Rabia Roberts's guest appearances

Rabia Roberts

The Peacebuilding Podcast : From Conflict To Common Ground

Kamal Mouzawak

Priya Parker

John Horgan

Thomas Hill

Thomas Hübl

Jim Zimmerman

Scilla Elworthy

Terry Real

Peter Coleman

Charles Crawford

David Gage

Bob Stains

Riane Eisler

Melanie Greenberg

Barbara Huson

OwlTail

Dear Podcast Friends,  Happy 2021!  We came so close in the United States of America.  We came right up to the edge, looking into a very deep and bleak abyss.   But we didn’t fall in, we pulled ourselves back, and democracy – at least to the extent we have realized it --  has prevailed. I, along with so many of my fellow citizens, am thrilled.  I have not generally been a person to wave the flag of the U.S. and tout our exceptionalism, though I love my country like I love my family.  I was one of those kids that resisted saying the Pledge of Allegiance as early as 14 because I was already very aware of what my country was doing in Southeast Asia. Fast forward to this podcast, I am all too aware that the U.S. spends more on our military than the next 10 countries combined, and uses our military might to dominate the world in very much the same way the wealthy have used our police to dominate poor black neighborhoods to keep assets pouring into the hands of a small, mostly white, male few of Wall Streeter types  – some of them my family members.  But today I feel more patriotic and proud of my country than ever before.  It feels like we have just gone through a hazing, a reckoning and perhaps Donald Trump has done us a favor to wake us up. Like the saying goes – it takes a lot of pounding to create a good bar of steel.  I read a book a long while back called the People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, the same guy who wrote The Road Less Traveled if you remember it. The premise of the book is that lies are the core of human evil.   Seeing ourselves clearly -- as a person, as a country, as a world -- is the beginning of healing and real positive change. As we say in the gestalt world -- awareness works: It’s a paradox that change happens most quickly when we can by see the fullness of 'what is' in the present moment.  A few weeks back, when the run-off elections in the State of Georgia tipped the balance in the U.S. Senate to a Democratic majority I tweeted:  I am so deeply moved by what has just happened in Georgia. Thank you Stacy Abrams. Change Georgia, change the country, change the world.   And “bing” -- I immediately got a like from a young woman in Asia who is an activist for democracy in her own country.   I love how connected we are, and how movements for justice and democracy inspire each other around the world.   After living with the Trump administration for the last four year that used bullying and the fantasy of a lost, white, Christian and patriarchal America, it was so super moving to  see, in the words of one of my friends  “A glorious display of inclusivity including all the raw feminine power. . .  -- How bright &amp; radiant”  and knowing that that was brought about, in part, by the activism of so many of us, of which I am proud to be a part.  One turning point was on January 21, 2017, when women, with our pussy hats on, marched on Washington in the largest single-day protest in American history that dwarfed Trump’s inauguration numbers of the previous day.    So, I am feeling optimistic, but there is so much to do and the climate clock is ticking   The contribution I have chosen to make toward a deeper democracy is focusing on empowering women by building our negotiation capacity, and showcasing through the podcast some cool content about interventions to build common ground in complex systems.   One CAN bring very polarized groups, even warring factions, together to build common ground.  I have done it.  I have seen it.  But so many of our world governments, including my own, are still so steeped in win-lose, adversarial, “power-struggle” methodologies, egged on by a media that leads with what bleeds. Making better use of the collaborative – and yes, more feminine – processes we know work would help us become less polarized, and more creative and relational. Humans are very capable of dealing with complexity and problem solving if given the right process “containers”.   Power over v power with. . .  Win-lose, win-win. . .  Both of these have big gender implications.  On the podcast front, I’ve been frustrated with how slow I am to get episodes out. There are so many I would like to do, so many cool people to interview – but like so many solo “socialpreneurs” like myself, there is the issue of bandwidth and making a living.  This fall, I put together a six-week, virtual course called Women, Negotiation &amp; Power which was thrilling. I will launch an even better version of that course in March so stay tuned, please enroll, or send people my way. Check out this testimonial video here.   I am also super excited by my growing audience of women whose stories and struggles I am hearing either through my online courses, or individual or group coaching. So thank you.  I am here to serve you and make the best content I can for women around negotiation, and for this podcast.   Getting gender right is delicate -- just like democracy.   Patriarchy tends to cut humans in half and say that men can be this way, and women can be that. What is happening is people are becoming more fully human, and being allowed to develop themselves fully, not just according to gender roles, or reconnect, for example, to what it means be a woman and not have the divinity in that taken out in any way. This is exciting, and this will create a more peaceful world.  As Carol Gilligan so aptly said feminism is the movement to free democracy from patriarchy.   We have a lot of work to do because honestly the model of so many things is still fundamentally the man, supported by the woman.   It’s gonna be weird, but it’s gonna happen in the U.S. soon enough, that a woman becomes our next president with or without an intimate partner standing beside her.  It's gonna feel uncomfortable and probably unnatural to many because it is uncharted territory in the U.S. though so many other countries around the world are leading the way.  So how did we get to this moment in time, to all those colorful flags and empowered women and people on the Capital steps of the U.S., a young black woman, a descendant of slaves, delivering the inaugural poem and declaring her unabashed desire to be President of the U.S. someday?  I think it has come from untangling narratives that are untrue.  For me, that has defined so much of the work I have done to grow as a human.   Seeing ourselves clearly v. the stories we have made up,   Discovering truth v. lies or fictions like the election was stolen from Donald Trump women came from the rib of Adam, that my brother was more valuable than I was from the moment of birth.  These are all untruths, but powerful narratives that have big consequences.  So in part B of Herstory, Rabia continues to unpack our human history, herstory, from the perspective of women. Read the full blog here.

Dear Podcast Friends, Happy 2021! We came so close in the United States of America. We came right up to the edge, looking into a very deep and bleak abyss.  But we didn’t fall in, we pulled ourselves back, and democracy – at least to the extent we have realized it --  has prevailed. I, along with so many of my fellow citizens, am thrilled. I have not generally been a person to wave the flag of the U.S. and tout our exceptionalism, though I love my country like I love my family. I was one of those kids that resisted saying the Pledge of Allegiance as early as 14 because I was already very aware of what my country was doing in Southeast Asia. Fast forward to this podcast, I am all too aware that the U.S. spends more on our military than the next 10 countries combined, and uses our military might to dominate the world in very much the same way the wealthy have used our police to dominate poor black neighborhoods to keep assets pouring into the hands of a small, mostly white, male few of Wall Streeter types  – some of them my family members. But today I feel more patriotic and proud of my country than ever before. It feels like we have just gone through a hazing, a reckoning and perhaps Donald Trump has done us a favor to wake us up. Like the saying goes – it takes a lot of pounding to create a good bar of steel. I read a book a long while back called the People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, the same guy who wrote The Road Less Traveled if you remember it. The premise of the book is that lies are the core of human evil.  Seeing ourselves clearly -- as a person, as a country, as a world -- is the beginning of healing and real positive change. As we say in the gestalt world -- awareness works: It’s a paradox that change happens most quickly when we can by see the fullness of 'what is' in the present moment. A few weeks back, when the run-off elections in the State of Georgia tipped the balance in the U.S. Senate to a Democratic majority I tweeted: I am so deeply moved by what has just happened in Georgia. Thank you Stacy Abrams. Change Georgia, change the country, change the world.  And “bing” -- I immediately got a like from a young woman in Asia who is an activist for democracy in her own country.  I love how connected we are, and how movements for justice and democracy inspire each other around the world.  After living with the Trump administration for the last four year that used bullying and the fantasy of a lost, white, Christian and patriarchal America, it was so super moving to  see, in the words of one of my friends “A glorious display of inclusivity including all the raw feminine power. . .  -- How bright &amp; radiant” and knowing that that was brought about, in part, by the activism of so many of us, of which I am proud to be a part.  One turning point was on January 21, 2017, when women, with our pussy hats on, marched on Washington in the largest single-day protest in American history that dwarfed Trump’s inauguration numbers of the previous day.   So, I am feeling optimistic, but there is so much to do and the climate clock is ticking  The contribution I have chosen to make toward a deeper democracy is focusing on empowering women by building our negotiation capacity, and showcasing through the podcast some cool content about interventions to build common ground in complex systems.  One CAN bring very polarized groups, even warring factions, together to build common ground. I have done it. I have seen it. But so many of our world governments, including my own, are still so steeped in win-lose, adversarial, “power-struggle” methodologies, egged on by a media that leads with what bleeds. Making better use of the collaborative – and yes, more feminine – processes we know work would help us become less polarized, and more creative and relational. Humans are very capable of dealing with complexity and problem solving if given the right process “containers”.  Power over v power with. . . Win-lose, win-win. . . Both of these have big gender implications. On the podcast front, I’ve been frustrated with how slow I am to get episodes out. There are so many I would like to do, so many cool people to interview – but like so many solo “socialpreneurs” like myself, there is the issue of bandwidth and making a living. This fall, I put together a six-week, virtual course called <a href="https://www.susancoleman.global/wnp-level1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Women, Negotiation &amp; Power</a> which was thrilling. I will launch an even better version of that course in March so stay tuned, please enroll, or send people my way. Check out this <a href="https://vimeo.com/501810157" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">testimonial video here</a>.  I am also super excited by my growing audience of women whose stories and struggles I am hearing either through my online courses, or <a href="https://www.susancoleman.global/coaching-for-professional-women" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">individual</a> or <a href="https://www.susancoleman.global/cohort-coaching" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">group coaching</a>. So thank you.  I am here to serve you and make the best content I can for women around negotiation, and for this podcast.  Getting gender right is delicate -- just like democracy.  Patriarchy tends to cut humans in half and say that men can be this way, and women can be that. What is happening is people are becoming more fully human, and being allowed to develop themselves fully, not just according to gender roles, or reconnect, for example, to what it means be a woman and not have the divinity in that taken out in any way. This is exciting, and this will create a more peaceful world. As Carol Gilligan so aptly said feminism is the movement to free democracy from patriarchy.  We have a lot of work to do because honestly the model of so many things is still fundamentally the man, supported by the woman.  It’s gonna be weird, but it’s gonna happen in the U.S. soon enough, that a woman becomes our next president with or without an intimate partner standing beside her. It's gonna feel uncomfortable and probably unnatural to many because it is uncharted territory in the U.S. though so many other countries around the world are leading the way. So how did we get to this moment in time, to all those colorful flags and empowered women and people on the Capital steps of the U.S., a young black woman, a descendant of slaves, delivering the inaugural poem and declaring her unabashed desire to be President of the U.S. someday? I think it has come from untangling narratives that are untrue. For me, that has defined so much of the work I have done to grow as a human.  Seeing ourselves clearly v. the stories we have made up,  Discovering truth v. lies or fictions like <ul><li>the election was stolen from Donald Trump</li> <li>women came from the rib of Adam, that</li> <li>my brother was more valuable than I was from the moment of birth.</li> </ul> These are all untruths, but powerful narratives that have big consequences. So in part B of Herstory, Rabia continues to unpack our human history, herstory, from the perspective of women. <a href="https://www.susancoleman.global/episodes/2021/01/ep-48-rabia-roberts-partb" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read the full blog here.</a>

Ep 48: Rabia Roberts - Herstory, Part B

Dear Podcast Friends,  I took a hiatus this summer from high-speed internet and went to the “boonies” which was great for making progress on my book, Women, Negotiation &amp; Power (stay tuned), but made podcasting virtually impossible. Indeed, I discovered quickly how much high-speed internet is running our lives – those of us with access to it – in both good and bad ways. It was good to take a break, to slow down, disconnect. I found myself very happy, but also glad to come back and be a part of our digital revolution once again. Being off the grid allowed me some good reflection time. Perhaps because as I age there is less time ahead of me than behind, I find myself looking backwards at the big things that have shaped me and my culture. For instance, it was determined at the moment of my birth that I would be more dependent and less powerful than the men in my family simply because I was a girl. Shaking off that type of conditioning takes some doing – for all of us. And, however inspired the words of our Founding Fathers (U.S.)  “all men are created equal”, it’s clear from historians that the founders were really just referring to propertied, white men like themselves, a crack in the foundation that is revealing itself and reverberating in movements like #metoo and #blacklivesmatter. The irony for those founders, products of their time, was that many of them were slave owners who also could not entertain the suggestions from both their wives and the Native Americans who inspired the fledgling U.S. democracy to include women in the process of forming it. So, in keeping with looking backwards and the big things that still reverberate, I'm super excited to bring you my current podcast episode, HerStory. HerStory Part A (and Parts B and C coming soon) will go back to the very beginning of humanity and tell the story of human evolution through the eyes of a woman. Perhaps that past seems ancient or irrelevant to you but, as my guest Rabia Roberts puts it “once you start studying things like neuroscience and how long it takes the brain to develop, you being to understand that pathways get laid down long ago that still have a great influence on us.” These recordings are actually classes that Rabia gave to a group of women in Boulder, Colorado in 2017. They're just super excellent and not to be missed which is why I am including them here. I will release them one each month for the next three months, HerStory, Parts A, B and C. I think you'll find so much useful information, and Rabia is an amazingly intelligent, sophisticated, and light spirit. Rabia was on our show in 2017. As you will see, her description of herself as an activist, who loves to be a scholar is pretty darn accurate. For the past 50 years, she's been deeply engaged in what she describes as the three great movements of our time: social justice, peace, and environmental action. Rabia has lived and worked in places as diverse as Iraq, Syria, Burma, Thailand, Jordan, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Brazil and Afghanistan. Her unique experience yields a rich harvest of insights relevant to the challenges facing us.  HerStory was intended to be a series of seven classes or so, but unfortunately after number three, Rabia has had constant medical challenges which has slowed her down. I’m hoping this podcast release might inspire her to continue, even if just in this type of audio format v. a real class.  Rabia got into this project because of  “the need for global feminine leadership, and the fact that patriarchy won't die”. This was to be her legacy for women and girls. In her words “HerStory is a great empowering story of who we women are, how it has been misunderstood and how women have the unique qualities and skills to bring our country together and our democracy forward. In fact, I believe only a woman will be able to heal and lead us into the future. Only women have the needed capacities and skills to bring men and women, people together. And history gives the evolutionary reasons why this is so.” This first episode, Part A, covers the human story from 13.6 billion years ago, basically the beginning, to about 40,000 years ago. In it, Rabia gifts us with so many incredible insights. The following is just a few of my “favorite frames”. The first is what she calls the enormous femininity of making something out of nothing, what cosmologist and scientist Brian Swimme calls “the great effulgence” commonly known as the Big Bang.  One of our first principles of our beginnings was differentiation, “that everything differentiated, nothing was the same. It wasn't a pile of gas that evolved, it was differentiated beings, differentiated things.” Rabia points out that differentiation is one of the main principles in us and “when we try to establish monocultures or mono races, we are working against the fundamental principles of Earth, and ourselves. Monocultures ruined our food and trying to have one race is ruining our civilization.” The second is that mammals began for a long time with cloning -- XX  -- females of species from insects to the apes reproducing themselves. For those of us who grew up with Adam and Eve, of course, this shows a tale turned upside down: Adam and Eve was completely backwards. The male evolved from female, not vice versa. It’s crazy how so many of our traditions attribute our beginnings to a God the Father, a male with no reproductive capacity at all. Another frame is especially relevant to the search for peace and the need for women to not abdicate our power. The evolution of the Xy chromosome, the male, brought much needed biological diversity, but also more violence from the testosterone needed to get DNA into the female. Rabia goes on to say that while women can be violent and competitive, the male half of our species creates most of the violence in both intimate and larger systems. She shares insights from other large mammals that she has studied – whales and elephants -- who also deal with the same challenges of male violence, and how the female of those species handle it -- Women take note! I like her tales of the bonobos, our equally-distant cousins to the chimpanzees. The bonobos are led by females, and if a male gets aggressive, they go have sex. They are, according to the particular biologist that Rabia was studying, the sexiest creatures known – males having sex with females, males with males, females with females, young and old, a lot of sex going on, and no aggression. As the saying of an earlier generation had it – make love, not war. Another frame is just how resilient we have been as a species, how our ancestors have survived two major ice ages and so much more. One of the key reasons for our resilience was the hunter gatherer females who were, Rabia says from her research, “probably the most skilled human beings that ever existed on the planet, with the ability to kill animals to hear a snake in the brush to see a saber toothed lion to smell climate change days in advance, all while keeping her eye on her children. I mean, the working mom goes a long way back, like from always.” Finally “the oldest grave that is known about with decorations and shells all over the parks and around it was a little girl. It wasn't a big Chief. It doesn't seem like male chiefs were any more decorated than the females that were found.”  In this episode, Rabia is pointing her audience to a timeline. I've put that timeline on this page, as well as the original YouTube video if you would like to refer to that. I’ve also included here Rabia’s introduction to her Waking Up Together series which I like very much. So my dear subscribers, I hope in the midst of all this craziness, you get a chance to listen to this episode. It has changed the way I see the world and I’m sure it will do the same for you.

Dear Podcast Friends,  I took a hiatus this summer from high-speed internet and went to the “boonies” which was great for making progress on my book, Women, Negotiation &amp; Power (stay tuned), but made podcasting virtually impossible. Indeed, I discovered quickly how much high-speed internet is running our lives – those of us with access to it – in both good and bad ways. It was good to take a break, to slow down, disconnect. I found myself very happy, but also glad to come back and be a part of our digital revolution once again. Being off the grid allowed me some good reflection time. Perhaps because as I age there is less time ahead of me than behind, I find myself looking backwards at the big things that have shaped me and my culture. For instance, it was determined at the moment of my birth that I would be more dependent and less powerful than the men in my family simply because I was a girl. Shaking off that type of conditioning takes some doing – for all of us. And, however inspired the words of our Founding Fathers (U.S.)  “all men are created equal”, it’s clear from historians that the founders were really just referring to propertied, white men like themselves, a crack in the foundation that is revealing itself and reverberating in movements like #metoo and #blacklivesmatter. The irony for those founders, products of their time, was that many of them were slave owners who also could not entertain the suggestions from both their wives and the Native Americans who inspired the fledgling U.S. democracy to include women in the process of forming it. So, in keeping with looking backwards and the big things that still reverberate, I'm super excited to bring you my current podcast episode, HerStory. HerStory Part A (and Parts B and C coming soon) will go back to the very beginning of humanity and tell the story of human evolution through the eyes of a woman. Perhaps that past seems ancient or irrelevant to you but, as my guest Rabia Roberts puts it “once you start studying things like neuroscience and how long it takes the brain to develop, you being to understand that pathways get laid down long ago that still have a great influence on us.” These recordings are actually classes that Rabia gave to a group of women in Boulder, Colorado in 2017. They're just super excellent and not to be missed which is why I am including them here. I will release them one each month for the next three months, HerStory, Parts A, B and C. I think you'll find so much useful information, and Rabia is an amazingly intelligent, sophisticated, and light spirit. Rabia was <a href="https://www.susancoleman.global/episodes/2017/12/19/ep-023-elizabeth-rabia-roberts-bearing-witness" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">on our show in 2017</a>. As you will see, her description of herself as an activist, who loves to be a scholar is pretty darn accurate. For the past 50 years, she's been deeply engaged in what she describes as the three great movements of our time: social justice, peace, and environmental action. Rabia has lived and worked in places as diverse as Iraq, Syria, Burma, Thailand, Jordan, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Brazil and Afghanistan. Her unique experience yields a rich harvest of insights relevant to the challenges facing us.  HerStory was intended to be a series of seven classes or so, but unfortunately after number three, Rabia has had constant medical challenges which has slowed her down. I’m hoping this podcast release might inspire her to continue, even if just in this type of audio format v. a real class.  Rabia got into this project because of  “the need for global feminine leadership, and the fact that patriarchy won't die”. This was to be her legacy for women and girls. In her words “HerStory is a great empowering story of who we women are, how it has been misunderstood and how women have the unique qualities and skills to bring our country together and our democracy forward. In fact, I believe only a woman will be able to heal and lead us into the future. Only women have the needed capacities and skills to bring men and women, people together. And history gives the evolutionary reasons why this is so.” This first episode, Part A, covers the human story from 13.6 billion years ago, basically the beginning, to about 40,000 years ago. In it, Rabia gifts us with so many incredible insights. The following is just a few of my “favorite frames”. The first is what she calls the enormous femininity of making something out of nothing, what cosmologist and scientist Brian Swimme calls “the great effulgence” commonly known as the Big Bang.  One of our first principles of our beginnings was differentiation, “that everything differentiated, nothing was the same. It wasn't a pile of gas that evolved, it was differentiated beings, differentiated things.” Rabia points out that differentiation is one of the main principles in us and “when we try to establish monocultures or mono races, we are working against the fundamental principles of Earth, and ourselves. Monocultures ruined our food and trying to have one race is ruining our civilization.” The second is that mammals began for a long time with cloning -- XX  -- females of species from insects to the apes reproducing themselves. For those of us who grew up with Adam and Eve, of course, this shows a tale turned upside down: Adam and Eve was completely backwards. The male evolved from female, not vice versa. It’s crazy how so many of our traditions attribute our beginnings to a God the Father, a male with no reproductive capacity at all. Another frame is especially relevant to the search for peace and the need for women to not abdicate our power. The evolution of the Xy chromosome, the male, brought much needed biological diversity, but also more violence from the testosterone needed to get DNA into the female. Rabia goes on to say that while women can be violent and competitive, the male half of our species creates most of the violence in both intimate and larger systems. She shares insights from other large mammals that she has studied – whales and elephants -- who also deal with the same challenges of male violence, and how the female of those species handle it -- Women take note! I like her tales of the bonobos, our equally-distant cousins to the chimpanzees. The bonobos are led by females, and if a male gets aggressive, they go have sex. They are, according to the particular biologist that Rabia was studying, the sexiest creatures known – males having sex with females, males with males, females with females, young and old, a lot of sex going on, and no aggression. As the saying of an earlier generation had it – make love, not war. Another frame is just how resilient we have been as a species, how our ancestors have survived two major ice ages and so much more. One of the key reasons for our resilience was the hunter gatherer females who were, Rabia says from her research, “probably the most skilled human beings that ever existed on the planet, with the ability to kill animals to hear a snake in the brush to see a saber toothed lion to smell climate change days in advance, all while keeping her eye on her children. I mean, the working mom goes a long way back, like from always.” Finally “the oldest grave that is known about with decorations and shells all over the parks and around it was a little girl. It wasn't a big Chief. It doesn't seem like male chiefs were any more decorated than the females that were found.”  In this episode, Rabia is pointing her audience to a timeline. I've put that timeline on this page, as well as the original YouTube video if you would like to refer to that. I’ve also included here Rabia’s introduction to her Waking Up Together series which I like very much. So my dear subscribers, I hope in the midst of all this craziness, you get a chance to listen to this episode. It has changed the way I see the world and I’m sure it will do the same for you.

Ep 47: Rabia Roberts - Herstory, Part A

Elizabeth Rabia Roberts

Elizabeth Rabia Roberts, Ed.D, is an internationally known citizen activist and women’s advocate. She is MaShieka — spiritual guide and teacher—in the International Sufi Way, and a lifelong student and teacher in nondual Buddhism. She has spent nearly 50 years working as a change agent for environmental and social justice, and the past 26 years working in 17 countries using “Bearing Witness” as a model for transformative action. Bearing Witness is a process that has grown out of the teachings and inspiration of many people (Bernie Glassman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Witness for Peace, and Elias Amidon, to name a few). It has deep spiritual roots — but is being newly adapted to improve the effectiveness of working with transformative change. Rabia has slept in tents, bamboo huts, ashrams, church basements, hotels, the occasional palace, and the guest rooms of friends around the world. She describes her work as an exercise of happiness and optimism – something that you can feel palpably when talking to Rabia.In this episode of The Peacebuilding Podcast: Bridging the Divide, Rabia shares a specific story of Bearing Witness, in a multi-party conflict playing out in the national park system between native people, environmental activists, loggers, the police and others in the then Burma where she spent many years with her husband Elias Avidon.About the process of Bearing Witness, Rabia says, “No one person, organization, or political party holds a monopoly on what will make a healthy future for us all — either at the planetary or community level. Perhaps nothing is more important today than crossing the boundaries that seem to separate us and learn to think like an interconnected system.”“Our challenge is to loosen our attachment to our personal or group agendas so that we can begin to sense what is trying to emerge from the larger whole. . . .”“This does not mean we excuse greed or need to capitulate on what is true—i.e. pretend that a river is not polluted when it clearly is—but we must continue to dialogue. Future leaders will be those who have the collaborative skills and spiritual maturity to bear witness to the totality of what is.”Rabia describes the principles of Bearing Witness as “appear(ing) quite simple—you may have heard them before from a spiritual teacher, or in your church—but like most important things in life (i.e., marriage, child rearing, committing to a spiritual path), they are not easy. Whether you work in peace building, education, community development, corporate training, or simply want to improve your family dynamics, the process of bearing witness can be helpful. •Encounter the other; show up; take the plunge•Ask caring questions that open the heart of the “other”•Practice the art of Deep Listening, without judgment•Understand techniques for setting aside one’s own beliefs and attitudes•Learn to guide meetings without driving one’s own agenda•Learn the difference between fixing, helping, and serving•See ways to bring forth the greater whole that is emerging•Perceive what is ‘yours’ to do, and when action is ready to emergeIn 1999 Rabia and her husband, sold their home and undertook a deliberate period of homelessness as part of an international pilgrimage of direct service and teaching. In 2002, while working with a peace group in Iraq, Rabia was elected the first American delegate to the Global Non-Violent Peaceforce. Since then she has worked organizing and teaching active non-violence in Burma, Indonesia, the tribal lands of Southeast Asia, Iraq, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Brazil, Afghanistan, Pakistan and most recently Standing Rock. Please tune in to this wise soul whose upbeat spirit is simply contagious, and path of activism and adventure compelling.

Elizabeth Rabia Roberts, Ed.D, is an internationally known citizen activist and women’s advocate. She is MaShieka — spiritual guide and teacher—in the International Sufi Way, and a lifelong student and teacher in nondual Buddhism. She has spent nearly 50 years working as a change agent for environmental and social justice, and the past 26 years working in 17 countries using “Bearing Witness” as a model for transformative action. Bearing Witness is a process that has grown out of the teachings and inspiration of many people (Bernie Glassman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Witness for Peace, and Elias Amidon, to name a few). It has deep spiritual roots — but is being newly adapted to improve the effectiveness of working with transformative change. Rabia has slept in tents, bamboo huts, ashrams, church basements, hotels, the occasional palace, and the guest rooms of friends around the world. She describes her work as an exercise of happiness and optimism – something that you can feel palpably when talking to Rabia. In this episode of The Peacebuilding Podcast: Bridging the Divide, Rabia shares a specific story of Bearing Witness, in a multi-party conflict playing out in the national park system between native people, environmental activists, loggers, the police and others in the then Burma where she spent many years with her husband Elias Avidon. About the process of Bearing Witness, Rabia says, “No one person, organization, or political party holds a monopoly on what will make a healthy future for us all — either at the planetary or community level. Perhaps nothing is more important today than crossing the boundaries that seem to separate us and learn to think like an interconnected system.” “Our challenge is to loosen our attachment to our personal or group agendas so that we can begin to sense what is trying to emerge from the larger whole. . . .” “This does not mean we excuse greed or need to capitulate on what is true—i.e. pretend that a river is not polluted when it clearly is—but we must continue to dialogue. Future leaders will be those who have the collaborative skills and spiritual maturity to bear witness to the totality of what is.” Rabia describes the principles of Bearing Witness as “appear(ing) quite simple—you may have heard them before from a spiritual teacher, or in your church—but like most important things in life (i.e., marriage, child rearing, committing to a spiritual path), they are not easy. Whether you work in peace building, education, community development, corporate training, or simply want to improve your family dynamics, the process of bearing witness can be helpful. •Encounter the other; show up; take the plunge •Ask caring questions that open the heart of the “other” •Practice the art of Deep Listening, without judgment •Understand techniques for setting aside one’s own beliefs and attitudes •Learn to guide meetings without driving one’s own agenda •Learn the difference between fixing, helping, and serving •See ways to bring forth the greater whole that is emerging •Perceive what is ‘yours’ to do, and when action is ready to emerge In 1999 Rabia and her husband, sold their home and undertook a deliberate period of homelessness as part of an international pilgrimage of direct service and teaching. In 2002, while working with a peace group in Iraq, Rabia was elected the first American delegate to the Global Non-Violent Peaceforce. Since then she has worked organizing and teaching active non-violence in Burma, Indonesia, the tribal lands of Southeast Asia, Iraq, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Brazil, Afghanistan, Pakistan and most recently Standing Rock. Please tune in to this wise soul whose upbeat spirit is simply contagious, and path of activism and adventure compelling.