Ram: Dear Cindy, thanks for looking after me recently. I had a great time. I hope that when you feel like coming to America you will stay with me. I have a new flat and can put you up. What do I think about this non-violent communication practice that is becoming popular these days? Well, as you know I have something to say about just about everything, so here goes.
I think there is a good intent behind it, but I believe that it really doesn’t get down to the fundamental issue. Perhaps the word “non-violent” hides the real issue. Instead of saying one is practicing non-violent communication, wouldn’t it be better to say one was practicing love? When someone says they are learning non-violent communication, isn’t the subtext “I communicate violently”?
My question is, how can you practice who you are? How can you learn and practice love? It is either known to you or it is not. You either have it or you don’t. If you see that you are love, each and every word and deed is soaked in love. You may have noticed that I experience virtually no resistance in human encounters; my life slides along as if on greased wheels. In fact many opportunities that are not available to guarded people come to me for one reason: there is love behind my words. I don’t try to be loving. I just know that love is my nature and that it is always there to be experienced by others.
If you don’t examine this fundamental issue, if you just take yourself as a non-loving being to begin with as if you were born this way or conditioned this way by unloving parents, then whatever you practice will not bear fruit – because no practice can change your fundamental self. You will try to practice love because you think you are not love. When you sent that first gift to Sally, you felt bad. It was an unexceptional gift and you did not value it, so you felt that you could let it go. The reason you felt bad was because the statement you were making was not loving. It was a polite attempt to be loving, but the real feeling of love was absent. Later you realized it and you were not happy with yourself. How could you be? It was not “you” who sent it. So you sent another gift, something exceptional, and you sent it with love. It is interesting to note that Sally did not react when she received the first gift. She didn’t think anything good or anything bad. She just set it on the counter and that was that. But when the second one came she lit up like a light bulb. She loved it. She danced around and she said that she had been thinking about just such a thing for several days and here it was – she was amazed at how the universe manifested her thought. And immediately she said she was going to get you something nice too. This is because the communication was loving. And significantly, she gave it pride of place on her altar. Why was the communication loving? Not because you neutralized your first karma with the second, but because the real you sent it.
When you set out to change your ego, you are always in a bind because the changes you make, being based on an incorrect self-understanding, merely serve to reinforce that self-understanding (i.e. misunderstanding). So you never get out of it. You always feel that you are not good enough, loving enough, etc. You are esteeming the wrong self.
~ Love to you, Ram
