"Living, Speaking, and Writing Compassionately" seemed an adequate subheading at the time I extracted this handout from the cassette, but the longer I practice Compassionate Communication, the more I experience other effects in my sense of my whole being and my connection to my becoming self. The practice of Compassionate Communication opens me and us to a steady stream of reflection on why we say something and how we say something in a courageous attempt to speak authentically. In that sense, such communication begins within, and in doing so, encourages us to critically reflect on meaning perspectives and make new choices with our conscious perspectives. It that way, we experience and thus learn not a new way of thinking but practice a more authentic way of thinking. It also allows us to choose a more authentic way of feeling, compassionately, which comes from the nature of our becoming self. The practice of Compassionate Communication makes my life feel more fulfilled in even quite mundane situations.
The word "practice" holds very true in this regard. I practice all the time, but it never makes perfect. Different situations and different responses within me make for daily challenges in using this language. I have also found that the use of Compassionate Communication always stands me in good stead. At best, everyone involved feels good about the exchange even in what could be sensitive situations. At worst, I go away from some encounter that did not work well feeling I have tried to do the right thing in my speech. I also go away reflecting on how I might learn from that encounter, so the outcome might serve the participants more fully in the future. This means telling myself the "Yes" of "This is how will do it next time" rather that the "No" of "I should have said it better." The basics Compassionate Communication may well come to us as accessible and meaningful. The practice of this form of language takes very conscious effort and even courage. Most of us, if not almost all of us, speak rather automatically using forms of expression we have rehearsed so many times that we no longer think much about those words as we speak them and what they actually mean. In my practice, I have found that automatic or phatic speech rarely if ever gets to authentic speech. The authentic commits us to what we have said. Automatic or phatic language just fills an uncomfortable language void without much if any content. This communicative awareness might sound rather daunting, but it becomes quickly rather fascinating as awareness grows and all kinds of levels of meaning spring out of our newly practiced compassionate speaking which connects itself with a newly realized sense of compassionate thinking and feeling. That's what gives life to the next part of the handout:
Inspires compassion toward ourselves
Inspires compassion toward others
Inspires compassion in others
When we experience that compassion toward ourselves as fully as possible, it takes the sting out of the conscious effort that this practice calls for. In a dominator model, all effort happens on a field of judgment, generally negative judgment: "I am disappointed in myself." When the compassionate nature of our conscious effort at speaking in that way reaches us, we will feel acceptance of that effort even when it doesn't get the result we originally wanted. That process comes as an engagement with our becoming self. Our becoming self makes no negative judgments. The becoming self practices no dualities. In the becoming self, we experience the wholeness of our being even as it recognizes and values the elements that make up that being.
During this writing, I have become more and more aware of the very things about which I write. In all honesty, this writing itself speaks of my own growing awareness of my becoming self and the choices I have made and will continue to make to encourage and nurture awareness of that becoming self as well as the becoming self as the defining core of the whole being which is me.