, that can provide the resources that we need. Beyond both self and world, there is the power of being.

This idea of the power of being to overcome non-being is an abstract symbol which expresses something of the substantiality of matter, which may change its form without itself being destroyed, and something of the life force, which seems to press forward beyond the non-being of death into new generations and new biological forms, and something of the integrity and community that we humans deeply desire. This is much more than saying that the physical universe will survive a nuclear holocaust, because the power of being refers also to the affirmation that the universe has value, regardless of whether this is recognized by humans. The power of being connects with ideas of God, of a world soul, of life force, and of a larger web of life.

Crumbling under the cumulative effect of the facts I had learned and the pictures I had seen, my defenses gave way, forcing me to face within myself the knowledge of our possible imminent extinction -as a species, as a planet... How do I live with the horror of this knowledge? Do I go crazy with it, or do I numb myself again? In the weeks and months that followed, I carried these questions inside me like a bomb in my chest. (Joanna Macy)³

American culture is dedicated to optimism, so that pain, doubt and difficulty may be harder to share there than elsewhere; but this seems to be balanced by the resources for coping that a realistic optimism can offer. Cultures of pessimism may cope with negative experiences by sharing them, but they may also lack resources for moving beyond the resulting depression. Despair can cripple our peacemaking efforts; Joanna Macy's "despair-work" offers us guidelines for turning this debilitating experience into a positive, energy-giving resource for our living.

1. Feelings of pain for our world are natural and healthy.

2. This pain is morbid only if denied.

3. Information alone is not enough.

4. Unblocking repressed feelings releases energy, clears the mind.

5. Unblocking our pain for the world reconnects us with the larger web of life.⁴

This is a simple description of a process that will be as profound as the pain that we feel. This pain comes from our caring and it connects us with the larger web of life. What is mysterious is the transition from being stuck in despair and powerlessness to being reconnected with the larger web of life, once again powerful, self-affirming and world-affirming. Despair-work involves ways of working with our own images that somehow give us access to the sources of our pain and the sources of its healing; it connects us with the major spiritual traditions of humanity, which are a substantial resource for coping with any nightmare.

I no longer see nightmares in a fully negative light, following a particular experience with a dream that began as a classic nightmare. I have been writing down my dreams for a number of years in order to reflect on what they might mean, and without this discipline I doubt that I would have given this dream a second thought. It occurred on the middle night of a five-day retreat, so that I had time for reflection, and someone to talk with about it. There were a number of details that were significant at the time, but which are not worth sharing here. The main point is the surprise with which I discovered that it is possible to revisit dream images through an intentional meditative process, and the joy of finding the power of being in the stuff of nightmare.

A dream. I have basket of washing to do, so I take it to the local church office. Inside the entrance, one of the staff is talking with some kids. ”You have some sort of a record here. Firstly, I came over especially at one o'clock in the morning, why I'll never know, just because you asked me to...” I leave this area and enter a dark corridor in search of a washing machine. There is a locked door, to which I have a key. I am a bit concerned that I didn't bring soap power. I put the key in the lock and start to turn it when the door is opened forcibly from the other side, and I realize that whatever is there is about to attack me. I feel quite paralyzed, and I finally manage to get my voice box to work and to call out for help, when I realize that it is a dream, so I stop before I really make a noise. I have quite a strong sense of fear, even panic.⁵

My further initial reflections included the suggestion that it was to do with my sense of vulnerability to violence, and fear of personal attack. I felt a continuing subtle pressure to let it drop, and not to regard it as being important. The next morning, still not thinking it

very important, I reported this dream to Sue (not her real name), the person with whom I was sharing my inner journey during this retreat. Sue said two things that helped me to focus on this bad dream as a significant inner occurrence. The first was that the entry into locked inner rooms in a building to which I had a key was an archetypal image for my encounter with buried, despised and forgotten parts of myself. This made sense to me, and caught my interest. She also said to me that when I could encounter the attacking force, I would find that it was love. This surprised me, and aroused my interest even further. I then resolved to attempt to make fresh contact with these dream images.

On this retreat, we had been using a form of prayer called centering prayer, or the prayer of the Cloud of Unknowing, which is outlined in the mystical work of that title. The method involves repeating one word over and over again, concentrating the conscious mind upon it. As other thoughts come, they are gently noted and put out of awareness into a “cloud of forgetting”. That day, I had four such prayer sessions. In two of these sessions, I experienced images that somehow allowed me to complete this dream, and to reach a very different conclusion about its meaning for myself.

Second session. There were a lot of thoughts and images arising, including the elements of my dream of last night, though not the fear or the attacker. I remember, in succession, passing through and dismissing, the discussion in the entrance, a vision of the crucifixion of Jesus, the dark passage, the dark room behind the locked door, with a crack in the corner through which there flowed an overwhelming, brilliant light. There was also a sense of the massive movement of love associated with this light.

Fourth session. I started to get a sense of presence that wouldn't go away, so I let it stay. Then I started to get elements of my dream returning. I sent them away. They insisted. The staff member, the dark corridor, the key going into the lock. I sent them all away. Then there was a massive wall of light. I tried to send it away, but it didn 't really go. Then I felt something of the fear, and clung onto my word. Then I opened the door and found this overwhelming light all over me, and a vision of the darkness in me (around the hips, and lower and upper back). The darkness was being slowly washed away by the light. Then I sent that away. Next came a side view of myself, in terror, opening the door, and the light springing out and overpowering me, and the same sense of the light washing away the darkness and the lack of life in me. The figure that was me could have fainted, have died, have been immobilized by panic/terror/fear. Send it away. The massiveness of the light... There was a lift in my energy following this, the beginnings of joy. I was reminded of the washing that I had brought; it seems that I got washed.

These experiences helped me to see something ugly and fearful

as something of overwhelming beauty, power and, yes, love. It was an ecstatic experience, and I am aware that it has in some way alleviated my fear of being personally attacked (which fear was certainly associated with this nightmare). I am not very clear about what has changed, and I am aware that this experience borders on the incommunicable because it is so personal in focus. I have told the story because it is at this personal level that the threatening and foreboding power of nightmares can be challenged and alleviated.

There is also much to be learned from contemporary fantasy literature about facing those things that we fear. An excellent and archetypal example is the story of Ged, in Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin.6 In the story, Ged lets loose a fearful blackness into the world through deeds of folly, and initially he tries to hide from this blackness. When it becomes clear that this is impossible, and that the blackness is pursuing him, Ged is terrified. The story recounts how he finds ways, despite his terror, to turn and to hunt the blackness, so that it flees before him. His quest, which has the dimensions of a life-and-death struggle, is concluded when he catches the blackness and is able to somehow claim it as his own, as an ugly and evil part of himself.

In this story, what is feared is deliberately portrayed as mysterious, nameless, and without precedent in Ged's experience; it is baffling even to the wise in his society, who tell Ged that he must deal with it himself. While we may not encounter terror in anything like this pure and abstract form, anxious fears do have this nameless and intangible aspect. At the level of individual experience, we all have a degree of ignorance and uncertainty that provides a base for the emergence of these intangible anxieties. In anxiety states, it seems that our bodies mobilize for" fight or flight".7 The story of Ged, who tried flight before seeking to fight, can remind us of the need to find, and to struggle with, the source of our anxiety.

This pattern of courage and struggle as part of our personal and spiritual growth crops up in many stories of human encounters with the unknown and the sacred. One example is the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, with his famous refusal to cease from the fight, even though wounded in the hip, until his opponent bless him (Genesis 32:22-32). Another example, which comes from Carlos Castaneda's account of his apprenticeship to a yaqui Indian sorceror called Don Juan Matus,8 concerns encounters with spiritual beings known as allies, which, if overcome, are thereafter a profound source of power. It seems that the best way out of threat is through facing the source of the threat, provided that we have the courage and the ability and the good fortune to survive the encounter. Successful encounters with such challenges change and empower us.

This pattern works at the level of individual experience, but there are also significant parallels with our collective experience. As a world civilization, we are like Ged in letting loose the fearful blackness of the nuclear nightmare and other threats to our physical survival. In

refusing to face the fullness of what we are doing, we find that the black shadow becomes more menacing and substantial. While we have great collective resources for facing and overcoming these threats, we have not yet properly deployed these resources. Reasons for this failure may lie with things like greed and institutional inertia; but perhaps behind these things we fear that we cannot cope with collective recognition of who we are, as world humanity, because we have no answer for the pain, the anger, the hatred and the despair that is there.

The story of Ged suggests that we need courage to face whatever is there to be faced, and to nurture, and work in terms of, a vision of the wholeness of things. Threats arise from the disastrous separation and conflict between elements in our world community that should constitute a harmoniously functioning whole; unity is strength, although it must be real, and should ideally operate without the requirement for an external enemy. To overcome the nuclear nightmare, we need the courage to face it, and to learn the hard lesson of our unity with other people and with the life of our planet.

In the story of Ged, he was a diminished person when first under threat from the shadow. Ged had power to do his duty, but lacked power to face the shadow. The turning-point came when he returned to his teacher, Ogion, in a dehumanized and diminished state, and accepted Ogion's advice that he turn and pursue his pursuer. He reached the point of desperation where he recognized that to continue to run is to be lost; and he found the courage that comes with this recognition.

Much of what threatens us is of our own making, either through our actual deeds, or through our fantasy life. This is literally true of the arms race, considered on a collective level. We fail to recognize this only by fracturing our awareness into "us and them" categories, thereby ignoring the evil side of what we do, and the good side of what our so-called enemies do. We need courage to take the risks involved in attempting to put together what is now so disastrously separated into competing ideologies and conflicting nation-states; and for this task we need to recognize how present divisions are created and maintained.

We laugh about the man who constantly blows a trumpet in order to keep the elephants away, and when told that there are no wild elephants in Australia says, "See how effective it is?" Fears can lock us into behavior that we literally do not dare to change. Consider how difficult it could be for this man to hear the advice that he stop blowing for a while, in order to see if any wild elephants come. There is validity in his question," But how long a silence will prove that I can stop expecting them? "Lacking our common-sense perspective on reality, he will need some way of accepting a discrete new frame for his perceptions. To resolve his fear, he will need to look at his own fear as well as at the empty neighborhood. The pile-up of nuclear weapons seems like trumpet-blowing to keep fears at bay, coupled with a covert enjoyment of noise-making; is it really true that we need these devastating weapons so that we don't have to use them? Making peace comes together with making sense when we can face our fears and the despair

to which they lead us, and reconnect, as Joanna Macy suggests, with the larger web of life.

As we listen to our world, we can identify elements that lie to hand, awaiting transformation. There is an unprecedented technological linking of human societies around the planet, a growing awareness that we need to safeguard the biosphere from the effects of our own activities, and an emerging consciousness of world citizenship. If the fierce nationalistic commitment that directs the arms race could only be bent to the service of world humanity, our nightmare could indeed become a dream. The way out of the nuclear nightmare, like other nightmares, is through, but only if enough of us do what is necessary to take us through.

The elements that I see to be required for finishing the nuclear nightmare in this positive way include: the commitment by masses of people to hope rather than to despair: intentional activity to imagine, receive and invent the hopeful future in all its myriad aspects: rejection of all our personal and corporate inadequacies that block this future: and a commitment to foster hope. I believe that we do all know how to work on these tasks.

Imaging a World without Weapons

The imaging techniques used in this workshop were developed originally by Warren Ziegler.... They were designed to help organizations and community groups, trapped in apparently unsoluable conflicts, to break out of their deadlocks... Ziegler added to the imaging of a desired future the idea of standing in that imagined future and "remembering" how the parties got there. This technique has been repeatedly demonstrated to be effective. Shifting the emphasis from a deadlocked present to a realized future solution seems to release creative search behaviour in participants. (Elise Boulding)⁹

Elise Boulding points out that we cannot work seriously for an outcome that seems inherently impossible, and that this is how we do see the idea that our world might become weapon-free. This can change when we visualize a weapon-free world in concrete detail, covering all the various levels at which we experience violent conflicts, and how our world could change to become weapon-free in this pattern. It is important to exclude critical analysis until the visualization is complete, as our critical sense tends to be dominated by our present view of the world, which is a part of what we need to challenge. This imaging draws on the coded store of our life experiences, and what we get is unconsciously edited by our express desire to see how a world without weapons would look.

The workshop format involves seven steps, which are; formulating a goal statement of the sort of world we want to see; contacting childhood memories, as a way of exercising our imaging ability;

moving in imagination to look at the world as it" is" thirty years from now; clarification of what our imagined world looks like through explaining it to others; constructing a model of this world; standing in this future world and remembering how we got there; and action planning in the present in the light of this future.

This process can occupy any length of time from a few hours to a few days, or a number of sessions over many weeks. Elise Boulding suggests that two full days is optimal, and that fifteen participants is a minimum number, with an optimum of twenty-five to thirty. In the two-day workshop in which I participated, we had a group of sixty-six, which was a little large for effective negotiation between the different world models that emerged. I found it significant that symbolic, image-based forms of presentation were used throughout, and that this made it much easier to see connections rather than contradictions between the various world models; differences were seen as a source of diversity and therefore strength, rather than as a source of contradiction and therefore weakness.