NVC

NVC is a way of creating clear boundaries between self and other. “This is the way I perceive the situation, and this is how you perceive it”—which determines how we are affected by it. But people deeply want to share reality, want to be in union by agreeing completely on what they see, so their experiences are merged and they are not alone. But from the existential point of view, we are alone, because we can never be fully seen by or fully see another person. Our experience of ourselves will always be a little bit different from their experience of us, and vice versa. And even if one person experiences profound connection with another being, that being may not experience the same thing. Such is true with our experience of the rest of reality as well—like the metaphor of the blind men touching different parts of the elephant and arguing about what they are all encountering, since they each focus on a different facet from their own perspective.

Having such clear boundaries and being disillusioned by the knowledge that my experience not entirely consciously shared by the person I am with can be very painful. And yet ironically it is the ground-space for genuine human connection and love. It is a place where both people are being completely true to themselves, and the experience of separation creates intimacy that is so intense. So really, NVC is about creating honest human intimacy, which everyone is desperate for in their heart.

                I connected with the quote from J. Krishnamurti that “observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence” (p. 28). To me, this is the point of some forms of meditation—allowing someone to see clearly by releasing his/her lenses for what is positive, negative and neutral—simply experiencing without bias. Though I completely agree with this position, the counterargument that often arises for me is a question of how action can flow without evaluation. Evaluation appears to have the place of directing our actions. Would I move toward a woman I am attracted to if I did not have the evaluation that she was a positive experience that I wanted more of? Would I ever act to end an injustice if I didn’t feel that it was a negative thing? How would I make any choices at all if I didn’t want something over something else? I believe there is a way of skillful action that goes beyond what I want or don’t want, and is perhaps evaluated with the lens of “what is to be done here?” or evaluated from a more interpersonal, communal, cultural, global, or cosmic level of self: “what is in the interest of both of us, the whole community, all of humanity, Gaia, cosmic existence?”