Relax into No Right, No Wrong (It's Not Alright!)

Recently I joined a group called, "Consciousness Transformation Community" facilitated by Miki Kashtan. On a phone call yesterday we of this virtual community spoke of the importance of feedback. I found myself moved by the practice of coming to a place of trust in the moment. So often I want to lead the conversation, or to just listen in so that I can give all that I can to the people involved. In so doing, I mourn that often I do not trust that the highest ideal of where I wish to be in relationship with others and with myself is with the beauty of existence and the power of connection. I'm wanting to "fix" the world and heal it. Perhaps we can judge this as noble, however, I find that it keeps me from authentic life-giving connection.

For instance, imagine that after delivering a sermon at my congregation, one person on the way out shakes my hand and says, "Your sermon didn't feed me today." What are my options? I can ask more questions of this person to see what needs of theirs are unmet, or perhaps engage in a way that helps me find out more about the feedback that will help me "heal the world" more efficiently in the future. Or maybe, just maybe I can relax and trust, and share with this person what is in my heart - to go for the connection without reacting to the content of the feedback. In this case I might say something like, "I feel sad to hear this because I can see how much you long for support and community this morning. Is this right?" In checking in with the other person, not leading or avoiding the conversation, I offer a prayer to the relationship gods and goddesses that I may rest in the field beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing.

Where do you diminish your chance for connection and speaking from the heart because you are concentrating on content, strategies, or "doing the right thing?"

Questions Elicit Wisdom

Yesterday I heard Nonviolent Communication Trainer Miki Kashtan speak about the power of questions. If we can ask a question to help others see the value of something in their lives, they are more likely to listen to what learning you have to offer to them.

For instance, consider you would like to help your son see the connection between his feelings and his needs. You really long for him to be able to recognize what needs are coming up for him, so he can be a powerful agent in his own life to creatively work well with others to address these needs. Instead, you have been frustrated and saddened that he seems to be angry quite a bit, and blames this on you. So, you can ask him if he'd be willing to listen to the importance of connecting his anger to what needs lie underneath, or perhaps you could ask him this:

After you have expressed anger towards someone else, how do you feel later, and does it impact your relationship with them?

When you have been angry, what has worked for you to lessen your anger?

When you see that other people are angry, what have you seen others do to help them deal with their anger?

Out of these conversations he might be able to come up with what you hoped to "teach him" and he might open up to more listening to you because he appreciates respect and being heard. By questioning, you can bring to consciousness the wisdom within us all.

Where in your life do you wish to share/teach something to someone, where a question along might bring out the wisdom of the other?

And Also

Open Heart

A few nights back I had a dream where "the answer" to life and the complexity of our days was "and also." It was a phrase to be uttered whenever I had a thought, or a judgment of a situation. By saying "and also" I cued myself to keep opening up to possibility and to what was going on in me and others. To say these words was to keep the heart open to what might be the deeper truth of my days - that all beings have inherent worth and dignity and that every moment is rich with the possibility of understanding and interconnection.

For instance, I might think, I am tired and don't want to work on this project.

And also...

I enjoy this project I am doing and the people who will be there.

And also...

My body is telling me I am sleepy and it would be good to take a nap

And also...

Wow, a nap in the sun would be so nice right now.

And also...

Gosh, the sun and sky are so beautiful today after all the rain.

And also...

It is good to be alive this day and to slow down to see the beauty before me.

What do you do to keep your heart open to possibility and connection?

Mourning

I recently gave a seminar on Compassionate Communication: Nurturing Ourselves, Healing Our World. We spent a good part of the day reflecting, practicing, and offering one another nurturance and healing through self empathy, and out of that, taking the time for celebration and mourning. One participant asked me to elaborate on mourning and later said that this was an important aspect of life that does not get enough of her attention. What do I mean by mourning?

There are many ways to mourn. In the context of nonviolent communication we can say that it is taking the time to get in touch with our feelings and needs, and to rest in that "energy" and spaciousness without trying to fix it or move onto requests of ourselves or others. In this space we give ourselves, we move from "should" and "blame language" to looking to the underlying needs. By connecting to needs we connect to the pulse of life coming through us, and this can be healing even in the face of unmet needs and tragic choices that arise out of trying to meet a need. We may regret our choices and actions, or those of others, but we hold fast to our longings and dreams that are informed by connecting to universal needs. Giving ourselves time and energy to think about what might seem uncomfortable, frees us to treasure these needs, without discounting them just because an unmet need can bring up disquieting emotions.

So when you pick up the newspaper and read disturbing news, open an email, have a conversation, or recall a painful memory, take time to breathe and find the need behind the emotion. Take a few seconds or longer to think about this, meditate, or journal and give yourself full permission to feel and to treasure what you are learning about yourself and the good life, for yourself and for the world's beings.

Desire: Distinguishing the Universal from the Particular

My spouse and cominister, Rev. Meredith Garmon, incorporated the theory and components of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) in a recent sermon he delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville on January 17, 2010. I was pleasantly surprised with the novel approach for the component “need” in NVC. His thinking relies on the difference between a universal desire and a particular desire. A universal desire is life seeking to flow in all humans. You desire something because it is how our species evolved and how we may flourish. In NVC language we often call this universal desire a “need.” A particular desire is the specific strategy you might employ to respond to the universal desire. The reason to say “desire” and not “need” helps us see how we can decrease the urgency for any of our strategies. This allows us to be more open to alternate strategies that might meet the desires of ourselves, others, and our communities.

Here’s how it works.

1. Think of something you’d really like to happen for you, or that you’d like to do. Perhaps it is something that you long for, or it’s absence causes you sorrow or stress. Maybe it is something that you think someone "should" be doing, or you "should" be doing.

2. See this as a particular desire, a kind of strategy for meeting a universal desire you share with the human species.

3. Now discover the universal desire behind the particular desire.

Example: Particular desire = Wanting your children to clean up their room or the house

Universal desires = order, beauty, support, ease

4. Next see how you might “let go” of the particular desire in that there are many ways to respond to the universal desire.

Example: You might think of making a game of cleaning so that the children are having fun (meeting their needs) or you might consider hiring a house cleaner, or sharing house cleaning with other families. Perhaps you take a different track all together, for order, beauty, support, and ease can be met in so many ways. You gain a sense of freedom in that your house doesn’t have to be clean right now or that your children have to do what you say. You also gain a connection to life because you are connecting to the validity and presence of universal desires in your life which connects you to all the earth and her beings.

5. Open yourself to let go of any urgency to meet the universal desire because the

freedom of choice offers you a chance to be fully live and powerful as you

embrace reality.

Example: Feeling connected to your own desires and perhaps that of your children, you are thinking of how important beauty is to you, and ease. Validating this gives you a sense of belonging in the world and of your interconnection and openness to others, even if they don’t do what you’d like them to do. One day you might come home and see how you don’t mind the house in disarray, and rejoice in the beauty in the people around you, and in yourself.

6. Celebrate or mourn the desire fulfilled or unfulfilled. The hope is to let go of

strategies, but to hold dear the life affirming desires.

May it be so!

Emotional Liberation

(Liberation in Holland, WW II)

I have been practicing and growing in nonviolent communication (Compassionate Communication ala NVC by Marshall Rosenberg) since 2003 and I continually am surprised (gratefully and pleasantly) with the depth of this construct to grow my heart and add richness to my life.

For instance, I recently pondered the idea of emotional liberation. Here’s how it works.

1. You are responsible for your own emotions and nobody else’s.

2. This freedom from being victim or judge allows you to fully connect with your needs and the needs of others.

3. The result is that you can live more fully, embracing choice and love with an ever opening heart.

I can think of numerous examples in my own life where I think I take responsibility for my own feelings, but deep down, I assign away the rights of my interior life to external stimuli. For instance I had a relationship with my mother growing up from which I have observed came much emotional bag gage. From a emotional free distance I knew of her struggles in parenting and in healing her own child-hood wounds. I thought I had moved from blame to acceptance in much of this. With my mother’s dementia in the mix I find that off and on I am triggered emotionally by her behaviors, which are unpredictable, and with words that are full of blame and anger towards me and others. Unbeknownst to me, I have been holding her responsible for my discomfort and this results in a distancing in our relationship. Spending time (meditation and journaling) knowing that I can choose how I feel I discover relief and a lightness of heart, that in turn opens up ways for me to relate to her with a caring heart for her and myself

Where in your life are you held hostage or hold others accountable for your feelings? Would taking charge of our own feelings liberate you in any way?

Wired for Empathy

The recent tragedy in Haiti confirms at least one thing in my mind. Humans are wired for non-empathetic responses to others. We go out of way to not witness the suffering, we deny, disbelieve, or rationalizethe stories, and send others in to address the human condition that we think must surely be someone’s fault.

In acute and massive events our empathetic channels open up, but over chronic situations that might even entail more individuals, our empathetic channels narrow. In times like this I wonder how we can keep empathy alive long enough so that the dire pre-earthquake circumstances in Haiti and similar countries and communities never happen.

Compassionate Communication gives us some tools to open our hearts and offer empathy so that we may strive for societal transformation in response to chronic oppression and not just respond with charity in catastrophic events.

Here’s one method that I use in my journaling and also my “time out” periods when I find myself responding to stimuli with expensive emotions that I’d rather not experience so I can instead use my energy on strategies to open myself and others to the full possibility of life.

I define empathy as recognizing my feelings and searching for what universal needs give rise to these feelings. Then I ask others, or guess, what they might be feeling based on needs met or unmet. Then I slow down, breathe, and take time to celebrate that I am connecting and open to life without judgment and open to whatever feelings come my way, and take time to mourn about the tragic consequences of disconnecting relational patterns in friends, families, and societies.

In the case of Haiti, I found my schedule rushed on those first initial days so I sat down for 30 minutes one morning and did the process described in the previous paragraph and then journaled about it. I discovered the possibility of doing this for a few minutes every day for those with whom I wish to connect (self, family members, friends, co-workers, people I know, people I’d like to know, people I regret knowing, and strangers near and far). My hope that is that I might I tap into enough empathy to endure the suffering of the world, and to grow in courage and strength to transform the suffering to global flourishing. This is my hope, this is my prayer, and may this be my practice.