Michael H. Cohen - Om Dattatreya, Journey to the West

Do I Have You To Blame?

New Compassionate Communication Class in August See Below

Recently I had a client come in who previously belonged to a common housing community. They had the interesting and upsetting experience of someone vandalizing their bikes. This caused a series of events that is very enlightening as to the psyche of the human being under trying circumstances. One of the leaders of the community accused one of the others co-housers as being the person who was creating the problem. Without proof, on pure speculation, the person was accused. So it started with a crime, followed by an accusation, and the third and most damaging thing came next… the gossip. Now, when you are looking for something in the house that is lost, and there is someone else in the house, don’t you always pick the other person in the house and assume that they moved it? Then you look and look for it, and when you let go of finding it, the object appears right in front of you? What they are all now looking to find is their peace which gave way to fear these last few days. Why do we as humans need to point the finger outward for how we are currently feeling? Honestly, fear is just a loss of power by giving your power away to a person or a situation, and love is just as easy as reclaiming your power.

What then if you are the person being blamed for this act, without proof, or even motive? The Four Agreements offered to us in Don Miguel Ruiz’s book. First of all, this is just an opportunity for growth and we can remind ourselves of that every time our peace becomes relocated by the fight or flight energies. We all want our safety, and no one would want another to do this to do to them. When something is done to us, our immediate feeling is fear, and our next desire is to create safety. We will all do that in different ways, but the most common human response is to find blame in someone and then sweep that someone out of your existence in whatever way is easiest. When truly what we are trying to do is regain our inner peace. That person or situation is not in charge of your inner peace, only we can reclaim ourselves.

STEP ONE

So I recommended: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, and Non Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D,

Be impeccable with your word.

Pare it down to an observation

Gossip is the great poison on the planet. We make up stories in our heads when we turn upside down in ourselves emotionally. I call it temporary insanity. In efforts to understand the story we are concocting we talk to other people. This is what the analyzer does in attempts to solve an emotional puzzle. Then in efforts to validate you, other people start to believe your story and voil’a, a story is now considered true by others and it becomes what many are talking about because they are all trying to solve the emotional puzzle even though it was never their problem to begin with. If we take this a step further to NVC (compassionate communication), the truth is something you can see, hear, or tape or video. If you didn’t see it how can it be real for you? If you can’t get to what is real, then ultimately you are just talking stories. Before you know it many are talking the same story. Gossip is one of the greatest destroyers of peace because it takes your disconnection, and then spreads it around. Tragic the way blaming spreads like a disease.

Practice: A student might say something like:

“When I see the members of the cohousing community looking at the damaged bikes, “

STEP TWO

Don’t take anything personally

What are you feeling when you think about the observation?

Nothing anyone else says or does has anything to do with you. This is a hard concept for the typical ego based human to understand. In fact each and everyone is acting out of meeting basic needs and they may be making up the story that you are their problem, but in fact you are never another person’s problem. The problem is that the person isn’t really connecting with how they feel. They are feeling agitation but they are swirling around in their story and therefore not connecting with what they are feeling. You could have said or done something that triggered a feeling for someone. This is the greatest road to freedom once you really understand that you are not another person’s solution or another person’s problem. What if I am not your problem and you are not my problem, but there is still a problem? Then you have yet again another opportunity to learn to communicate. The problem is the lack of peace, given way to fear. So what if you shifted and took yourself out of the other persons problem, and focused on yourself. What are you feeling?

Practice: A student might say something like this:

“When I see the members of the cohousing community looking at the damaged bikes, I feel concerned,”

STEP THREE

Don’t make assumptions

And What is the Underlying Need that creates that Feeling?

One of the greatest mistakes we make in our relations with one another is thinking our made up version of the story is part of reality. Then we are lost in the Maya (Illusionary World of The Mind). Our made up versions leave us to believe we know what others are thinking based on their actions of the past. The worst part is we really believe our stories then go around trying to get others to believe them too. How we get around making assumptions is to understand that everyone is doing what they are doing to meet basic needs. In the 80’s the belief was that everyone does what they are doing because they are needing love. Compassionate Communication up levels that now to everyone is doing what they are doing to meet one or more of the nine basic human needs. They are: sustenance, safety, love, creativity, empathy, play, community, autonomy, and purpose. Rather than presume the worst in a person or situation it is so much more empowering to accept the very best of a person or situation. In my Sufi Tribe we have a song that goes like this: Take me, Oh Take me as I am, summons all that I can be, Set your seal upon my heart, and live in me. So I asked my friend to let go of their assumptions and connect with what they are needing.

Practice: A student might say something like this:

“When I see the members of the cohousing community looking at the damaged bikes, I feel concerned, because I am wanting peace and harmony in our community,”

STEP FOUR

Always do your best

Make a doable Request

My friend told me a story about a man meeting a lovely Eastern Indian woman in a coffee shop. She was so lovely he asked her if she was married and she said yes and told him she had been married for many years. In the conversation he learned that she had been married in an arrangement worked out by her parents. He asked her how that was going. She said something like…”Americans choose their own partners, get married, and then find everything wrong with their partner and then get divorced. Choose again and do it all over again. I was taught to find the best in my partner everyday and I really enjoy being in this relation where we bring out the best in each other.”

In everything the glass is half full or half empty. It is all in what way you look at it. What if we choose to see everyone as whole, and focus on the parts that are whole instead of the parts that are empty .It is just not how we were taught in this blame and shame paradigm. We can give empathy: It is unfortunate that the bikes on your property have been in some way tampered with, and it must be painful to want to have understanding why or how it is happening. Are you feeling concerned about it, because you deeply value your peace, harmony, and the safety of everyone living there? I am hearing that you love your community. Sounds to me like a neutral communication healing is in order, would you enjoy receiving that?

Practice: A student might say something like this:

“When I see the members of the cohousing community looking at the damaged bikes, I feel concerned, because I am wanting peace and harmony in our community, can I accept in this moment that the peace in deep within me and the harmony I seek is within myself? “

Thank Goodness For Tools! Do you want to learn some Compassionate Communication Tools? I am going to teach a class in the fall. It will be wonderful practice for me, and a playful journey of opening your heart to empathy for you. Monday Evenings 7 - 9 pm. August 23-Oct 11, 2010. A eight week series for a request of $140. Or two contributions of $70. Is money an issue? Lets talk about it.

Are You Getting What You Want Out of Life?

Divine Souls, Aloha

Has anyone out there noticed how quickly time is moving these days? Even while the pace of Time and Space is picking up on the planet as we speed through time towards 2012, isn’t it interesting that within this fast moving pace, time in the present seems to be amazingly slow. The more we stay grounded in the here and now, the more we experience the sweetness of the everyday kindness existing in everything.

For all of you who read the last email in regards to Having Power to Have Love, and Having Love to Have Power, I would like to introduce another concept: Having Perseverance to cultivate Patience. Simply we are not always going to get what we want or think we should have, and things are not always going to manifest according to our vision of what we think we should have. Yet amazingly most of the time we are getting what we want. True character is revealed when we are not getting what we want. Oh how the little self loves to kick and scream and fight the way of the world. Patience is how we settle down and let the powers gently guide us, while the larger and wiser self takes a center seat in the process of our creation.

Ancient Indian Prophecies say that we are in the darkest of times. That said, we are also in the end of a cycle that has been in the making for thousands and thousands of years. Just think for a moment of how intense it gets around Christmas as we draw a year to a close. Think then on how it must be in the way of intensity to be bringing many thousands of years of Karma to a place of transformation. With no tools that must seem like a great amount of work. I remind you once again to use your tools. Sit down and meditate. This time and space we are currently in was not designed to be so easy. Yet it is much easier if you have tools and use them. Spiritual growth and focus are very much needed at this time on the planet. We must cultivate unending faith. Honestly, if these are truly the darkest of times, then I am so blessed to be in the lightest part of the darkness.

Someone the other day pointed out I am a courageous being. She sees that I get a vision and I follow to the best of my ability. I do this out a sense of knowing myself. If we trust our intuition above the outside information around us, we can have faith that we are on our path. There are three keys mentioned in the New Testament. 1. To know yourself. 2. To know your God. 3. To enter as Child. Once you know these things you truly do live in the Kingdom. There is no more searching of any kind. Your complete experience on this plain of existence is as a gift to everyone you encounter.

Blessed Souls, I love you! I am so grateful to be here with you right now.

Warmest Aloha, Alexandra Steinicke starthealingnow.com