Language of Compassion

Chip August: Welcome to “Sex, Love & Intimacy”, I am your host Chip August. Today’s show I’m talking to Kelly Bryson. Kelly’s quite an interesting guy, he’s a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in marriage family therapies. He’s a certified trainer for the Center for Nonviolent Communication. He’s the author a great book called “Don’t Be Nice, Be Real” and the subtitle is “Balancing Passion for Self With Compassion For Others” and he’s a contributor to a recent anthology I saw called “A Marriage of Sex and Spirit”. He’s really…all of that and a really interesting fellow and a nice guy. Hopefully, we’re going to be talking today about non-violent communication, sometimes called NVC, sometimes called Compassionate Communication. It’s a style of communication that I think…I’ve done some studies in and that a lot of people I know have done some work on and I think is sort of…in my mind is the technology for the 21st century on how to communicate without hurting, pushing away, being aggressive, being violent. It’s an extraordinary technique, so we’re going to be talking about NVC and Compassionate Communication. We’re also going to really take a look at ineffective and sometimes really tragic ways that people communicate and see if we can come up with some alternatives, and I’d like (I hope)  we’re going to talk a little bit about how to use this kind of communication in sex, in relationships, in all kinds of things that couples face. So, I’m looking forward to an interesting conversation with an interesting friend.
*BREAK*
Kelly Bryson: I think as one of the major difficulties, major problems you can say, couples have is that when they’re in pain, instead of asking for understanding, they tell the other person what’s wrong with them. What they did, what they should have done and they usually do so in terms that are exaggerative or imply blame, or imply wrongness in some way. I say just what they did, but I do so in observational language. I don’t say “You left a mess in the bathroom”, I say “You left your clothes on the floor.” So just that is a big shift. One element that non-violent communication helps us with a lot is to train us to begin thinking in these terms, is how to have empathy, how to have not just mental reflectings, know how to have impactive sensing. How to feel into what’s going on energetically with the other person. This, I’ve been told, is what makes great lovers. And of course that never makes anybody feel safe and open… “Oh NOW I’m…I’ve been in denial! That’s where I’ve been, let me come out. Now I want to make myself vulnerable and naked and trust you now that you’ve called me those names.”
Chip August: Well behind every inhuman deed is a human need. I love that.
Continue reading →

THE POWER OF A CONCRETE UTOPIA

Excerpt from the book: The Sacred Matrix by Dieter Duhm

If we want to overcome war, we need a concrete vision for peace. If we want to overcome the powerful global field of violence, we need a concrete vision for a powerful global field of peace. During the student revolution in the Sixties, we experienced how easily people are united to fight against something, yet at the same time find it difficult to live together. We were able to solve the problem of a police barricade, but we were unable to solve the problem of dishwashing in our communal households, the problem of hierarchy in our groups, and especially the problem of sexuality. Apart from the slogans for a life free from domination, we had no positive vision and no concrete utopia for a new lifestyle. Most struggles for liberation were fights against existing injustice and were not a fight for the realization of a clearly seen and realistic vision for peace and justice.

TAMERA’s* task is to develop a concrete utopia for a new type of human civilization and society and a new way of connecting our life with the beings of Nature and the powers of Creation. Such a concrete utopia contains a relatively precise image and a complex informational totality for a real culture of peace. The difference between utopia and illusion is that utopia is compatible with the inner blueprint and the possibilities of reality, i.e. of the universe. All beings carry a concrete utopia (a so-called “entelechy” and a sought-for inner gestalt) inside of them that guides their development. The power of concrete utopia is immense. It turns a seed into a full-size tree, a caterpillar into a butterfly, and an embryo into an adult. Individuals do not have this power on their own, but through their connection with the whole. Concrete utopia is the matrix or blueprint through which the power of the whole can flow into the individual and bring it into being. If a caterpillar wanted to become a butterfly on its own, it would have an impossible task. Concrete utopia is the power in life that takes all beings beyond their present limitations.

The action of concrete utopia follows a principle of power, which is far superior to all mechanistic principles. A tiny sprout of grass is capable of pushing through a layer of asphalt that is five centimeters thick. Again, it is not its own power that empowers it; it is its connection to the whole, which is immanent in its inner blueprint. The power struggle between the sprout of grass and the layer of asphalt is thus determined on a completely different level. In a comparable manner, the forces for peace could succeed against the external superiority of the powers of destruction.

If we are able to find a suitable concrete utopia for us and our cultural development, there is no doubt that a fundamental turn toward a future without violence is possible. This would give us the matrix or blueprint through which the power of Creation could enter our work. It is the only power stronger than war. The main idea behind TAMERA is to develop the concrete utopia that needs to emerge in the current entelechian development of history and to use the power of a utopia of peace to influence the struggles surrounding the major decisions of our time.

The inner “dream” of humanity is the still unfulfilled, but real vision of a global community of human beings and peoples, in solidarity with each other, linked together in mutual caring and love for all life on earth. What precisely does this dream mean for nutrition and production, the living together of the sexes, the political organization of new communities, global communication, and the collaboration between the beings of nature and the powers of Creation? What does this dream mean for our coexistence with wild animals, domestic animals, and snails in the garden? What precisely does it mean in relation to our daily life, our way of eating, working, loving, and praying? What kind of concentration of power and spirituality in our daily lives do we need, to be able to see and implement the concrete utopia immanent in us and in history? With these questions we are right on the threshold of the Archimedean fulcrum, where so many things are decided. There are no reasons to remain stuck in the constraints of the old life.

——-

* In this context, TAMERA (www.tamera.org) is a case study based on political framework which can be realized anywhere