Map Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Step 7
Step 7
Climax, Harvest and Celebration
Step 7 on the Generative Conflict Map is coming to rest in a place of no conflict. Taking time to harvest and integrate after a conflict is the most important step. Savouring is when all our neural rewiring happens. We can choose to exit a conflict at any time, and come into this step.
Conflict is nervous system arousal, just like Eros. People and communities sometimes get caught in an “addiction” to the neurochemistry of conflict-generated arousal, if we don’t consciously cultivate times of no conflict and grateful rest. The same understandings of the neural learning zone, the spectrum of response, embodied trauma, and empowered choice and voice that empower our erotic lives can guide us in generative conflict. So too, our understanding of orgasm. We stretch into our outer limits, driven by our longings. With the highest-intensity arousal we can muster; we hover at the edge, with individual and collective nervous systems at the point of almost-breaking. The drive for both individuality and community, both ecstasy and equilibrium, meets the outermost limit we can hold in resilience-with-integrity. We climax.
We know, then, to celebrate and savour. We understand that it is by noticing and attending to small and large moments of climax that we resource our nervous systems to reach for bigger, better, more sustained and more accessible climaxes. If this is the very best climax we can get to, for now, together, we know not to miss it. We take time to harvest, say grace, and then actually eat the feast, while saving seeds for what’s next and what’s more. Then we rest, and integrate – in a period without conflict.