Seeing from the heart

By Megan Lindow

'Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.'

Hearing these words from the 13th century Persian poet and mystic Rumi invoked by the Palestinian peacebuilding activator Eva Dalak, in conversation with Pocket Project CEO Kosha Joubert for the World Women's Summit, I felt a deep, quiet resonance in my heart. What follows is a weaving of words, impressions and inspirations from that conversation.

Eva grew up as a Palestinian in Israel, then left the region as a young adult for a peacebuilding career in the UN that brought her into 22 different conflict zones around the world over the next 30 years.

She dedicated her life to peacebuilding. Yet as she reflected to Kosha, "conflict was my comfort zone." Focused on wars and conflicts "out there", she did not see that she was running away from the pain of her own internal conflict.

During the COVID pandemic, Eva temporarily lost her eyesight. As she described it now, she lost her main organ of judgment, her ability to look at the world "out there" and form an opinion about it.

Her loss of sight was an invitation to develop new in-sight. As she could no longer look outward, she looked inward – into her own upbringing as a Palestinian inside of Israel; as a second-class citizen in a society that normalized violence. Looking inward, she saw her conditioning, how she had subconsciously learned not to see the system of domination and oppression she was living inside of.

This was part of her journey from being a peace activist to a Peace Activator. Cultivating practices of nervous system regulation, heart-centered listening, spiritual psychology, embodied feminine wisdom and somatic healing, she came to understand peace not as something enacted through universal resolutions and the protocols of global governance– but rather as a capacity that arises from within. An embodied capacity for presence.

Her Peace Activation initiative was born in 2023 as Israel unleashed a genocide in Gaza in response to the October 7 attacks of Hamas. As she received news of the attacks in Costa Rica where she now lives, her young son couldn't understand why she was crying. Her mother, informing her of grandparents, children and other family members killed by the bombings in Gaza, then proceeded to ask her what she had eaten that day, unable to stay with her grief.

These events called Eva back to face her "crisis of origin." To offer spaces where Palestinians, Israelis and others could meet and share the feelings of grief and love in their hearts.

Opening the heart towards another takes courage, vulnerability and will. Through the feminine wisdom of the body, courage arises. Through the heart, each nervous system grows its capacity to be in relation with others and become a seed of peace in the wider world. Each heart grows the courage to speak out against systems of oppression from a place of strength.

Palestinians and Israelis are noble enemies who carry the collective trauma of humanity, Eva said. Many of us are sensing a tight contraction in our global nervous system, as wars escalate seemingly without end. How do we open our hearts to shift this paradigm collectively? When enemies can begin to see each other with the heart, the possibility of reaching Rumi's wider field beyond begins to open. Looking one another in the eye, soul-gazing, meeting one another without righteousness, seeing our shared humanity, the collective trauma can be transmuted. "Once we see the loving essence of the other, we don't see them as a soldier or a terrorist or an enemy," Eva said.

That wider field is a place of generative tension and infinite possibility. It holds all our complexity and difference in a dynamic balance. It holds the understanding that, in Eva's words, "we can be radically different, and interdependent, in a complex situation where we are witnessing a system of oppression and occupation, and choosing not to be part of it".

Hosting the other while staying anchored in our own sovereignty, the heart enlarges to hold both perspectives. The heart sees more of the truth of our shared humanity. It holds the capacity to stay in relation, even when we don't agree. As the heart seeing is enlarged, the collective field of humanity expands. Interdependent, collaborative, creative, connected – this is what humanity is, can be, can become. But only if we choose to meet each other in that field beyond.