skip to Main Content

Awakening to the fulness of self-connection

(I wrote this short article for a German NVC magazine and then thought that it might be of interest also for English speakers, so here it is...) --- Similarly to all other aspects of life that NVC is exploring, self-empathy/self-connection is also, for me at least, an ongoing research, an ongoing journey of discovery. It stretches from very practical questions of how to do it, when to do it, how to know whether I am self-connected, to very existential ones of what self is at all, who is connecting to what, what it all actually is in its essence… Key…

 

The Tunnel of Delusions

The other morning I experienced yet another of these enlightening, and at the same time embarrassing moments. It was just before the sunrise in the morning, and as I was very slowly waking up I noticed Noa, my beloved, quietly sliding out of the bed and leaving the bedroom. Five minutes later I, while sleepily walking to the bathroom, glanced across the living room and saw Noa standing outside, on the terrace, with her phone in her hand. I stopped and was staring at her for a few seconds; what is going on here? What could be such a secret…

 

Relativity of Heroism

When our newly born Dorian was two weeks old, Noa developed some blood poisoning and had to go to a hospital and stay there for three days. There was a possibility for Dorian to stay with her, but we both had a very clear sense that being in a hospital atmosphere and energy would likely not be as nourishing for him in this tender time as what our wooden little house in the nature provides, so we decided he would stay at home with me. I was deeply touched by all the support I was receiving during these days from…

 

Getting rid of negative people… Seriously?

In the last couple of years I have been seeing, in social media, quite regularly one of those quick-fix wisdom statements, that goes something like this: “The key to happiness is in getting rid of negative people in your life, as they are sucking your energy, etc etc etc…” Now, first thing: isn’t the above a rather negative statement in itself? You know, labeling other people as negative and then trying to get rid of them… So, should I now label a person that just made this statement as negative and try to get rid of them. And then they…

 

The lonely trainer

Even before I turned twenty, I became a member of a spiritual cult group. There was an incredible amount of deep spiritual companionship present, belonging, love, beauty, and loads of spiritual experiences, expansions. And, at the same time, there was lack of transparency, lack of honesty, manipulation, strong hierarchy, abuse of power, sex and money, primarily by the spiritual leader himself… So, I eventually left, with a torn heart. Only to dive straight into the next spiritual cult group, where the story continued with very similar patterns, with another spiritual leader, even more charismatics. This time I got out a…

 

Beyond the tyranny of hard work

The other day I was going through my calendar in the past ten years, searching for some things, and the more I browsed through it, the more shocked I felt, with memories rushing in. Namely, I used to work so much. I would give four to five training-days per week, with squeezing all the meetings, preparations, mediations, writing articles and handouts into the remaining time. I basically did not live – I worked, fed myself and I slept. Consequentially I was completely knocked-out in illness twice a year for a week, of course always during national holidays, when there was…

 

What are we intending to change with the social change?

Sitting on the train from San Francisco to Seattle, I am still digesting the amount of despair and hopelessness that I was witnessing on the streets of San Francisco during the last few days, while passing by truly immense numbers of homeless, poor, devastated people and observing what seemed to me like signs of a collapsing society. It all seemed pretty post-apocalyptic at times. And it reinforced my impression of the urgency of radical social change, otherwise there soon might not be any society left to change. And, when thinking of the urgency of a radical transformation of a paradigm…

 

Trusting the field

So, an old story says that, long, long time ago, there was a man (sic!) out there, on a long journey that took him through many unknown lands. He was following, on his horse, a barely recognizable path through a thick forest, which was getting darker and darker and he found himself entrapped by the darkest night, not being able to see an inch in front of his nose, let alone to follow the path. Feeling hopeless and in despair, he got off his horse and started tiptoeing around… Suddenly it seemed to him that he saw a dim light…

 

Longing for the company of not-knowers

The last two days I spent on airports, planes and in similar social settings, on my way to co-facilitating a retreat in Virginia, US. And, as I often do in such situations, I spent certain amount of time sitting and observing people, hearing their conversations… And again I had this sense that somehow most of the conversations seem to be about proving to each other how right we are. As if the main impulse underneath most of our behavior and self-expression in social environments is about showing to ourselves and to others a certain image of ourselves, which I could…

 

The Masochism of Attending Retreats

Almost a year ago I was co-facilitating, together with Robert Gonzales, one of our Awakening to Life Intensive retreats, that time in Arizona. As I was sitting in the room full of people that were doing the process, and witnessing them experiencing deep levels of love, intimacy, connection, peace, bliss, joy, inner spaciousness…, I realized how masochistic this can all become. It hit me that if we keep visiting retreats on personal evolution and spirituality and we don’t, every single time after the retreat is over, make bold steps in our lives, even radical changes if needed, in order to…

 

The Issue of Ownership

As I had been on a long road journey through Portugal this summer, exploring areas and properties to perhaps start an intentional community there, I was also learning much about the land. Walking around with friends and sometimes with extraordinary permaculture experts, I was learning more and more about the devastating impact human species have had on this planet for thousands of years, with its peak in the last century. One day it suddenly hit me that perhaps the original sin to it all started many thousands of years ago with the concept of ownership. With the idea that the…

 

Empathic listening does not work. Unless it is empathic listening.

About 15 years ago I had regular interactions with an acquaintance of mine of whom I had lots of enemy images and judgements, and our interactions were not easy. Life moved on in a way that we nowadays barely meet briefly every few years, yet I still remember a piece of wisdom that he articulated then, and I only started to appreciate lately. In the midst of complex and emotionally charged weeks of interactions, he said: “You see, one day, after all of this is passed, perhaps even on our death beds, we will end up opening hearts to each…

 

Lurking in the dark

Last morning, at a friend’s place here in North Germany, on the road trip from Sweden to Portugal, we ended up having a vulnerable conversation around breakfast. We were an Israeli Jew, a German and a Slav talking about wounds from the Second World War, individual and collective, that are still speaking through us. Listening to many subtle stories about how our collective fields have been traumatized by the war and by the holocaust, on all sides of the story, how we were culturally conditioned in using various strategies to deal with it, from dark humor to suppression and denial,…

 

Privilege of not being rapeable

When not travelling my base camp is an apartment just across the street of the large city park that borders a small forest, in Ljubljana. And the other day I went for a walk into the wood, around midnight, after having spent most of the day in front of the computer – to connect to nature and reset my inner system before going to sleep. Just before stepping onto the tiny path that led straight in the peaceful darkness of the midnight forest, I saw a man standing on the parking lot, perhaps 20 meters away, looking straight at me.…

 

Standing on the blood soaked soil

Today, at the last day of the 9-day International Intensive Training in Nonviolent Communication here in Indonesia, where I have an honour to serve as a trainer, we had a heart-shattering sharing in the morning circle. A participant, aboriginal Australian, shared with us a story of massacres that his mother survived and told him about. White settlers were attacking the aboriginal tribes, killing peaceful tribal members, chopping their heads off. They were dragging children, tied to horses by their legs, through bush and piled them up, covered them with wood and burned them alive. There were many attacks on their…

 

Hoping for Another Step Towards the Inner Freedom

Yesterday I found myself, while visiting Israel, sitting in a circle around the bonfire with another 15 or so people, sharing our hearts. It was the eve of the Passover celebration, which is about commemoration of liberation from slavery in Egypt, under the leadership of Moses. One of the deeper meanings of the celebration of Passover is about noticing what is the inner slavery we have been carrying within ourselves and wish to get free from in this year. So we were sharing our fears, core beliefs, automatic responses, dilemmas, struggles… that we would like to liberate ourselves from in…