What is the purpose of Nonviolent Communication? It’s to help us connect with ourselves and others in a way that makes compassionate giving natural. Now, compassionate giving for me, is when we do something for ourselves or others where our sole intention is to enrich life. We’re not doing it for a reward; we’re not doing it to escape punishment. We’re doing it out of what I think we human beings like more than anything in the world: to contribute to life, to enrich life.

“From an audio: ‘Nonviolent Communication’, disk 1, track 3”

There are three qualities that come to the forefront that are developed in this work.

The first is clarity: the kind of clarity which is an experiential clarity, also a cognitive clarity – that I’m able to distinguish that all of the thoughts that I have, all of the evaluations that I have, all of the judgments that I have are simply an emanation of my thinking mind and how it captures me experientially when I‘m lost into it. The more I can develop that clarity, the more I can distinguish and not get caught into it – and clearly observe observations and facts as they are and not as the story I tell myself. So this clarity is the foundation.

What that evolves into is the second quality, which is compassion. Until I have this clarity, I don’t have the inner spaciousness of heart to be able to feel into the compassionate space; the warmth, the depth, the love of compassion. So it is almost as though compassion is built on clarity because it requires the space that clarity provides. And then when I have the compassion, I am able to have the capacity to mourn. Compassion allows all of it. It allows the pain, it allows my heart to be broken open. It allows me to be in my open, vulnerable, tender place.

And, almost paradoxically to the rational mind, out of that rises strength. Out of my vulnerability there’s a real strength, which can be called empowerment. In that heart, in that vulnerability, is my authenticity. That is what empowers me to live in the way I want to live in this life; in the way that the inner life calls me to live.

Think about the difference this makes in a relationship: “I don’t want your love. I want the same Love you want. I don’t want your love. I want what you want and we can find it together and share our deepening experience of it. Thank you. I thought it was your love I wanted and it hurt so much when you couldn’t give it. I even made a bargain that if I gave it to you, I could expect it back. I thought you agreed to this bargain. I thought you were part of that deal.

I lived in fear that your love would disappear. I moved so deeply into the veil. Now I hear within me the whispering of something else. I feel the possibility of a Love that has nothing to do with you – an infinite resource which is always there. This Love is not affected by any condition, nor does it change in the stream of time. It is the same Love whether my body is strong or weak, whether I am rich and bountiful in material things or whether I am poor. It is not affected by things of this world. This is the Love that brings release. This is the Love that dissolves chains. This is the Love that brings peace. This is the only Love I want. It releases you, my friend, from all our contracts.

Stephen Schwartz, from the book The Compassionate Presence, p. 22

…in any situation in life, confronted by an outer threat or opportunity, you can notice yourself responding inwardly in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist, or you will soften, open, and yield. If you go with the former gesture, you will be catapulted immediately into your smaller self, with its animal instincts and survival responses. If you stay with the latter regardless of the other conditions, you will remain in alignment with your innermost being…

from The Wisdom Way of Knowing, p. 74-75

A New Story of the People