The only thing the whites could not appropriate
was Consensus,
for it would destroy the fundaments
upon which their false tyrannies, hierarchies, and priorities rely,
thus collapsing their whole world and society
as they know it. (…)”
A 3 days Peaceful Communication Retreat and one day of Silence
Introduction
I learned these practices in the East aware the West could not provide ways out to its own labyrinths.
Besides our own centre, when we are in a relationship with others there is a common centre of gravity between us and them. A common centre, and even a shared ego, that modern people,
used to identify in their individuality only, fail to know and respect, constantly imposing their more or less aware decisions, priorities and needs over those of others,
relentlessly.
So imagine everyone in the circle is your own child in the Desert who needs to drink, and imagine that
expressing View is the drinking.
Then know why nobody can leave until everyone has drunk when we have a
Consensus Meeting, no matter how tired we may be or are sure to know already what someone is to say.
It is only when each has expressed their ViewPoint that all the dots to make the Round view come together.
Due to how often people forget this, it is best to repeat once again that Consensus Practice can ONLY be done as an EQUAL and MUTUAL EFFORT when any 2 or more parties freely
Choose to leave behind the “normal” Conflict Communication, that is inevitably the result of dualistic thought and top-to-
down socio-political dynamics between social classes, social statuses, different ethnic groups and cultures and so on.
Peaceful Communication practices observed in multiple cultural contexts all have a few points in common, in that they all strive:
– To peacefully acknowledge we all project as a part of being human;
– To work with Others on common grounds instead of against:
-To create an equally emotionally safe environment for all
– To prevent sorrow in each as in everyone, starting always from the most vulnerable in the group.
- To give to everyone’s happiness a chance.
CommunicA(c)tion is literally the Act of Communion. Yet nowadays all so-called ‘communication’ is violent
because on a myriad of subconscious levels the human languages currently available to express ourselves
inevitably reflect top-to-down paradigms and often subconscious and untold hierarchies resulting from millennia of
capital-based societies built upon the appropriation, accumulation, and commodification of natural and human resources by
way of oppression.
The resulting society stands on an unbreakable structure of socio-financial threats, to which are attached nearly indestructible
human co-dependent relationships and emotional threats. Such toxic dynamics feed on unsustainable hierarchies that serve
the twofold purpose of producing capital on one side and of discharging social and individual tensions, and error in any form
on those lower social strata of ‘lesser lives’ the majority of people have come to subconsciously consider ‘useless’, both
individually & collectively.
This in turn forms socio-cultural barriers that make some categories of people as socially redundant, thus precluded to human and life
resources
. The Communion Traditions here
briefly presented challenge the notion of anyone being evil and unnecessary, affirming that Consensual
Communication mutually and correctly practiced can pair in friendship anyone at all, heal anyone at all,
solve any conflict whatsoever and reveal that every single life and view point is vitally necessary and never
redundant, regardless of right and wrong because to make the Round Views all views are necessary, while
from an objective viewpoint every life that has ever existed and will ever exist is equally necessary.
Non violent, ConSensual Communication is only possible as a joint effort when we are open and humble enough
to learn it from people who were in turn open and humble enough to dedicate their whole life to learning it from those Mircea Eliade called the ‘won’ societies.
Course background
Inspired by ancient and residual contemporary Folk traditions from East and West here syncretised, and certainly taught to me by great many people throughout much of my life, I have only in the past seven years come
up with a unique 3-days simplified course in Consensus & non-violent Communication practices merging Peace traditions of
distant times, cultures and walks of life.
Most of the ancient traditions and Communion practices here presented in syncretic form were learned during my years in
China and Tibet training as a doctoral student of anthropology; but also in New Guinea, in South America, in the French Alps
and in the Cantabrian regions, well prior in life to my academic training, learning through direct participation about ecstatic and oracular practices astonishingly parallel in ways between Asia and Europe. This in significant ways included Non Violent communication and Consensus practices both with humans, animals, and with the World Invisible, i.e. the Spirits of Nature believed to inhabit the trees and the springs, the
rivers and the mountains , the seas and the stars, the moon and the sun, the crossroads of any 3 roads or more, the stupas, the
old bridges, and ancient ruins, as well as anything “old enough to have a soul”.
Interchangeably to ‘non-violent
Communication’ the term ‘Consensus Method’ is used.
The ‘Workshop’
This is best practiced wearing large soft clothing of organic material that are breathable and do not entrap and encage your
Body and your inner centres. If you are able to be comfortable with it, wearing flowery motives and delicate colours helps get in touch with our soft and receptive Self.
To avoid trousers, especially tight ones or jeans, is also extremely useful, regardless of perceived ‘gender’.
From a practical point of view, when we do this practice both women and men wear soft, large, wide and feminine clothing, or
just wrap themselves in wool, in felt, in skins, or are naked (not recommended at Inis Fail) , and they drum to connect the
Spirit dimension and the Heart centre of the participants.
By breathing
a bit more deeply,
speaking a
bit more slowly,
with longer
breaths
and pauses
and Listening
Listening on
and on
slowing down the Breath when we don’t want to Listen
when we think we already know it all
or that we listened to it a thousands times,
or that we know better
just listen on
anew
One more time
without interrupting
in the same familiar words you might hear things you never heard before
Nobody will hit you on the head if you do interrupt …but please do keep trying to quit, as if you don’t this won’t work out.
Be fully committed to understanding rather then misunderstanding the Other, whatever ‘challenge’ may arise, people speak quietly about whatever they have in mind.
There is no ‘wrong’ way to feel, or to say, there is no need for hiding any inner truth, so long as it is expressed
speaking in the first person. While this practice strives to make us aware that projection is intrinsic to our human nature, the practice also
Focuses on becoming aware of how in describing in a negative, dismissive or diminuishing light another we cannot help including our negative projections. Tbese, apart from describing more ourselves & own deep shadows than the Other, inevitably add weight on the Other, posing limits to the achievement of their unbiased self knowledge and thus to their potential.
We also in doing so limit rather than
support the achievement of their contribution to the world.
In order to limit the damage of the projections we all make as humans, it helps to ask ourselves:
1: Is it True?;
2: Is it Kind?;
3: Is it Necessary?
4. Am I about to say it in a way the Other can understand?
The workshop lasts from 9 to12 hours in total and is arranged over a period of 3 days Silence Retreat, in order to allow silence
and void after the practice each morning. This is necessary in order to let the new ideas and ways to sink in, to be felt, heard
and experimented free from biases, fears, endless self-sabotage and inner clutter. The Self also allows a rupture
between the ‘normal’ ways in which communication was practiced before, and the newly learned ones. Please bear in mind
that silence after the workshop each morning, during the days of the Retreat, is also necessary to allow Other Participants to
declutter and let the experience sink in so that the rupture with their life as it was may also sink in.
IS NVC for You?
I have seen this practice being used to resolve matters of blame & Responsibility regarding serious conflicts, including the accidental death of children. Clearly, there is no greater
bitterness and rawer anger adults may be dealing with when affording conflict than the death of a child. Especially when it is
women blaming women or people trying to avoid responsibility.
It is to be understood that Nature is unforgiving in the wilderness when it comes to human errors and conflicts, and Nature
certainly taught humans and animals alike that the only way to survive in Nature is collaboration, compassion, tolerance,
kindness and solidarity even when we do not have the instruments to understand one another, without practicing exclusion as a way of resolution.
It is also understood that if one’s happiness or need can be dismissed made ‘less important than another’s, then anyone’s needs & happiness can be dismissed too.
If the Community is unsafe
for one, it is inevitably unsafe for all.
Nature with her cycles and balances between species, certainly teaches that everything is a round cycle and that everything
goes round and round.
What we do that hurts others, to make it easier for ourselves, is Violent Communication to the damage of Others, and as a consequence, even more, to ourselves in the long run. Sometimes in the short.
It doesn’t matter who is ‘Right’ or ‘Wrong’, every View is necesssary to make the Round View, even those which are utterly wrong and against life itself, paradoxically or not.
Nature as Teacher
The Retreat will help us realise that Nature is our Greatest Teacher at Consensus, for Nature’s perfect ecosystem only humans
had the arrogance to break:
– In Nature’s wilderness there is no house, supermarkets and cars, or money and “jobs” to earn money to live.
– In Nature to live we all need each other equally.
– Living in Nature we learn that protecting lives is a non-egotistical matter for each lives is an equal responsibility to
all, for each life has a contract of equal responsibility towards the thriving and well being of all life forms.
– In Nature When a tree is injured, trees walk imperceptibly near to it to feed it through the roots until the Tree is all well again
Humans appear to have lost the ability to share wholeheartedly the best parst of life in the fear of scarcity and mutual unworthiness.
By hearing other people’s stories and views you may feel puzzled in awakening to a formerly invisible multifaceted reality
which before we accepted unquestioningly as ‘ordinary’, known better than most and understood.