What Happens When You Disagree?

What happens to you when you experience disagreement? Are you able to come to a mutually satisfying agreement or, at least, agree to disagree?
This article is for those who experience discomfort or lack of satisfaction in disagreements. For those who: tend to think blaming, defensive, judging, guilty, or hopeless thoughts; feel physical tightness or discomfort or whose breath stops or becomes shallow; tend to be angry, fearful, anxious, or sad; and who tend to use words like "you are wrong", "I am right", "you never..." or " I always...", "there's no point in talking to you", "you don't understand or care", "I don't have the strength", "You are completely hopeless", "it's not all my fault", "it's all your fault", "if we talk about this, it will only make matters worse".... just to name a few of the many ways we cultivate and reinforce arguments and separation when we disagree.
Why is it so much more comfortable to agree than to disagree? Why is it so much easier to feel good with someone or to feel love for them when that person agrees with us?
We are biologically wired to defend ourselves whenever we perceive we are in danger. Any stimulus which threatens our perceived sense of self or safety automatically triggers both psychological and physiological defense. As animals we fear differences because that which is different might be interested in eating us for dinner! Each animal's instinct provides the wiring to discern dangerous from harmless differences without regard to the particulars of the situation.
As human animals we can learn from the past and apply that learned or conditioned response to the present situation. We also have an ability for Conscious Awareness. This enables us to take in new information and produce an entirely new response to a given situation. We can think through a situation and consciously discern safety Vs danger. This gave us more flexibility to respond to new information. For example, a person can approach us wanting to know the time of day. Another person could approach us and want to steal our watch. Our senses can help us perceive and our intellect can help us interpret how to respond to these two similar looking people with different agendas. Our behavior is guided by the integration of this information through our Conscious Awareness. n Our culture, however has elevated the importance of the intellect over the senses, and has relegated instinctual response to the lower animals. As a result, over time, we have come to rely less on our instincts and sense perception and more on our intellect and our conditioning for our protection.
Unfortunately, our intellect doesn't always tell us the truth! Because of our defensive orientation, our thoughts and perceptions are often governed by our survival needs: by our fears and the associations and memories that accompany our fears.
For instance: Say as a toddler you were badly bitten by a dog which hurt and frightened you and upset your mother. Your defensive structure would catalog dog as a dangerous animal. Every time you saw a dog thereafter, your intellect would remind you of the danger and you would feel fear in your body. Fear is contagious and the new dog, who otherwise might have been quite friendly, sensing your fear might bite you to protect himself. So instead of having a new and positive experience with a dog, you would reinforce the original negative one. These reinforcements could go on until you might not be willing to visit a friend who had a dog, even if the dog was tied up, because it might just get loose and you'd get bitten again.
This is an example of a person's intellect being automatically governed by her defensive structure. She is unavailable for Conscious Awareness in the present moment and inappropriately generalizes fear from one specific dog in one specific situation to all dogs in all situations, just to be safe.
This person does not have the advantage of the animal's instinctual ability to discern predator danger, nor can she utilize her Conscious Awareness. She is somewhere in the middle, disadvantaged altogether.
I propose that: we humans are in the process of evolving our ability to be Consciously Aware and that the next evolutionary step requires our active participation; a good barometer of our progress lies in the way we respond to disagreement; we are biologically wired to defend ourselves; and when we don't understand or respect the impact that defensive orientation has on our thoughts, emotions, and our physiology our intellect will continue to be governed by defensive structure rather than by Conscious Awareness – by what was perceived to be true in the past rather than what is actually true in the present.
Defended intellect would say all dogs are dangerous and have us avoid them at all costs. Conscious Awareness would observe how the particular dog was actually behaving as well as how others around us were responding to that dog and then decide.
Those whose intellects are still governed by their defensive structure will perceive a disagreement as a dangerous difference and will automatically experience fear, both physically and emotionally.
Fear is the original, primal, and often unfelt feeling that our wiring evokes in the disagreement. However, it may be disguised as frustration, anger, impatience, helplessness, superiority, inferiority, futility, and/or judgment. These feelings are quickly justified and maintained by defended intellect with the utmost righteousness and inflexibility. Defensive thoughts will follow your feeling of fear, causing you to perceive the other person — whether you intend to or not — as someone who is trying to hurt you. All ensuing conversation will be, to some degree, polarized, argumentative, and win/lose if not lose/lose. Certainly not mutually satisfying! n Sometimes what seems to be the reason for the disagreement is only the tip of the iceberg. What lies underneath the surface may be some unexpressed, unacknowledged, or unresponded-to resentment or need. Every disagreement provides a new opportunity to check our personal barometer of consciousness and navigate toward mutual safety through compassion, respect and the willingness to listen. To listen all the way through to whatever misunderstanding, withheld resentment, or unexpressed need or desire might be at the root of the perceived stalemate.
We can identify that we are in fear and look to our Conscious Awareness rather than our defended intellect to see whether or not the fear and our defense is appropriate.
As we are more sensitive to our physical sensations and our emotions (Are my muscles tight; is there a knot or churning in my stomach; am I holding my breath; are my hands or feet cold; are my palms sweaty?) and can look for polarization (Is my voice raised; am I frustrated of angry; am I using judging, blaming, victim words; is my point more important than his; am I thinking about what I want to say instead of listening to what she is saying?) the more we will then be able to see the other as our brother or sister rather than our enemy and support our intention to co-create a mutually satisfying resolution. n We can choose Conscious Awareness over defended intellect. We can step out of fear into love and actively participate in the evolution of our consciousness. A consciousness that sees the other not as a threat but as a benefit to our survival. Where we can pool our resources in abundance in community rather than compete, dominate and even kill to survive in a cut-throat jungle.
The choice is ours. Each new moment brings an opportunity for a new choice. In the asking, in our honesty, and in our willingness to grow we can have love and peace. We can BECOME LOVE AND PEACE!