Welcome.
I wanted to share a few words about how I see non-violent communication in conjunction with non-duality.
And if I'm really honest,
Ultimately for me I find it very difficult to talk about the depth of NVC or non-violent communication without actually linking it to divinity.
Now I believe that Marshall B.
Rosenberg,
The originator,
Creator of NVC,
Was in fact also coming from this paradigm of divinity or religion.
And not in the sense of,
At least as my estimation,
Not in the sense of institutional religion,
But more a felt personal spirituality.
And so this is what I wanted to say specifically about the concept and experience of needs.
If I am connected to my needs,
It is a way of knowing myself.
And so action that springs forth from connection with my needs,
I am present in my actions because they are infused with my intentionality.
If I am not connected with myself and don't know the needs that I want to meet,
Or the kinds of ways I want to experience myself in any given situation,
I am slightly,
At least slightly,
Alienated from what my soul wants to experience.
And there's a nuance between the quality of experience I long for and the strategies I employ to manifest those qualities.
So I want to have this intentional focus on the kind of life I want to live,
With the kinds of needs I want to meet,
And I want to let go of the outcome.
I want to hold my strategies lightly.
I want to stay self-connected and mourn and celebrate when my needs are not met or met.
And the beautiful and interesting thing is,
From my own experience,
When I am truly connected to my needs that are important to me in any given situation,
I am knowing myself.
I am present.
I am not restless or jittery or craving something from the outside world because I already know what experience I want to have.
I already taste the quality of the needs that I'm trying to meet.
And so it really serves as a compass.
Perhaps it's no coincidence that the word for compass and for compassion have a similar etymology,
And it's somehow both connected to the heart,
At least in this sense.
When I am connected to my need for dignity,
For example,
Then strategies somehow magically become visible to me.
It's like I'm inserting the cartridge of the need and out flows a map in front of me.
And this is more on an intuitive level,
But it is that sense of direction,
A direction that comes from within me,
Pulling me forward,
Giving clarity.
And because I am connected to my needs,
I am so longing to experience dignity that my experience from that longing is already colored a little bit with that taste.
And so,
To quote Rupert Spira,
Our longing for God is God's love for us.
It is the pull of our being,
Inviting us to return from the adventure of experience to the sanctuary of the heart,
To return home.
Or,
As Bernadette Roberts has so beautifully said,
For that in us which knows God is God.
And so,
When I am aware of my needs,
I can then make requests from those needs,
And I can express the experience I had with an ex I have,
I had.
So,
I'll tell a little anecdote.
I had an experience with a former partner.
I've shared this experience many times before,
But here I'm going doing it again,
Because it's so telling.
It was like this.
We were standing in my kitchen in Amsterdam at the time,
And she was speaking in a volume that was very unpleasant for me,
Very close to my face.
And what she was talking about was kind of complaining about something.
So,
My experience was that it was a very unpleasant conversation.
It was quite loud,
It was in my face,
And it was,
You know,
Complaining,
And I found it very uncomfortable.
Now,
This was actually before I had done any NVC.
I didn't even know about non-violent communication.
But in that moment,
Somehow,
I had some moment of clarity,
And I did the perfect NVC thing.
So,
I just noticed that I was feeling very uncomfortable with her volume,
And with the kind of speech she was busying,
And in conjunction with that,
How close she was to my face.
And I simply said something like that.
I said something like,
Hey,
I'm noticing I'm finding it a little bit loud how you're speaking.
Would you be willing to lower your voice a little bit,
Because I find it a bit uncomfortable.
And it was really with that completely blameless,
Just calmly,
Respectfully,
Plainly assertive,
Just expressing my experience.
That's all.
I just expressed my experience without blame,
Without judgment.
And because I was so clear,
And I was so connected to my obvious need for ease,
Calm,
Quietude,
I was so clear about those qualities I wanted to live that these qualities were kind of already present in me.
And this is what I want to speak about.
It's just such a shift in energy,
If I come from a clear connection to my needs,
As opposed to if I'm craving my needs being met by other people from the outside,
Without any clarity as to what I'm truly wanting.
You know,
Because if I don't know what I want,
And I'm kind of just lost and triggered,
I'm much more likely to lash out,
To blame,
To judge.
And of course,
Tragically,
That probably won't meet my needs.
That's why Marshall Rosenberg said something along the lines of every judgment,
Criticism,
Expression of anger,
Blame,
Etc.
Is a tragic expression of a beautiful need.
Beyond strategies,
Why do I want what I want?
That is the question that leads us to our needs.
And the way I feel myself inside my body with the self-connection of awareness of my needs is pleasant,
It's non-judgmental,
I feel no need to blame.
I just have the calm clarity to manifest the life I want to live.
And from that calm clarity,
People are somehow automatically attracted.
And there's just this,
Truly this both and inclusive interpersonal connection.
And what I mean with that is this attractiveness.
I think that presence attracts presence.
You know,
When I said this request to my partner at the time,
She immediately snapped out of it.
You know,
She was clearly kind of in some kind of mental bubble where she was sort of needing to express in this certain way.
I think you kind of can picture it.
But because I came from more or less pure presence,
Her own inner presence was kind of activated because it recognizes presence.
Presence recognizes presence.
And we had a wonderful time.
She really,
The mood shifted in less than a millisecond.
Again,
It's like presence attracts presence.
And you hear this also about people,
And I'm really not saying this about myself,
But more as kind of a comparison because I think it is something true in reality.
That's why I'm saying this.
You hear this about people with a very high degree of enlightenment,
And it just touches people.
The very presence of those human beings,
Because they're so deeply rooted in reality,
People are,
They feel it.
They snap out of their own delusions and distortions and warpings of reality.
Think about Sri Ramana Maharshi,
Nisargadatta Maharaj.
I'm pretty sure that Jesus in his days and all the other prophets from all the other religions had that same,
It's more than charisma,
It's real energy.
It's just this magnetic energy.
Presence attracts and recognizes presence.
And if my magnetic frequency is strongly resonating in my heart,
People feel it because we are not separated.
We are not separated.
That's why we can feel it.
So this is what I wanted to share about what it means to be connected with our needs.
That our connection to our needs already kind of maps out the world in front of us.
Almost like this,
If you can imagine this kind of virtual reality or augmented reality kind of map,
But it's not exactly visual,
It's more intuitive.
And that people feel that,
Because if I am present,
Your presence will recognize that.
And to me somehow it relates deeply to non-dual awareness,
The deep nature,
The ground of being,
What we might call God.
And I don't care if you call it other words,
But those are just the words that that seem to come up for me.
So this is my offering.
I hope it's to some inspiration for you.
And I really hope it's to your benefit.
Thanks for listening.
