Living Nonviolent Communication

The kind of spirituality I value is one in which you get great joy out of contributing to life, not just sitting and meditating, although meditation is certainly valuable. But, from the meditation, from the resulting consciousness, I would like to see people in action, creating the world they want to live in.

We have a need for information, and so we make a request for feedback from the person whose life we are trying to enrich. We want to know, “Is my intention being fulfilled by my action? Was my attempt to contribute successful?”
In our culture, that request gets distorted into our thinking that we have a need for the other person to love us for what we’ve done, to appreciate what we’ve done, to approve of us for what we’ve done. And that distorts and screws up the beauty of the whole process. It wasn’t the other person’s approval that we needed. Our very intent was to use our energy to enrich life. But we need the feedback.

The cause of our feelings is our needs, not other people’s behavior.

if we’re connected with the Divine in others and ourselves, we are going to enjoy what happens, and that’s the spiritual basis. In this place, violence is impossible

Almost all the religions and mythologies I’ve studied say a very similar message, one that Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, summarizes in some of his work: don’t do anything that isn’t play. And what they mean by play is willingly contributing to life. So don’t do anything to avoid punishment, don’t do anything for rewards, don’t do anything out of guilt, shame, and the vicious concepts of duty and obligation. What you do will be play when you can see how it enriches life.

Some people may choose a new car as a strategy for meeting a need for reliability or peace of mind, but you’ve got to watch out, because society can trick you into thinking it’s the new car that you really need.

What they don’t realize is that all human beings, when they’re in pain, need presence and empathy. We may want advice, but we want that after we’ve received the empathic connection.

Violence begets violence.

How I choose to look at that situation will greatly affect whether I have the power to change it or make matters worse.

Again, the first step to get into our consciousness is realizing that what other people do is never the cause of how we feel. What is the cause of how we feel? It’s my belief that how we feel is a result of how we interpret the behavior of others at any given moment.