Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships (Nonviolent Communication Guides)

by Marshall B. Rosenberg

In both cases, the point isn’t to change your actions but to change your consciousness. To do that, you must walk a path from A to B, where A is a life based on the incessant demands of the ego and B is selfless awareness. To be frank, nobody really desires selfless awareness; from the viewpoint of looking out for number one, it sounds at once scary and impossible. What’s the payoff if you depose the ego, which is all about payoffs? Once the ego is gone, do you sit around passively like a spiritual beanbag? The answer lies in those moments when the personal self falls away naturally and spontaneously. These occur in moments of meditation or simply deep contentment. Selfless awareness is the state we’re in when Nature or art or music creates a sense of wonder. The only difference between those moments—to which we can add all experiences of creativity, love, and play—and Ahimsa is that they flicker in and out while Ahimsa is a settled state.