"as" clause

Hi, Members and Gurus!!

In the following, it's difficult to understand how the "as clause" gets integrated in the whole sentence.

I wrote to the friend I was suing and informed him that I was dropping my legal action in order to start removing conflict from my life. He called and thanked me, and we began to rebuild our friendship. Eventually I would learn that this same kind of scenario, in different forms, had played itself out thousands of times in the previous few decades as some people in conflict had begun a process of laying down their weapons and surrendering to a greater wisdom within themselves.

Then I began trying to activate forgiveness and love, as I understood them at the time, in the situations that confronted me on any given day.
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Does "as" here refers to "a reason" or "a manner" or something else?