The purpose of nonviolent communication is to help you to do what you already know how to do, to connect in a way that makes natural giving possible.
You all know that giving. You know how to do it by remembering to stay with that quality of giving moment by moment in any connection. But we also all know that it’s easy to lose it. It’s easy to lose that connection. So that instead of enjoying that quality of giving, which is possible every moment in every contact we have – in spite of how precious that is, we forget.
And instead of playing the game which I call, “Making Life Wonderful,” much of the time we play another game called “Who’s right?” Have you ever played that game? It’s a game where everybody loses. Isn’t this amazing? We all know about this quality of giving. Its possible every moment. We find that the richest thing to do, and much of our life we end up playing “Who’s Right?”
Now the game of, “Who’s right” involves two of the most devious things human beings have ever come upon. One punishment. See, because if you’re wrong in the game of “Who’s right?”, then you deserve to suffer. No more punishment. You won’t do it in your families. We’ll get rid of it with criminals. It just makes things more violent. We’ll find other ways to deal with other nations besides punishment. No more punishment.
No more reward. It’s the same game. It’s part of the game of “Who’s Right? If you’re right, then you get rewarded. If you’re wrong, you get punished. No more. No more. It’s created enough violence on the planet.
We’ve been educated for quite a while to make violence enjoyable. And educated in a way we can even be violent to our children? Watch a parent try to bring about change in the child.
“Say you’re sorry!”
“I’m sorry”
“You’re not really sorry. I can see it.”
“I’m sorrrrrrrry!”
“Ok, I forgive you.”
Can you imagine a game like that? Can you imagine a parent responding to a child that way? And if a parent is going to do that to a child in their own family, what are they going to do to people from other cultures who behave in a way they don’t appreciate?
So of course you are going to have violence wherever you have this kind of thinking – learning how to go up to our head in think in terms of who is right, wrong, good and bad, normal, abnormal. In cultures that do not have this thinking, you do not see violence.
You see, natural giving, anything we do in life that isn’t coming out of that energy, we pay for it and everybody else pays for it. Anything we do out of fear of punishment if we don’t, everybody pays for it. Anything we do for a reward, everybody pays for it. Everything we do to make people like us, everybody pays for it. Everything we do out of guilt, shame, duty, obligation, everybody pays for it.
That isn’t what we were designed for. We were designed to enjoy giving – to give from the heart.
