A few weeks ago I was watching an episode of Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday series, where she was interviewing DeVon Franklin for his book, Produced by Faith.  Since DeVon is a Hollywood Executive his book relates our spiritual journey to constructing and developing the plot of a movie.  Given this parallel, he believes conflict is an essential part of our spiritual journey.  As with the plot of a movie, without drama or conflict, there is no story (or journey).  Initially, this struck me as completely contradictory to our journey towards peace.  How could conflict lead to peace?

The truth is I have been using conflict to propel my spiritual journey, but from my perspective, the goal is to reach a point where the factors that create drama no longer register in our awareness.  At which point, conflict would no longer be a part of our journey.

We can use the friction created by conflict for spiritual growth when we learn to grow beyond the factors that caused the initial drama; otherwise we keep the drama alive by unconsciously playing it out over and over again.  We remain stuck in the …

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