A Clear Vision for Building Peace

Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Scilla Elworthy is a vibrant example of what we are capable of doing when we see clearly — and take action. When Scilla was just 11 years old, her four older brothers were teaching her how to fire a shotgun at their home in Galashiels, England. In one quick moment, young Scilla did something that forever changed her life path.

"I thought I was being so clever," recalls Scilla, who joins Esalen faculty Sheva Carr and Robert Browning for their upcoming workshop, Tap into the Power of Your Heart to Promote Peace — Inside and Out.

"I stood underneath a tall tree and way up on a branch was a nest. I pulled the trigger of the shotgun and down on my head came pieces of sticks, eggshell and the sky-blue feathers of a mother bird.

"I was so shocked by what I had done — the violence of which I was capable — that I put the gun back in the house and never touched it again.

"That was a springboard into realizing what guns do to creatures and obviously to human beings. It was one of the things that first brought me to a path of peace-building."

Two years later, another incident fueled Scilla's growing interests for peace when she saw Soviet tanks charge into Budapest on television. She was intent on helping out in the region right then and there, but Scilla's mother, seeing how interested her daughter was in peace-building, intervened and promised to give her the proper tools she needed.

When Scilla was 16, her mother sent her to spend an entire summer with concentration camp survivors where she listened to a number of powerful survivor stories with a sense of awe.

"Those stories touched my heart in a way that never left me," Scilla says.

These childhood moments informed Scilla's lifelong path to peace-building in such profound ways that it eventually led her to become the founder of Oxford Research Group and Peace Direct, which supports peace-builders in conflict areas around the globe.

She now advises many global peace-building initiatives including, "The Elders," Syria Campaign and the Institute for Economics and Peace. And Scilla's book, The Business Plan for Peace, is filled with both the wisdom and peace-building strategies she garnered over the years.

Still, Scilla admits that there were times when she felt so challenged in her work that it forced her to learn to see beyond the obstacles and create a clearer vision of what path to take. This was most evident in 1982 when Scilla was at the Second Special Session of the United Nations on nuclear disarmament in New York City. After two weeks of meetings and little progress being made, she had a powerful insight: She was talking to the wrong people.

"It was one of those times when you just know what had to be done," Scilla recalls. "I got an insight that we had to find out who really makes decisions on nuclear weapons — individuals in the military, intelligence people, and the physicists for instance — and when I returned to Oxford, I started creating Oxford Research Group straight away.

"It was so crystal clear to me what I needed to do that I ignored the fact that it was considered ‘impossible.’ I think ‘seeing clearly’ makes the impossible possible."

Scilla started the research group around her own kitchen table, in fact, using her savings to pay people to work with her. Collectively, she and her team gradually built up the group with a primary vision of building a dialogue with “shadowy individuals” involved with nuclear weapons who weren’t normally known about.

But when the group hit a wall in creating effective dialogue with key negotiators, Scilla made a bold decision to create a fresh approach; one that would put her team’s skills to their greatest use.

"I learned to meditate and delve deep into unearthing who I really was,” she says. “This process of self-realization led me to realize a new way of promoting peaceful negotiations. I was moved to answer the question that had been sitting with me for years, namely, ‘Who am I?’ In that process, I learned to self-reflect, discover and examine my shadow sides, namely my anger and my fear."

She also realized that as long as she was projecting her emotions onto those she wanted to talk to that they, too, could feel it as well. “I had to do the hard work to face, address and transform the roots of these very violent emotions as best I could,” Scilla adds. “As a result, over a period of a few years, we rethought our approach and went on to successfully open dialogue with key policy makers in all the nuclear weapons nations at that time."

Some 37 years and many peace-building initiatives later, Oxford Research Group continues to work stridently on peace, security and justice issues with its research and dialogue activities mainly focused on the Middle East, North and West Africa. Today, Scilla has greater clarity on what humanity must be aware of, and can do, in terms of building peace.

"We've all heard of IQ and EQ, but now there's FemmeQ, the new intelligence available equally to men as it is to women," Scilla says. "It's essential to our future because of its five components or qualities, which will re-balance the yin with the yang in our world."

The five FemmeQ components are:
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• Help nature re-generate: "Reconnect with nature yourself," Scilla says. "That means discard your electronic device, go out to where there is grass or a tree and stand there in your bare feet. If you want to take a stand on an issue you really care about, deliver it from a base of wisdom, from the Earth, and not from anger or fear. That means planting your feet on the Earth and letting the Earth nourish you. Be guided."
• Employ compassion in action: "There’s a massive difference between feeling sorry about an issue or ‘languishing’ and actually using your compassion,” Scilla says. “That means taking action. Find your partners on the path and then pour in your passion and your love. Make love your currency.”
• Listen to your intuition. Allowing our internal GPS to inform us, Scilla suggests sitting in a quiet place and speaking out loud our questions, the angst, the doubt. “You’re talking not just to yourself, you’re calling on your Higher Self, and your Higher Self will answer,” she adds. “This is your inner power and on this you can rely.”
• Resolve conflicts by listening: Ask the following to a person with whom you have a conflict: “Would you be willing to spend half an hour with me and I will listen to you and you, me?”
• Remember you are in service: "Service is the highest attribute of a human being; higher than survival, higher than learning, higher even than making your way in the world,” Scilla says. “Being in service means being 100 percent present to what’s needed in the moment. That means having a quiet ego so that your energy is attuned to others, not to you. That’s where you will find your real friends, your allies, your combined power. That's why you're here."

If the mantra of the last century was ‘What can I get?’” Scilla adds. “The mantra of this century, with your full participation is, ‘What can I give?'"

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