The wonder of my needs

I had a most amazing realization an hour or so ago and just need to share it with somebody. And since I am the only one awake in the house at the moment and nobody seems to be available on Skype, here I go.

I have just attended a telecourse with Robert Gonzales, another Nonviolent Communication teacher. My first astonishment was about how amazingly effective and even mind blowing can a two-hour telecourse with around 50 people from all over the world actually be. Yet a much deeper realization was in regards to the content itself. I hope I will be able to make this short account understandable also to those not too familiar with the NVC terminology (however, if you are interested you may want to have a look at the three short films of Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the NVC, explaining the very basics of it).

Anyway, nonviolent communication has a lot to do with getting in touch with our unmet needs and expressing them in a clear enough way so that the other person can receive it. In my everyday perception of my unmet needs the very awareness of them is normally accompanied by a certain amount of frustration and even anger. I do get in touch with my unmet need for acceptance and understanding, in an event of a recent conflict with my wife for instance, however I also feel frustration because this need is being unmet and a stubborn tendency within myself to persuade the other person to meet it. Therefore I seem to be circling in endless circles. With every new need that I am able to become aware of and to express it, another one pops up.

So tonight, while doing various exercises on this telecourse and going again and again over a specific event from couple of days ago, Robert Gonzales encouraged us to really sink into our needs, explore them and get in deep touch with them, get in tune with them rather than just simply become aware of them and tick them off: “Yeah yeah, this is my need for acceptance and there sits my need for understanding…” And when, through a series of exercises, I really got in tune with my need (in my case it was primarily the need for acceptance), several amazing things happened.

The first one was that I, completely experiencing my need for acceptance, slowly became very peaceful, content and fulfilled. All the restlessness, frustration and anger disappeared on a rather deep level. Not only this, I started to feel so much more alive. As if this need of mine suddenly ceased to be a deficiency and a inner contraction, but rather my connection with life, aliveness in me. Beautiful!

The next amazing thing that happened was that my urge to get this need of mine across, to communicate it to other person and to somehow persuade this person to do something about it (or at least start feeling guilty for not doing anything about it, ha ha), well, this urge of mine disappeared. I did not need anybody to do anything about it anymore and I was not angry at anybody anymore.

The last and perhaps the most miraculous thing for me was to notice that empathy spontaneously yet unmistakably started to grow in me, an empathy toward that person who was not giving me acceptance in the first place! What a shift in my mind. Yet completely natural.

It sounds too easy to be true, but right now it seems to me that 50 % of my difficulties in relationships would be long gone had I learned to focus on experiencing my needs rather than on the issue of whether my needs were being met by other people or not, subtly demanding them to meet them.

Hey folks, life keeps surprising me big time.

The terrifying lightness of denial

The other day my mother stopped by for a coffee and so me and Marjeta chatted with her for half an hour about this and that, a regular small talk. Then the topic about the events in Kenya emerged and we exchanged a few rather typical phrases about it: “Yeah, terrible, I mean, what people do to each other, really horrible and painful, yeah, well, yeah…” Took a couple of deep breathes and than followed the conversation to other topics, like weather, prices going up in supermarkets etc.

After a couple of hours, the realization caught up with me. It was so terribly easy. To just hide myself behind the justification: “Well, yeah, life is like this, what can you do…” and turn away. And continue living my cute little immaculate life, hidden in this sweet place… As long as nobody hurts me or my kids or my wife, I hear no evil and see no evil. Disgusting!

I do not see my relation to all the immense amount of suffering of individuals around the planet in terms of responsibility and guilt. This is quite debatable, I know, and I do not really care, to be frank. Is it my responsibility or not, what is my responsibility… Blah blah blah.

I can only relate to two things right now: what is alive in me NOW and what kind of person do I want to be.

What is alive in me now is a strong feeling that it is not right. It definitely does not feel right to deny it all. It does not make me feel more fulfilled and peaceful and happy, when I turn my gaze away. It does not meet my need for a meaningful life AT ALL!

And what kind of person do I want to be? How do I want to live through my existence? I definitely do not want to be a person who hides, ignores and does not care about other people’s pain and suffering. And I do want to be able to say something when my kids, in say 15 years, ask me: “Now, you smart-ass, have you ever done anything worthwhile in this regard?”

” PULITZER PRIZE ” winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine.
The picture depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.
The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.
Three months later he committed suicide due to depression.

Freedom from and freedom to

Last year was a somewhat weird one. On the outside things were seemingly progressing perfectly, but I was struggling on the inside. Not really in a heavy-duty manner, but I was facing certain void that I have briefly described in my personal history.

As Fromm has beautifully explained in his book The Fear of Freedom, there seem to be two types of freedom that we individuals struggle with and try to obtain; namely the freedom from (external or inner pressures) and the freedom to (do, create, move, be…). I guess a large portion of my life was about attempting to finally become free from – mainly personal and cultural patterns of thinking, neurotic feelings etc. In the course of all those years I somehow got used to live with these inner companions and felt quite comfortable and natural not feeling free from…

In the last few years this has shifted and I have started to not only feel free from, but also to feel free to. Now, the problem was that I did not really know what to use this new freedom for, so to say. What did I want – besides all that I already had? About 20 years ago a palm-reader somewhere in South India assured me (and so this must be 100 % certain) that I would live 80 years. Sharp! So last year I was a bit horrified about the fact that there were still roughly 38 years ahead of me – of being free to not know what to do and why to do it.

So I guess I was making everybody around me rather depressive last year, talking about this lack of motivation and meaning etc. I have noticed that friends actually ceased asking me how I was. However, in August things started to unfold and I feel in a completely different shape nowadays.

I have attended an International Intensive Training in Switzerland, lead by Marshall Rosenberg and the Centre for Nonviolent Communication. I guess if I haven’t had 12 years of experience of practicing psychotherapy, this could have been just another communication training, an excellent one of course, but I doubt it would have sparked inside of me what it actually did. Somehow things came together – what I have experienced as a psychotherapist as being the eternal and always present core of all our psychological and relational problems, namely our inability to realize and express our true inner feelings and needs to each other, proved to be the very core of Marshall Rosenberg method of Nonviolent Communication. If you are not familiar with the NVC approach, I am very much inviting you to have look at a short film (in three parts) of Marshall describing it and to therefore hear some of it from the source.

It took me couple of months to realize what actually happened there. At first I was completely overwhelmed with all the beautiful people I have met there and all the great things I have realized about communication and about my life and about, you know, everything… And than, just a month or two ago, I started to realize the depth of it, the dimension of the breakthrough. Many things got together and the void was just not there anymore. The meaning was coming back and now I feel if I can devote my energy to teach people to speak this language, the true language of heart, if I can mediate and use that language to help people relate in a more pristine way, get together, commune…, well than I am back on the track again. On the track of my life.

And, after 38 years, while entering the tunnel and looking back, I will feel content.

Friendship on an island

I am still enjoying tranquillity of the surrounding and the aloneness – I haven’t felt so much rested and relaxed for ages. Tomorrow I will go back home – if the wind is not too strong and so ferries will operate.

Yesterday an old and very dear friend Nado came to visit me at the camp. He leaves about 60 km away, in an old coastal town Zadar and is a professional musician, guitarist. On top of that he also manufactures most exquisite hand-made hard-wood electric guitars and electric basses one can imagine. Thought electric instruments, his guitars preserve the rich sound of the acoustic instruments – it is probably the wood he uses, but I believe it is definitely also the love he infuses into his pieces of art. Check it out.

Spending a couple of hours with him in an honest and easy conversation, about life, relationships and midlife crises, of course, filled me not only with a lot of warmth in my hearth, but also with a lot of thoughts about the friendship.

Nado and I have met 20 years ago in the military service – we were both sent to the same army unit in Montenegro. It was not the easiest time of our lives; however we became friends instantly and supported each other until the end of our terms. We even played together in the army rock and folk band.

We keep meeting each other every few years here and there, remaining open and supportive. I believe these are two crucial factors that transform a relationship between two individuals to what can be called a true friendship. Openness and mutual support.

I have once heard or read someplace that the proof of friendship is not that you are on-line non-stop with certain person, but that you remain open to that person even for decades if you do not see each other – and when you sit down again after all that time, the openness is there instantly, you just continue from the point where you have had paused, right on, no need for small talk, no need to introduce and test each other.

And the issue of the mutual support; I guess this is the feeling when I know I can ask for support whenever I need it and the other person will immediately respond, no question asked and without a moment of hesitation. To me it does not mean that I will be using this potential of friendship all the time – in certain friendship I actually never used it so far, I think – but just the feeling that this quality of the contact is present, makes the difference.

Just now, writing this I realized that I actually have a lot of friends like this around the world. Just knowing this feels me up with easiness, warmth

Grieving on an island

I decided to take one week off, completely off. I have given 80 workshops this year, from one to three days long and numerous talks, coaching sessions, facilitations on top of that. And I feel immensely exhausted from being in an intensive interaction with people all the time, and especially from being exposed in front of audiences continually. I just had to run away for some time, to simply be alone, not interacting. Luckily enough Marjeta fully understands my position and supports this need of mine. And kids are OK with it too. Although this is not the best way to spend the Christmas time.

So here I am, with our dear good old reliable van, that has taken us to such wonderful places that we already consider it/him to be a part of our family, in a deserted camping on the island Pag in the Adriatic sea. I wanted to do a lot of cycling in order to get my blood going and my knees back in the correct position, however since it is raining most of the time or the wind is just too heavy and too cold, not much cycling has taken place since my arrival here. But I do enjoy reading, writing, gazing at the horizon, watching a DVD a day, meditating a bit…

Reading an excellent Jack Kornfield’s book “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry” (I love the title), about what is life like after the spiritual ecstasy and awakening, brings out a lot of memories, all linked to the period of my life when I was spending years with a group of people in a semi-community, devoting all I was able to personal exploration and growth. And I realize that a deep part of me is grieving over that time and that community.

To me that community was the first true family, a group of people I felt completely safe with. We had so much in common and shared that eagerly. We were trying to reach the Truth, as we have called it, enlightenment, the meaning of life, liberation… In practical terms it meant countless days of meditating and sitting together, opening up to ourselves, to others, to life, letting out what had been hidden for so long; pain, fears, shame, anger, unmet needs, love…, and sharing it with tearful eyes and joyful laughter, and than mutually accepting it, with love and patience. An utterly new world was opening up in front of us and we were, like kids, exploring it together, cautiously, yet excitedly.

When I remember those days my heart warms up, however I also feel sad. Sad because it was such a wonderful time and the beauty of it did not survive in the real life. And I am grieving over beautiful people I have lost contact with, over that community sense, over standing with others with our souls stripped naked, crying together, breathing deeply.

And I guess this feeling of community of people sharing the innermost parts is something I am still after. Wherever I sense the single trace of a possibility of something like this I immediately respond, trying to re-create something like that. But it never truly works. The magic does not repeat. Perhaps I have changed in the meantime, perhaps the world has.