No Pushing, No Giving Up

by Miki Kashtan

One of the common misconceptions about the practice of Nonviolent Communication is that it’s about being “nice.” It’s probably a similar misconception to that of thinking of nonviolence as passivity. I believe both misconceptions derive from our habit of either/or thinking. Most of us don’t have models for a path that’s neither aggressive nor passive. Within this either/or thinking, if the only two models are imposing on others or giving up on our own needs, many of us will interpret nonviolence as the latter.

What does this look like? In our relationship to authority, I already wrote about how we can move beyond submission and rebellion. When parenting, as my sister Inbal described in Compassionate Connection: Nonviolent Communication with Children, we can find a path that’s neither coercive nor permissive. And in our relationships, we can find that sweet spot between pushing for what we want and giving up on what we want.

The either/or paradigm as it applies to human relationships rests on two assumptions. One is that we are separate form each other. The other is that there isn’t enough to go around. It is the combination of these two assumptions that pits us against each other fighting for our needs. It is this legacy that prevents us from having satisfying relationships of authenticity and care. As soon as any difference arises between what we want and what someone else wants, our habits direct us to push or give up. How can we transform this legacy?

From Demands to Requests
If we are habituated to pushing for what we want, the message we convey to everyone around us is that their needs don’t matter. If we are the boss or the parent, our employee or child, as the case may be, is put in a position of doing what we want or suffering consequences. While we may get what we want on some superficial level, the cost is high. Every time someone does something just because we have the power to deliver unpleasant consequences, we lose respect, or love, or both. 

In a relationship of fundamental equality, pushing for what we want looks like a fight. When we don’t have the power to deliver consequences, we can’t officially punish or fire the other person. We can, and do, call them names, or judge them, or get angry, or give them the silent treatment, or take revenge at a later time. That’s what “punishment” looks like between equals. The result is the same. We are watering resentment and fear in the other person, and our own well-being is likely to be held with less and less care by them.

Shifting from making demands and pushing for what we want into an interdependent relationship of mutual care invites us to change our orientation to life as well as how we interact. Making requests is premised on integrating the radical understanding that if something works for us and not for another we pay a price that’s too dear. It also rests on choosing, wholeheartedly, to transcend the fear of scarcity so we can commit to the other person’s needs mattering alongside ours. 

From Agreement to Empathy 
If we are habituated to giving up on what we want, the message we convey to others is that our needs don’t matter, and they can do whatever they want without concern for the effect their actions have on us. Transforming this habit takes two steps. The first is learning to differentiate between agreement and understanding, so that we can offer our empathic presence and interest to another without thereby feeling compelled to do what they want. For many of us this shift requires an inner transformation so that we can take our own needs seriously enough to be willing to offer our hearts to another without necessarily agreeing to do what they want. 

Once we are able to set our own internal limits and trust our capacity to stand up for our needs, we can develop the flexibility and discernment to know when we are caving in and when we are acting out of true generosity of heart.

Asking for What We Want

The second step of shifting our habits and letting others know that our needs matter is learning to ask for what we want. Often enough we don’t ask because of being afraid that we will be seen as making demands. This is where both ends of the either/or split come together. For those of us who find it hard to let go of having what we want, learning to ask is about letting go of outcome. For those of us who have a hard time asking at all, learning to ask is about embracing our power, our significance as human beings, and the preciousness of our needs.

Ultimately, what we need to learn is to shift from pushing or giving up to full engaging with both of our needs.

I will be doing a 2-session phone summer course on this topic and I invite those of you who are intrigued to get more information and consider if this might just be the nudge for you. If you are local to the Bay Area or are open to travelling for a weekend of more in-depth learning, I look forward to meeting you.

Power and Humility – Part 2

By Miki Kashtan


This is part 2 of a post I wrote last week. This is my continuing exploration. If anyone is looking for answers, I don’t have them. All I know is to keep asking the questions, to keep opening my eyes and ears and heart to more and more input, and to keep taking the next step, whatever it is, knowing full well I don’t know how.

Finitude

Perhaps the most pressing question for me remains the question of the limits of my resources. What does it really mean to care for everyone's needs, to really care, and also hold clarity about finitude of my resources? When I fully let myself feel the weight of this, I could scream, because I care not only about the people with whom I happen to come in contact. Although in some ways impersonal, my care for all people living on this planet, and for the unspeakable horrors so many experience on a daily basis is large and the level of pain I am in about it often beyond my capacity to tolerate. How do I match that up with my limits?

I derive some solace from a poem written by a friend, Ted Sexauer, who is a Vietnam vet:

I am not responsible
for the movement of the earth
only what I can handle
what I can take in
is the right amount

I find it easier to know my limits with regards to people I don’t know than with regard to those I do. When someone is in front of me, on my path, someone I interact with, whose life is affected directly by my choices, I struggle mightily with knowing when and how to extricate myself. I do it. I am just never sure whether I am truly holding the other person’s needs as I do it, or essentially succumbing to my lack of imagination and closing off, however slightly.

This is a complex issue for anyone with anyone. It gets even more entangled for me when I am the one in a position of power. Honoring my limitations then borders too closely for my comfort with an assertion of my power over others. I don’t know what it means to use my power with others when I am reaching the limits, when there are more people with whom to be in communication about more things and more often than I can possibly handle.

Feedback

One of the lesser known aspects of Communist parties is the practice known as “criticism/self-criticism.” What I like about it based on my readings is the intention to provide feedback, including to self, to keep learning, and to support learning for others. I am particularly delighted to see that the process was intended to be applied to people in leadership positions alongside others within the party.

From what I read, I have quite a bit of trust in the intention that led to set up this process. In particular I was relieved to see an instruction put out to stay away from personal attack, and to criticize political and organizational mistakes rather than character. I still find the prospect of this process horrifying. I want people in power to receive feedback, not criticism. The two are dramatically different, even if some of what gets looked at can be incorporated into both. Feedback supports learning, while criticism tends to stir up shame.

For myself, I am still learning through feedback more than any other way, and I am not done. I don’t expect to ever be done for as long as I live. I so much want to know how to train or encourage people to stand up to me and tell me of their experience of me when I am in a position of power. For example, I know I need to learn something about why it is that with all of my profound commitment to power-sharing, learning, transparency, and vulnerability, I still hear regularly that people feel disempowered in relation to me. Is there something for me to change, or is it part and parcel of living in our culture that some people will not find their voice and power even when I am open to sharing it? What can I do to minimize the risk? Is there a different invitation I can issue?

Embracing Power

The more I look at power, the more I find fascinating and endless challenges to explore, grapple with, and continue. As soon as we drop the two positions of authoritarian power and abdication of power, we are on our own, figuring it out, without clear role models. The way through, as so often, is not by returning to previous models of authority but by finding new forms of authority that engage differently with power.

For example, I know that I, and others, can get caught in what I sometimes affectionately call the tyranny of inclusion. I believe it's another of the issues that stops those of us working for change from being effective. I see it as based in fear of making decisive moves and offending others. I am learning. Balancing unabashed power with complete humility is such a new territory for us to explore. I feel myself on a learning edge, sometimes alone, sometimes discouraged, and mostly curious and excited.

Telling the Truth to Create Intimacy

by Miki Kashtan

I have a close friend I walk with every week. We have been doing it regularly for about three years now. The walking and the friendship are mutually reinforcing, and as far as I am concerned, this practice could continue indefinitely.

So I was shocked when, one evening a few months ago, I got an email letting me know that my friend would be taking a break from walking with me, at least for a while, starting the next day. My friend, let’s call her Nancy, asked to know my response to her message, affirmed her sense of connection with me, explained what the reason for the break was (she needed her energy for some major projects in her life, which made total sense to me), and proposed other ways of staying in touch. 

As I sat down to write an email response to Nancy, I connected to a deep well of sadness. I knew that the “right” answer was to express my understanding and acceptance and to let it go. Instead, I chose to express the full truth – without holding back, without losing care for Nancy. In the depth of sadness and loss that I was at, this was no small task. I was particularly upset about the unilateral decision she made instead of bringing the issues to joint holding, so we could figure out something together. 

This started a couple of rounds of emails, followed by a one-time walk we scheduled to have an in-person conversation about it, which spilled into a second walk, and resulted in a reaffirmation of our shared commitment to the walks. They have since become even more satisfying for both of us. 

This seeming miracle resulted from bringing to the light of day everything that had not been said before. Nancy, it turns out, had been trained, like so many of us, to withhold anything that might be unpleasant or charged for the other person to hear. Although her love for me and appreciation for our friendship and time together were absolutely deep and genuine, there were things she didn’t feel able to tell me about ways of acting on my part that were mildly distressing for her. Mild enough in the moment so as to be able to tell herself that she could let go. And yet, over time, bothersome enough that interacting with me required some slight ongoing effort, and made our walks, despite how nourishing they were, feel like “work.” On top of that, she was raised with a strong sense of responsibility, and didn’t feel at ease about canceling if and when she didn’t have the energy for a walk. She pushed herself so hard inside, that she finally lost her ability to hold me with care, and thus came the abrupt unilateral decision.

At different times in our conversation one or the other of us cried as we reached for deeper places in our hearts. Nancy finally got to a place of feeling freer than ever, because she was able to tell me everything, and because we came to an agreement that gave her explicit room to cancel on any given week. I, on the other hand, was finally given priceless feedback I am always so hungry for. I was able to learn something about how my challenge around humility affected both Nancy and some other people I came in contact with through her. It’s no secret to me that some of my ways of being are challenging for others, and I can’t think of a better way of learning than through the experience of someone I care about and trust as much as I trust Nancy.  

On another occasion, with another friend, whom I will call Lorraine, I learned that when she is not doing well she is likely to choose to withdraw rather than ask for support. As we talked about what leads her to this choice, we discovered together that in some fashion she has a habit of acting within her relationships as if the well-being of the other person is more important than her own, which takes some effort. When she is not doing well, she simply doesn’t have the energy to expend on that effort. The result, a somewhat one-sided friendship, doesn’t actually work for me, because I want a friendship that nourishes both of us. To put it somewhat bluntly: a friendship that’s designed to work only for me doesn’t really work for me. While we didn’t come to some epiphany or clear resolution, the mere talking about this dilemma, and the holding of it together, brought us to a place of more appreciation for what we bring to each other, and a clearer sense of intimacy.

I see a striking similarity between these two unrelated situations, and a lot to learn about what makes relationships thrive. However scary it can sometimes be, telling the truth creates more intimacy. Instead of believing that we have to sort things out on our own, we can bring our incomplete process to each other and be together in the uncertainty of life.

Navigating what comes up may take some skill and a willingness to experience discomfort and step into unknown territory. This is probably why so many of us avoid it so much of the time. We tell ourselves we can let go, and yet we build resentment. We stretch to hold the other person with care, and don’t notice that we are giving up on ourselves in some subtle way. We prioritize harmony, and we lose depth and authenticity. Ultimately the source of the difficulty is about seeing honesty and care as mutually exclusive instead of recognizing the extraordinary possibilities that arise when we bring our dilemmas, our sorrows and doubts, and our less-then-together selves to each other at the same time as our love, empathy, and understanding. The result is nothing short of resilient and graceful intimacy, the kind we all desire.

These principles apply in all relationships, and most especially in intimate partnerships. If you would like to know more about telling truth to create intimacy, and other ways to make your relationships work, I would like to invite you to a workshop I am facilitating called "Peace Starts at Home". It's primarily designed for couples, and is open to anyone who wants to explore dialogue as a way of life.

Power and Humility - Part 1

by Miki Kashtan

Some time ago I wrote about submission and rebellion, the two poles that we have inherited as traditional responses to another’s power. Today I want to return to this topic from a different angle, which is whether and how we can transform power dynamics, so that the statement that “power corrupts” no longer appears so completely like a truism. Another way of asking this question: what does it take for any of us to become “incorruptible,” meaning being so strong in our inner practice that we can withstand the allure of power? I want to believe that we can operate in a way that diminishes and eventually makes obsolete the responses of submission and rebellion.

I am a relatively small fish in the large order of things. I have less than 400 subscribers to this blog, for example. The organization I co-founded has about 10 employees, and I have at most a few hundred former and current students who look to me actively as their teacher. Nonetheless, I am quite aware of at least some of the dynamics of power within which I operate, and have intimate knowledge, even on the small scale at which I operate, of the dilemmas and complexities that come with power.

The Challenge of Structural Power 

In blunt terms, having structural power means having the option of attending to my needs without including others’ needs. Structural power means access to resources based on my position within a structure, not based on relationship or personal resources. Here are some personal examples:

* As a boss (which I mostly am not), I  can fire someone. They cannot
   fire me.
* As a program leader, I can choose not to give someone access to the
   program, they cannot restrict my access in the same way.
* When I sit in a room and speak, people listen to me and are likely to go along
   with what I want much more often than when someone else, who is not a
   “designated” leader, speaks into the same group.

I find it extraordinarily challenging to know this and to have any clarity about how to operate in integrity. I am so committed to moving forward in a way that honors everyone’s integrity, dignity, and autonomy that I sometimes act with less than my full personal power in certain moments as a way to avoid imposing anything on anyone. I know enough to know I want to transform this habit, and am chipping away at it. I am not yet where I want to be. This is a learning edge for me.

The Temptation

I hold a very large vision for the world, and my life is completely mobilized for the foreseeable future to do all I know to do to increase the likelihood of a livable future. This is a lot of work, a huge amount of effort. I teach, I write, I am a key leader in BayNVC, I created and continue to offer leadership to the Consciousness Transformation Community, I am part of several collaborations, and I receive a steady stream of requests from former students, colleagues, and others. That in itself is more than a full life.

I also have a sister, Inbal, that I love beyond words and who is living with cancer. I am a major and active part of her support and care network. This is a journey full of uncertainty and immense beauty, as my two sisters are the biggest joy of my life. (Inbal is doing well at present, in case you are worried, and that’s not always been the case in the last four years and may not continue.)

If that’s not enough, I myself had cancer in 1997 and want to do all I can to minimize the risk of having another one (cancer runs deeply in my family, on both sides), I am very committed to attending to my own body and self-care, and to do things that nourish me.

Between these three primary commitments, my life is essentially unmanageable. The metaphor of a blanket that’s too short seems very apt to me. And, on top of that, I am a person with many sensitivities, physical, emotional, and social, and I find daily living often challenging.

I crave ease in the midst of so many commitments and challenges.

I know I am far from the only one who is challenged by life. Many many people are craving ease in the midst of challenging lives, all over the world. Most of them will never have enough ease and relief. I can’t not be aware of that truth. I also know that I do have enough power to arrange for some ease in my life if I want to use my power in this way.

Because I am so mobilized and putting so much of my energy towards service, I can easily “justify” using my power to create ease for myself. I feel that pull. I also know, and trust this insight, that it’s not going to serve the world for me to resist the pull and do nothing to create ease in my life, because it would result in my being less effective. At the same time I want to stay clear of slipping into more and more ways of creating ease that are less and less aligned with my values. Like many, this is a very complex line to walk.

For example, I like the outcome of my own decisions and how I do things better than most people most of the time. Full ease would mean making all the decisions and telling other people what to do to support me. That is too far, too similar to old models, and in that way ultimately not serving my vision. It’s also not doable for me emotionally, because I have a visceral aversion to imposing my will on others. I am still learning about when and how to involve other people in decisions and in the doing to maximize effectiveness, connection, collaboration, and empowerment for all of us. Like many things, this is a tall order.

Full ease would also mean working only with people who are fully empowered in their relationship with me, able to transcend the submit/rebel paradigm and make choices based on their full sense of inner power, and easily aligned with my vision and direction. This would mean people who can say “no” to me when I ask them to do something, who would give me divergent opinions when I offer mine, and who would be relaxed and comfortable shifting through dialogue with me. It would mean people who can speak clearly and articulate what’s important to them even when there is tension, as well as able to hear me and open their hearts to me without much effort. That’s a lot to ask for. If I don’t have it with someone, then I am at a loss about how to tend to the relationship with integrity, how to use my power with people, when it could take so much effort and open spaces in my schedule to do so. How can I do it? How can I not?

As often, I have more to say than fits in one entry. Stay tuned for the continuation of this topic in the coming days.

Understanding Everyone: Empathic Reflections about Osama Bin-Laden’s Killing - Part 2

by Miki Kashtan

 

This is part 2 of a post I started a couple of weeks ago. At that time I was offering my understanding to the people who are celebrating Osama Bin-Laden’s death, as well as to those who judge the celebration.

Today I want to explore in a similar manner other positions that people have within the range of responses to his killing that I am aware of. However, before doing that I want to respond to some comments on the previous post.

Vengeance

First, to an anonymous person who said this:

“I think you missed a vital point while trying to walk in someone else's shoes, and that is that some people seemed to be celebrating because they believe in vengeance. … They are celebrating because it's a video game, because they believe in an eye for an eye, because he's the bad guy and we're the good guys, and because they don't see him as a real human being. … it's much more of a challenge to empathise with someone who believes in the justness of the killing (murder, actually), and think they would be happy to do it themselves, given half a chance.”

I am appreciating the invitation to stretch even further into the experiential gap with those who are different from us. Initially it seems next to impossible. How can I truly enter the experience of believing in vengeance, of wishing I could be the one to kill, or seeing him as not really human? I feel in me the recoiling, the visceral level distance. And so I walk slowly towards it, as far as I can, to make emotional sense of it. I know enough to know that connection is not made at the level of beliefs. If I only put my attention on someone’s beliefs I am unlikely to get anywhere. And so I shift my focus, I try to ask: What is at the heart of the belief that someone is bad, that someone could be less than human? What is at the heart of the belief that it’s OK to get rid of some people because they are bad? I want to remain curious about the answer, open to discovering it, letting it emerge from practice.

Why is it that some of us want vengeance, that some of us think of killing someone as justice, so much so that we can even derive pleasure from doing it? Thinking of someone as less than human is familiar to me. I have done it plenty of times over the course of my life, and can still feel the pull to go there with regards, ironically, to those who might be making someone else less than human. Irony, and no surprise. Beholding such a gap and remaining open-hearted is such intense pain and confusion. I can see wanting to close the heart.

This is not the end. There is more. There is the delight in someone’s death, the belief that it’s the right thing, the just thing, the only way to go. What is the fundamental human need that’s leading someone to believe in “an eye for an eye?” If I truly embrace the core assumption at the very heart of Nonviolent Communication – that every human action is an attempt to meet a need – then I must find a need that could give rise to this belief. I am struggling to connect the dots in full, because I have no emotional reference point. I still find immense value in the effort to understand, even if I never get there in full. It is a human phenomenon, it’s happened since time immemorial, and I want to understand it. My faith tells me it’s a human experience emerging from needs that are no different from my own. I can name them, and have no emotional vibrancy to them. That’s how far I can go. Perhaps I need to role play this person in order to make contact. For now, I imagine that this kind of belief creates an enormous relief with regards to order in the universe. A sense of belonging in a human family now purified. I do, still, believe that deeper down is fear, and the desire to protect what is dear, and that the delight is in the success itself. And the journey is incomplete. I hope to keep learning this one for as long as I live.

Violation

I am imagining myself living in Pakistan, being a Moslem, and having the experience of violation of my national sovereignty and social dignity as the army of a foreign and ill-liked country proceeds to do whatever they wish on my soil. I imagine feeling infuriated and helpless, humiliated.

I am curious why I find so much more ease in relating to this experience, even though it’s also not one I have experienced myself? I guess it’s because I do have an emotional reference point. It’s quite completely different, and yet I sense the affinity. I’ve had the experience of non-consensual sex, with someone I knew, to boot, and more than once. That experience provides a window through which the helplessness and anguish are clear as day. I can sense the depth of the wish to be able to protect what is dear, to maintain the integrity and dignity of identity, of body, of borders, to have a say in what happens to me, to us, on our land. It blends easily with my experience. Even though I have never felt the fury and rage that often come in such moments, I can completely see it. It’s not difficult for me to imagine how much of a fertile ground this experience is for future generations of people set on destroying the people who caused such harm.

And now, through this, I can loop back to the celebrators, united across their opposing positions. I imagine this was my missing link: that the vengeance, the eye for an eye, the celebration of the killing in different moments in different groups, points to the assault on the soul that is at the heart of loss of dignity. I can now imagine that the people who wanted Osama dead, who wanted to kill him themselves if they could, experienced previous actions by Osama as an assault on their dignity and humanity, and that the vengeance is a response to that level of humiliation and helplessness, more so than to safety. I still don’t have a way of knowing. It just feels a little more true, a little more humanly rich, and closer to them as fellow humans.

I don’t feel done quite yet, so I may very well come back to this topic one more time. Still open to new perspectives and players to understand, please send my way.

Nonviolence and Killing

by Miki Kashtan

In the wake of Osama Bin-Laden’s killing a very active discussion emerged on the email forum used by the community of trainers certified with the Center for Nonviolent Communication. One thread of this conversation has been about responses to the particular event, and especially how to relate to the people celebrating Bin-Laden’s death. This exploration was the primary inspiration for my previous entry (to which I still intend to come back). Another thread has focused on a more general question: can killing in any way be compatible with nonviolence?

This is by far not a new dilemma in human affairs. The Dalai Lama, one of the living icons of nonviolence, also engaged with this same question, citing a Buddhist scripture that suggests killing may sometimes be necessary, so long as it’s done with utmost compassion and in extreme and rare circumstances. Whether or not the stringent criteria implicit in the story were met in this circumstance, the Dalai Lama’s essential claim is that Buddhism, in principle, is not categorically opposed to killing.

Others, including Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist leader who is also deeply associated with peace and nonviolence, and others who embrace a consciousness of nonviolence, are suggesting that killing is never to be done. For some, true nonviolence entails the willingness to die rather than to kill.

Earlier today an NVC trainer from Germany who is also a Sikh posted on the email forum, and included this sentence: “Killing seems to be part of nature – the question to me really is, what is the consciousness behind it.”

With some significant changes and additions, I am posting here my response to this post. This is an invitation to engage with this question, with all questions, with complexity and with love. In our times, with what we are facing, I don’t believe that simple one-dimensional answers will do. I sense that paradox and complexity are essential for our survival.

I was reminded of a very complex process I went through when I had cancer in 1997. At that time I was part of the Thich Nhat Hanh community, and, specifically, had taken the five precepts, the first of which is no killing and no condoning of killing. This was the background against which I was presented with the prevalent image of "war" against the cancer. I was deeply troubled, because I had complete clarity that these cells, no matter what else was true of them, were part of me, and were alive. I had a lot of difficulty embracing the idea of killing them.

What helped me were two insights, both of which seem relevant to this essential question.

The first was coming to understand that life depends on killing, at all levels. For example, if our immune system stops killing invading germs we will all die in short order. That realization was shocking, disturbing, and also expansive in terms of my understanding of life.

The second was that cancer is an unsustainable life form. It has no way to survive because of the indefinite growth that consumes more and more resources and will, eventually, kill the person whose cancer it is. My choice, as someone with cancer, was to do all I could so that the cancer would die faster and therefore I would stay alive.

In this moment it appears to me that most of the killing that happens in life is interwoven with the ongoing processes of living, eating, shelter, and other such basics. And then there are times when the option of killing happens as an active, conscious decision. I see the example of my cancer as a metaphor for one of the criteria about when killing is harmonious with life.

In a movie I saw many years ago I remember some people who were asking forgiveness of animals before killing them for food. In that act I saw recognition of the inevitability, as well as understanding of the grief and anguish of the necessity, of killing.

When it comes to killing humans I imagine that process being extraordinarily difficult. I have serious doubt that most of the killing that happens amongst humans receives that quality of immense care and attention.

Subsequent to my cancer experience, I lost my capacity to see “no killing” as a vow I could accept. I haven't yet found an elegant way to come up with a simple and tight set of criteria to use in deciding about killing. Nothing that is useful enough to share with others. It has been evident to me that the hermetic and single-focused “no killing” is in most instances easier to observe than the agonizing process of becoming conscious each time and deciding in the absence of clarity. I dropped out of the community, because I didn’t see that I could find companionship in the excruciating work of disentangling the complexity. So I wrestled by myself. Do I kill the ants that one day swarmed into my house in the many hundreds? I did kill them. Was it necessary? I doubt it. They were not threatening my survival in any way, only my comfort. Was the killing done with compassion? Hardly. I was frantic and shaking all over in primal disgust, and didn’t have any sense of presence of mind while spraying them.

Ants are not human, and I still also believe that I myself would not be able to kill another person even in very difficult circumstances. I hope very much that I don’t find myself in such circumstances, because whatever happens will no doubt be deeply traumatic for me.

Whatever else is true, I am confident that the more we can all learn and integrate into our body, mind, and soul the options of dialogue and nonviolent resistance the less likely it is that we would find killing the only option in any given circumstance. In addition to courage and love, I know I want to cultivate creativity so as to be able to find the nonviolent options: the magic of dialogue, the energy of nonviolent resistance, and the vision of love that grounds them both. I want all of us to walk beyond the constraining visions we have inherited, so we can truly see the possibility of transcending either/or thinking and develop trust that we can create outcomes that ultimately benefit everyone.

Understanding Everyone: Empathic Reflections about Osama Bin-Laden’s Killing

by Miki Kashtan

I have had a dream for many years now to be able to provide an empathic response to the news, whatever they are, so that everyone is seen as fully human. I see this situation as just the right time to explore this approach. There are so many ways in which people have participated in or responded to this event, and I want to capture the humanity of all of them. Some are rejoicing, some are horrified, some are skeptical, some are apathetic, and all are fellow humans. As tough as it sometimes is to really feel that commonality, that is what I most want to do.

People Celebrating Bin-Laden’s Death

I confess that this one is particularly challenging for me. Then I remind myself: the more challenging it is to viscerally step into the experience of another, the more necessary it is for me to do so in order to mend the separation. Whatever else is true, what is foreign to me, what is challenging, what is frightening, what I may judge, is also part of life. By distancing myself from it, I remain closed to some aspect of life. When I can truly get into those different experiences, then I embrace life, then I am in flow, without resistance, without claiming to know, and certainly without claiming to control any outcomes. Certainly a tall order.

And so I try to imagine myself being so happy that someone is dead. Why would I be happy that someone is dead? What could possibly be the experience that would lead me to wish for someone’s death? I don’t have to go very far. While I never wanted to kill anyone, I did have a few experiences in my life of reaching such a degree of helplessness and despair in a relationship, that I fantasized about the possibility that a particular person would die, somehow, and relieve me of my immense suffering. I also remember twice in my life when someone died and the primary feeling I had was one of relief. Now I can use these experiences as entry points. I can imagine having so much fear, so much helplessness about the basic, primal sense of safety for me and for the people I care about, both individually and collectively, that I would just be consumed with thoughts about how to get rid of this individual I see as the direct cause of my suffering. Of course, my fear, if I am this person, is likely fed by the media. That doesn’t make my experience one bit less real. I am rejoicing because, for a moment, I actually believe that the source of my troubles is removed.

And what’s the effect on me of having done this exploration? Twofold. First, I feel much less separate. For as long as I held the people celebrating Bin-Laden’s death as “other,” I didn’t even have the memory of my own experiences of extreme helplessness. Now I have more tenderness, for them, and for me. Something feels soft, and in that softness I relax into such immense anguish, and I have tears streaming down my face, and they are the first since I heard the news. My reaching across the divide to understand has opened me to me more fully to my own fallible humanity, as well as to my passion and dreams for how I want the world to be. I know I want different responses, and now I can stand within that dream more fully. I am soft, and I am committed to do what I can.

People Judging the Killing and the Celebration

I have a different challenge altogether in opening my heart here. As is likely evident already, I, too, responded with shock and despair when I heard about people celebrating. On that level it’s so much easier for me to understand the experience that leads to the judgment. At the same time I can also easily access disappointment that people who speak about nonviolent solutions, especially those who have been steeped in the study and practice of nonviolence, respond with distance and judgment. I can easily tell myself that they are reaffirming the very kind of thinking that perpetuates the structures and practices we have in the world. In moments of unconscious righteousness I can be pulled to minimize the differences between the celebrators and the judgers of the celebration.

I wake up from such moments through remembering that my own judging of the judgers is no different, either. Once I remember, the full openness is right there. Why do they judge, why do I judge? Time and again I have come back to the same clarity: when I judge, I am protected in some way. I don’t have to feel whatever is going on in its fullness. I have done that so many times, and continue to do it. Most of the time only for brief seconds, because I so prefer the open-hearted state that I easily choose to unfurl my protection and enter into the experience underneath. Not all the time. In some areas my judgments have not yet been dissolved. Those are the ones that are most likely to help me understand those who judge others. It’s not my agreement with their fundamental perspective. Agreement does not easily lead to empathy, because agreement keeps us at the level of content, and empathy arises at a different level of meaning, closer to the core of our shared human experience of responding to life, moment by moment.

As I keep asking, I see my judgment arising from the depth of my care, and in those places where I least know how to contribute to transformation. I judge, most easily, any time I view someone else as not caring, or not caring enough, and taking actions that I see as potentially harmful. I know that believing there’s lack of care on anyone’s part, whether small or large, frightens me deeply. So I judge as a way to have hope, perhaps. Because the judgment has some strength to it, some conviction. Even after so many years of study and practice, I still don’t have sufficient visceral trust in the power of just being with my own depth of experience, with my own needs, and dreams, and visions. I have seen time and again that the willingness to be with my experience, and to open my heart to another’s, has created breakthrough outcomes. How very sad that this is so. And how very human, given the thousands of years of being taught separation, distance, and creating order through enforecement.

Now the cycle is complete. I can now experience that blessed tenderness, that essential compassion, for the judgers, too. Because, once again, I am not separate. I am, once again, in the flow of life, open to all of us, regardless of where we are.

More to Come

This piece is only the beginning, as there are so many more players. I had, truly, no idea of where this writing would take me. This has been a personal exploration. Without quite planning to do so, the internal integrity or following truth led me to delve into the one-person experience that I have in trying to imagine how all the players are human like me. I am amazed, moved, and grateful for the many years of practice that allow me to share with such vulnerability, and through that experience such connection with life. As I am about to post this piece, I now imagine you reading it, and I feel the stretching into the vulnerability extending further. So many of you I don’t even know. Will you accept me? I see, vividly, that my own relaxed and complete acceptance of myself is what makes it possible to post this. I share this, because I am longing to inspire you all to embrace who you are more and more, so you can be stronger and stronger.

In the coming days I plan to come back and explore additional perspectives. You can help me with this by letting me know through your comments about anyone whose response is challenging for you to understand. Depending on how many such comments I receive, I may or may not find ways to explore them all. I am also inviting you to engage in the same way I did, or in any other way that would support you in seeing the humanity of all.