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# 2019-10-03 - Being Genuine by Thomas D'Ansembourg
# Introduction
Violence is in fact a consequence of our lack of consciousness. Were
we more aware inside of what we are truly experiencing, we would find
it easier to find opportunities to express our strength without
committing aggression against each other.
# Chapter 1, Why We Are Alienated from Ourselves
Violence, expressed within or without, results from a lack of
vocabulary; it is the expression of a frustration that has no words
to express it. ... And there are good reasons for that; most of us
have not acquired a vocabulary for our inner life. We never learned
to describe accurately what we were feeling and what needs we had.
... we started to listen to the feelings and needs of everyone ...
To survive and fit in, we thought we had to be cut off from ourselves.
## The author's process to get in touch with ourselves
* Intellect (or observation)
* Feelings
* Needs (or values)
* The request (or concrete and negotiable action)
## 1. Intellect (or observation)
Four characteristics of the functioning of the mind that are often
the cause of the violence we do to ourselves and others:
* Judgments, labels, categories
* Prejudices, a prioris, rote beliefs, automatic reflexes
* Binary system or duality
* Language of diminished responsibility
Judgments, labels, categories
We judge others or situations as a function of the little we have
seen of them, and take the little we have seen for the whole.
Prejudices, a prioris, rote beliefs, automatic reflexes
We have learned to function out of habit, to automate thinking, to
presumptively have prejudices and a prioris, to live in a universe of
concepts and ideas, and to fabricate or propagate unverified beliefs.
We enclose ourselves and others in beliefs, habits, and concepts
[that reflect our fears].
Binary system or duality
... most of us have gotten into the habit of expressing things in
terms of black and white, positive and negative. [Reality is
infinitely more rich and colorful than our poor little categories.]
Language of diminished responsibility
We use a language that allows us not to feel responsible for what
we're experiencing or for what we are doing.
## 2. Feelings
Through this traditional way of functioning, which sets mental
processes at a premium, we are cut off from our feelings and
emotions...
It is useful to identify our feelings because they inform us about
ourselves and invite us to identify our needs. Feelings operate like
a flashing light on a dashboard, indicating that something is or is
not operating properly, and that a need is or is not being met.
Developing our vocabulary expands our ability to deal with what we
are experiencing.
Power of action is therefore tied to awareness and the ability to
name elements and differentiate among them.
## 3. Needs (or values)
Most of us nowadays are to a large extent cut off from our feelings,
and we are almost completely alienated from our needs.
Can we genuinely give proper listening attention to others without
genuinely giving ourselves proper listening?
If we cut ourselves off from our needs, there will be a price to
pay--by ourselves and others.
Some frequent ways we pay for this:
* Difficulty making choices that involve us personally.
* Addiction to the way others see us. Unable to identify our true
needs, we become dependent on the opinions of others.
* We put a lot of energy into being nice and meeting the needs of
others. So if one day, in spite of all that, we confusedly observe
that our [own] needs are not being met, then there is necessarily a
guilty party, someone who has not bothered about us. We then get
into the process of violence by aggression or projection
* We experience being subservient to the needs of others (or we
have feared not being able to have our own needs met) to such an
extent that we bossily impose our needs on others... We then get
into a process of violence through authority.
* We are exhausted at trying to get our needs met and forever
failing. Finally, we capitulate: "I give up! I give up on myself.
I close in on myself, or I run away." Here the violence is
directed against ourselves.
A key reason for us to be interested in identifying our needs is that
as long as we're unaware of our needs we don't know how to meet them.
If needs aren't followed by a concrete request in an identifiable
time and space, it often looks to the other person like a threat.
The other person wonders if he or she will have the capacity to
survive such an expectation and remain themselves, maintain their
identity, and not be swallowed up by the other person.
When I perceive listening to another's need as a threat, i cut myself
off from it and flee, or I take refuge in silence.
4. The Request (or concrete and negotiable action)
By making a practical request, we release ourselves from the often
intense expectation that another person should understand our need
and accept the "duty" or challenge of meeting it. Such an
expectation can last a long time and prove very challenging.
Making a request means we assume responsibility for the management of
our need and therefore assume responsibility for helping to meet it.
By seeing what underlies our request and identifying our need, we
give ourselves freedom. We escape from the fallacy that there is
only one solution.
By taking care of our true need instead of haggling over our request,
we give ourselves a space to meet, a space to create!
We often favor quick and dirty solutions. This is one of the
consequences of our education: seeking intellectually to solve
things--and solve things fast!--using our intelligence, our
performance capabilities, getting immediate results, moving as
quickly as possible from seeing the problem to solving it without
taking the time to listen to what is truly at stake.
Our misunderstandings are often mis-listenings, themselves resulting
from mis-expressions, ill-spokens, and unspokens. We are capable of
learning to speak with sensitivity, force, and truth.
# Chapter 2, Becoming Aware of What We Are Truly Experiencing
Those parts of ourselves that we fail to listen to ultimately have
ways of giving us vigorous reminders that they exist.
* In order to survive, it is a matter of urgency to clearly
distinguish between taking care of and taking responsibility for.
* The only sustainable way of taking proper care of anything, in my
view, is by deriving deep pleasure from it, feeling great
satisfaction for the other person at the accomplishments and steps
taken. If ever a part of us is acting out of duty, out of
sacrifice, because "I must"--and feels such things as obligation,
constraint, and guilt--this part eats up our energy and vitality
and sooner or later turns on itself by coming through in the form
of anger, rebellion, or depression.
Children are often hypersensitive about how a conversation starts.
They haven't yet acquired protective armor against the brusqueness of
adults' usual manner of conversation.
Starting the observation in a neutral way doesn't mean we're
repressing our feelings. It means we start the conversation in a way
that respects reality and the vision that the other person has of it
(which may be quite different from our own), and that enables us to
communicate to the other person the full force of our feeling without
judging or aggressing.
Differentiating the telling of facts from an interpretation of them
is common practice in police inquiries and court procedures. Before
looking at the facts in light of societal values as expressed through
laws, all of the parties concerned need first of all to agree on the
facts. The same applies to the armed forces.
Judgments are static; they deep-freeze reality. Judgments enclose
reality in a single aspect of its nature and stop it [our thought]
dead in its tracks.
There are two benefits from distinguishing true feelings from
feelings that constitute an interpretation:
* The freer our language is of any dependency on what another does
or doesn't do, the more we'll be able to become aware of our needs
and values, then take initiatives to make sure that they're honored.
* This distinction allows us to be better understood by others,
using words that generate the least possible discomfort, fear,
resistance, opposition, objection, argument, or flight. [This
makes our language easier to listen to.]
To people who are working with me, I often suggest that they say
their needs aloud. People have a tendency to view their need as
theoretical and bury it under critical thoughts, quickly repressing
it. Reformulating the need aloud is a gentle way to take the time to
check that it rings true with you.
In doing support work, which one can consider to be an attempt at
conflict resolution between the conscious and the subconscious, it is
this word [that truly speaks of yourself] that we seek together, not
for the word itself, of course, but for the awareness it releases.
Growing up, we got the confused and almost constant impression of
others' guilt and debt toward us rather than any enlightened sense of
individual responsibility.
In my amorous relationships, as soon as the notion of "couple"
threatened to materialize, I managed to sabotage the relationship,
"courageously" relinquishing the decision to the woman I was seeing.
Systematically, I would take neither the decision to go on and
commit, nor the decision to end the relationship and disengage.
I needed to be in a relationship with a person with sufficient inner
strength and self-esteem to be autonomous and responsible, who would
love me for who I am and not for what she might wish me to be and
whom I would love for who she is and not for who I might dream she
would be.
I did not want to spend the rest of my life responsible for meeting
another's needs for affection, security, or recognition, nor having
another to be there to make good my deficiencies. This space for
freedom, breathing, and trust was indispensable in order for me to be
able to commit.
These difficulties in our relationships could be summed up in one
question, which to a greater and greater extent seems to account for
a fundamental challenge of our human reality: How can I stay myself
while being with another; how can I be with another without ceasing
to be myself?
As I travel the path toward another, I cannot afford not to travel
the path toward myself.
In human relations we are dependent when we act out of fear or
lacking, losing, or being lost. We are free and responsible when we
act out of a taste for giving, contributing, or sharing. This begins
with the relationship to ourselves and presupposes a proper
understanding of our mutual needs.
A need is not a desire, wish, or momentary impulse.
It is the collaboration, the consultation, that makes it possible to
come up with all kinds of solutions.
The quality of listening and respect that comes from seeking such a
solution in a climate of compassion is such that the actual solution
becomes secondary to the relationship itself.
Think of something you can't do, then say to yourself something like
this: "I don't understand a thing about data processing..." Then ask
yourself how things are [feeling] inside.
Now simply add [the phrase] for now: "For now, I don't understand a
thing about data processing..." What [feeling] has become alive in
you now?
You see, we can choose between language and consciousness that either
enclose us or open us up to new possibilities.
Any use of [the word] "but" causes us to split in our awareness by
canceling out or diminishing the first proposition. Using [the
phrase] "and at the same time" puts both propositions into
perspective. Take any sentence you might tend to say, e.g. "I agree
with you because ... but ..." Replace the word "but" with "and at
the same time" and then look inside to see if you just might get a
different picture.
We can float through life amid ideas, ideals, and magnificent
concepts. If we do so, we might never encounter reality, never bring
ourselves fully into the here and now. I personally was quite stuck
in the Peter Pan complex, summarized as follows: "Reality through a
windowpane is all right, but I'm afraid of really getting into
reality, fear of failure, fear of imperfection, fear of shadows and
incompleteness. I will make choices later." Immersed in an
apparently conventional legal career, I pursued my dream that all was
possible. For a long time, I tried to keep all doors open in front
of me without going through any of them.
In my support work, I observe that the difficulty of moving into the
request or concrete action is strongly linked to the difficulty of
entitling oneself to exist and deciding on true practical action
independent of others' expectations and values.
A realistic request takes reality into account--such as it is and
not such as I fear it may be or such as I dream it may be.
Seek first the smallest thing we might do, and change will follow.
We do not like being prevented "from doing." We much prefer being
invited "to do." ... the subtle essence of the form of communication
I am proposing [is] avoiding [in] both our language and in our
consciousness whatever divides, compares, separates, hampers,
encloses, resists, sticks, embarrasses--and preferring language that
opens, conjugates, connects, allows, invites, stimulates, facilitates.
It is the negotiable nature of the request that creates the space for
connection. This is more or less how it happens: If we don't make a
request, it's as if we weren't allowing ourselves the right to exist.
We remain with a virtual, disembodied need. We aren't truly making
our place in the relationship. Furthermore, if we issue orders or
make requirements, it's as if the other person doesn't have the right
to exist either.
The ability to formulate a negotiable request--and thus to truly
create the space for a connection--is a direct function of our own
security and inner strength: in short, our confidence in ourselves.
# Chapter 3, Becoming Aware of What Others Are Truly Experiencing
Seldom do we listen truly. Rather, we politely wait for our turn to
take the floor while preparing our own little bit--at best focusing
only haphazardly on what the others are saying and at worst using
their comments essentially as a springboard for our own opinions.
Sadly, most of these "conversations" are little more than sequences
of monologues. There is precious little encounter, and that explains
why there are so few nourishing, stimulating, energizing
conversations. We don't talk true, nor do we listen true. We pass
each other by. We miss each other.
More and more, I'm of the belief that in this "passing by" lies the
basic emptiness from which most of us suffer so acutely. We're
missing out on the nurturing process that is born of true connection.
And we're missing out on the connection both to ourselves and others.
As long as we don't know what we're looking for, we try to fill the
void with all sorts of tricks.
By naming the need, on the one hand we shed light on our own clarity
and assume full responsibility for what we are experiencing; on the
other hand, we inform others of what is alive in us and, at the same
time, respect their freedom and their responsibility. We invite them
to take responsibility and not simply to obey. We invite them to get
connected to themselves while staying connected to us.
For me, this is the number-one property of communication: providing
meaning for what I do or what I want.
Sooner or later each of us will be called upon to review how we
define our life and our priorities--and deal with issues surrounding
meaning.
Communication means [both] expressing and listening. Expressing
oneself and allowing another to express also, listening to oneself,
listening to the other person, and often checking to make sure the
reciprocal listening is of good quality. Many relational
difficulties stem from the fact that we don't take the trouble to
ensure that we have properly heard another person and that the other
person has heard us correctly.
It took me a long time to realize that all of this energy "eaten up"
by fear was then no longer available to act, to create, to quite
simply be. Paralyzed to a greater or lesser extent by fear, I pretty
much stopped evolving and, consequently, I stopped being. [The
author was stuck in a rut of fear most of the time, having only
momentary flights of confidence and creativity.]
Examined separately, [my many little fears] looked benign, harmless,
coincidental. In a flash, though, with a breakthrough of
consciousness into the fog of the subconscious, through therapy, I
was able suddenly to see them as a single whole, like a teeming
entity, a web-like network. I appreciated in an instant the extent
to which they were neither coincidental nor occasional but
structural, i.e., representing the way I truly operated. At that
moment, I became aware that I was in danger of dying. Perhaps not
dying an immediate physical death, but in danger of psychic death
[being dead inside]. This awareness awakened my instinct for
survival; it was a matter of urgency to change. It was essential to
relinquish fear and swing over to trust.
This is one of the challenges of life: either staying in the
known--which weighs upon us or even tortures us, but which is
reassuring because it is known--or swinging over into the unknown,
which can be infinitely more joyful, infinitely richer, but it
involves a passage, a change.
Do I act out of the joy of loving or out of the fear of not being
loved?
It seems to me that very few people living as couples are truly in a
person-to-person relationship, a relationship of responsibility,
autonomy, and freedom where each party feels the strength and
confidence to say, "I am capable of living and finding joy without
you; you are capable of living and finding joy without me. We, you
and I, both have this strength and autonomy, and at the same time we
love being together because it's even more joyful to share, to
exchange, to be together. We don't strive to fill up the gaps, but
to exchange plenitude!" Sometimes this state of being is called
synergism--where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Without knowing it, we're sitting next to the only well that could
truly quench our thirst. It's called presence with self, presence
with others, presence with the world, presence with divinity.
What hurts does not necessarily harm... and often helps.
I would suggest not only being open to our emotional or psychic
suffering, as well as the suffering of someone else, but actually
welcome it as an opportunity for further growth. If we want to see
what this suffering means, it can be a chance to grow, to learn
something about oneself, about another, even about the meaning of our
life. In my experience, welcoming suffering always heralds [as long
as we accept "going in" in order to "get out!"] profound joy, both
renewed and unexpected.
Let me make something clear: If we can spare ourselves pain, so much
the better. Since at least a certain degree of emotional or psychic
suffering tends to be the lot of humanity, however, I suggest
experiencing it as an incentive to get to a new level of
consciousness, to change one's plane of existence.
Suffering produces cracks in the wall, opens a breach, or turns the
key of a secret door as I can gain access to a new space within
myself, a profound and unexpected space, a place where I will get a
better taste of ease and inner well-being, greater solidity, and more
inner security. From that place I will be able to look upon myself,
others, and the world with greater compassion and tenderness.
Empathy or compassion is presence directed to what I am experiencing
or to what another is experiencing. Empathy for self or empathy for
another means bringing our attention to what is being experienced at
the present moment. We connect to feelings and needs in four stages
of empathy:
## Stage 1: Doing nothing
Accept just being there. All human beings have the resources
necessary to heal, to awaken, and to know fulfillment. When we
perceive them in a balanced way, we will be able to listen fully to
ourselves and others without interrupting and reacting.
## Stage 2: Reflecting on another's feelings and needs
This is not a question of interpreting, but rather of paraphrasing in
order to attempt to gain awareness of feelings and needs. It is of
vital importance to realize that repeating or reformulating another's
needs doesn't mean approving them, agreeing with them, or even being
willing to meet them.
Reflecting feelings and needs is like throwing the other person a
lifeline. A response of this nature, on the one hand, is an
incentive for the other person to look inside, to go deep down and
ascertain an inner state. On the other hand, it demonstrates to the
other person compassionate listening, which is needed to become aware
of inner resources. It is, therefore, active listening. We are
present and are displaying our presence by accompanying the
individual in their exploration of their feelings and needs. The
listening will be all the more active since the other person will
tend to go back into their head, into a mental space, possibly
needing help to come back to their feelings and needs.
Judgments are tragic expressions of unmet needs.
Empathy literally means "staying glued" to another's feelings and
needs. It also means putting yourself in the other person's shoes.
This means, on the one hand, you invent nothing, no feeling or need,
and you attempt to get as close as possible to what the other is
feeling by putting their feelings and needs into words; on the other
hand, the other is urged to listen carefully and explore their
feelings and needs rather than going up into their head, their
intellect, into cultural, psychological, or philosophical
considerations. The other person guides us, shows us the way.
When we complain, we often tend to identify with what we don't want
or no longer want. Then we talk about that to someone who isn't able
to help us. This is a recipe for spending a hundred years of one's
life complaining, while changing nothing.
Empathy is the key to a quality relationship with both ourselves and
others. It is empathy that heals, relieves, nourishes.
## Stage 4: Noticing a release of tension, a physical relaxation in
## the other person
Our nonverbal language often shows when we're feeling understood,
joined. Waiting for this sign is invaluable in checking whether the
other person feels understood or is ready to listen to us.
When a person resists open communication and empathy persistently
enough, it can result in despair. This only confirms to that person
that they were right to keep the barriers up. It can help to clearly
express our frustration in NVC, but that may also be rejected. What
remains is silent empathy--empathy from the heart. This calls for
inner-empathy work so that one doesn't in turn get caught up (or
bogged down) in the spiral of aggression.
Our needs must be recognized more than be met. Often nothing in
particular needs to be "done." And just being there doesn't
necessarily take a long time.
# Chapter 4, Creating a Space to Connect
Human beings are like the wells; if they go down inside themselves,
they get connected to each other via the same water table. The same
water keeps all human beings alive. The same needs are their
lifelines.
As long as we remain on the surface, face to face, mask to mask,
there is every probability we'll maintain a language that separates
and divides. If we wish to go down into our well and accompany
another person in theirs, there is a great likelihood that we'll find
a language (water!) that unites us.
Each of us regularly gives ourselves body care. We tend to our hair,
our beards, our clothes, our homes, as well as the whole range of
machines and apparatuses that we use... We do maintenance on all of
these things for our own well-being and that of our families. And
all of the logistics are perfectly well-mastered and built into our
routines. That is true to such an extent that we can with no
difficulty postpone an appointment by claiming that the car is at the
garage or that the computer has broken down.
What's strange is that relationships, whether with ourselves or with
other people, are expected to operate unassisted, without any fuel,
with scarcely any maintenance! It's hardly surprising, therefore,
that they so often wear out, burn out, or break down. We don't take
care of them. We get more wrapped up with logistics than with
closeness, as if closeness were taken for granted.
# Chapter 5, Emotional Security And Meaning: Two Keys to Peace
Are we celebrating our consciousness--or constantly "keeping the
books" on good conscience and bad?
If another person is sad or unhappy, we tend to believe it's our
fault. Such accountability in reality is more like
accountancy--being a "bean counter" in relationships.
Listening means trusting in the ability of another to be, which
allows them to come up with their own solutions.
Caring means helping another person to live what they have to live.
It means not preventing them from doing so. It means not attempting
to get them to spare themselves from suffering a bump in their road
by minimizing it. It means helping another person to get inside
their difficulty, to penetrate their suffering so they'll be able to
get out of it, aware that this path is their path and that only they
can make themselves walk along it.
Caring means focusing our attention on a person's aptitude to heal
from some suffering to to solve some difficulty they're experiencing,
rather than providing a ready-made remedy. It means trusting that
the other person has all of the requisite resources to pull through,
if they can succeed in listening to themselves and being listened to
in the right place. This presupposes that we have acquired trust and
self-esteem. How can we trust in another's ability to be if we have
not gained confidence in ourselves about our own?
We don't learn to be loved as we are, but to be loved as others would
like us to be
True connections take place between beings, not between roles.
Connecting means, first of all, being.
If we wear a mask and the other person wears a mask, that isn't
called a relationship, it's called a masquerade ball! And that is
OK? If it is fun, and if both parties derive pleasure from the masks
and the games, we can rejoice. Unfortunately, experience has shown
that a regular diet of such balls (literal and figurative) eventually
becomes sad and distressing.
[Ben's note: Psychologically speaking, we all have many layers of
personas and this is a natural adaptation as social animals. We can
never completely remove all of our masks. We can never communicate
in a completely uncensored way, not even with our closest loved ones.
We can only shift in one direction or the other. For this reason i
resist the notion that it is so simple as throwing off masks at a
ball! "Those trapped at such a stage remain "blind to the world,
hopeless dreamers... spectral Cassandras dreaded for their
tactlessness, eternally misunderstood."
(TXT) Persona psychology, see section Absence
It is not safe to be completely honest. Those people lose
employment, friends, and liberty. They are locked up.
But we still have the freedom to be a little more honest than we are
now.]
By practice in easy situations we develop our muscle power to be able
to say no in more difficult instances. Succeeding in saying no, in
setting boundaries while respecting others, is all the easier as we
acquire both strength and flexibility in the way we live out needs
for self-confidence, inner security, recognition, identity. By
working on our own self-knowledge, we get better and better at
knowing what we are saying yes to.
This results in more ease in saying no in a constructive and creative
(and non-hurtful) way--or hearing someone else's no without taking it
personally. Rather than saying merely no in opposition, we shall
focus our attention and our energy on what we are saying yes to.
[A friend put it this way: There are many other possibilities and you
can probably find some where you would be willing to say yes. Where
is your yes?]
If we don't give ourselves measured, just appreciation, we run the
risk of spending much of our life desperately seeking
disproportionate appreciation from others.
When we address anger in NVC, we're working on our own sense of
responsibility on the one hand, and we're ensuring that the other
person is listening to us on the other. To do so, we connect with
ourselves and stop being "beside ourselves"!
* The first step, therefore, is to keep our mouths closed, to shut
up rather than blow up, not in order to repress our anger, to push
it down, or to sublimate it, but precisely to give it its full
authentic voice. We know that if we explode in another's face,
instead of having someone in front of us who's listening to us and
attempting to understand our frustration, we'll get a rebel
plotting a rebellion, a victim preparing an assault, or an escape
artist who has already flown the coop! Yet, what is our need if we
are angry? In short, that the other person hear us, understand the
extent of our frustration and our unmet needs. To be sure, in
order for us to be listened to well, we know we must have first of
all to listen to ourselves.
* The second stage in dealing with our anger takes place within:
receiving the full impact of our anger, accepting the intensity of
it in Technicolor and without compromise. I observe that for many
of us (and I've experienced this myself) there is such a stigma
around anger that it's even difficult to imagine our being angry.
We'll say we're sad, disappointed, or preoccupied--socially and
"politically" correct feelings--rather than allow ourselves to have
real awareness of the anger in us. This second stage is therefore
fundamental to me: recognizing that we are angry, even enraged, and
mentally noting all the visions and fantasies that come to our
minds, recognizing the violent images that surge up... This inner
acknowledgment of these images of violence has the effect of the
pile of plates that people sometimes hurl to the floor--or the
chair they smash to smithereens against the wall. Such overt
actions provide relief and a safety valve for the excess energy
that anger brings about that prevents us from listening to
ourselves. Only after regaining some calmness, after the emotional
catharsis these visions and projections evoked, will we be able to
attempt the descent into our well.
* The third stage consists of identifying the unmet need(s).
* The fourth stage consists of identifying the new feelings that
may then surface. Anger can mask other feelings. Once it diffuses
these more precise feelings will, in their turn, inform us about
our needs.
* Finally we're ready for the fifth stage: opening our mouths,
speaking our anger to the other person. Now because we've done
some inner work, we have a much greater chance of being heard by
them. Sometimes, it's pretty hard to get into the inner listening
quickly while you're still with the other person. It might be wise
to say, "I'm too angry to listen and speak to you now in any
satisfactory way. I first of all need to get in touch with my
anger and understand it better. I'll talk to you later. Can you
give me thirty minutes?" ... there's nothing to prevent you from
"taking a timeout"
More joy is derived from attempting to resolve our conflicts than
from "succeeding" in escalating them.
# Chapter 6, Sharing Information and Our Values
We are familiar with constraints, a synonym of sorts for security.
Why do we hold back? Is it not because freedom generates in many of
us greater fear than does security?
If we had greater awareness of our needs, we would see more clearly
that we choose our priorities--and that the use of our time reflects
that in a very obvious way.
To respect rules we have to understand them.
We're all dangerous if our vitality has no opportunity to express
itself, if our ill-being has no opportunity to be shared, explored,
and understood. Violence is a bomb of thwarted dreams exploding.
# Chapter 7, Method
... when participants at a training session insist on having advice
as to a method of regular practice, I suggest the following:
Three minutes, three times a day! Three minutes listening to
yourself without judging, without blaming, without advising, without
trying to find a solution. Three presence-filled minutes for you,
not for your plans or concerns. Three minutes to take stock of your
inner state without trying to change anything. Three minutes to
connect with yourself, check that you are truly present to yourself,
and that to the question, "Is there someone home?" you can truly
answer with all your being, "Yes, I am there." Do this three times a
day! It is out of this quality of presence to yourself that may well
be born a quality of presence to others.
This method is an invitation, with a wink, to awaken to the fact that
it generally isn't helpful to set for oneself change objectives that
are so huge that they entail the risk of never getting to first base.
When we listen to ourselves in this way, we can little by little get
a sense of direction, of mission and, free from any notion of quick
fixes or instant results, focus our attention and our consciousness
on the lift emerging within us: Where is the life force in me, what
is it saying to me, what needs are being met, what needs are not
being met? Once the needs have truly shaken out and priorities
clarified, solutions can begin to be perceived.
Be aware of gratitude and express it ... for all the needs that have
been met. Be grateful--even with everything collapsing around
us--for being able to take the next breath, to have hands to feel, to
have eyes to see.
Once we sense the nourishment produced by everything that is going
right, we find the strength to take on some things that are going
wrong. This is a principle of inner ecology.
A few questions to ponder, Do we need to:
* Wait to lose our nearest and dearest in order to express our love?
* Wait to be hospitalized to celebrate the joy of being in good
health?
* Be alone in order to appreciate company?
* Wait until things "all go wrong" in order to become aware of what
was going right?
If we aren't watchful, our consciousness can get filled up with all
sorts of bad news, to such an extent that there is little room to
take in the good news.
# Epilogue, Cultivating Peace
I increasingly believe that violence is not the expression of our
true nature.
[Ben's note: we will have to agree to disagree. One has only to
observe other animals in nature to see that violence is natural.]
Violence and noncommunication constitute not one major problem but
rather seven billion small problems. As our numbers grow, we are
invited to take seriously our responsibilities regarding our
day-to-day behavior--and to take care of keeping a healthy
consciousness.
I believe that each one of us, with our human dignity, receives our
share of the responsibility. I hope--this is the dream alive in
me--that more and more men and women will become aware and joyfully
recognize this responsibility and assume it in their daily lives,
happy to contribute in this way, wherever they are, with whatever
means they have, to the welfare of the global family of humanity.
author: D'Ansembourg, Thomas
ISBN: 1-8920-0521-2
(HTM) detail: https://www.thomasdansembourg.com/
tags: book,non-fiction,self-help
title: Being Genuine
# Tags
(DIR) book
(DIR) non-fiction
(DIR) self-help