Nonviolent Communication is a Farce, and Other Spiritual Lessons

"I play with puppets and wear a Mr. Rodgers sweater.  Why yes I watch public television, why do you ask?  And I'm a spiritual bullshit artist."

I mentioned earlier how my ability to accurately read energies is distorted by my tendency to assign an emotional reaction to the reading.  I tend to react with anger toward the energetic disconnect, and this is something I need to change in order to get better at this.

Here’s an example – I tend to have a pretty strong negative reaction to “Nonviolent Communication,” or NVC for short. I read the book, tried out the lessons, and at some level could sense this was utter bullshit.  But instead of simply stating “this is bullshit” and releasing, I retained a certain anger toward it and the people who adhere to it, making it more than it is.

The fact of the matter is it’s a poorly-constructed concept of feel-good spiritual BS. It is both a cause and a symptom of the spiritual denial that owns the New Age spiritual community.  It’s a problem, but one that isn’t going to be resolved by anger.  Perhaps my anger was a reflection of my sense of powerlessness in the face of this societal disconnect.  But there are things I can do, so do those things instead of anger.

I came across this excellent article, “Nonviolent Communication is an Instrument of Psychic Terror” by Morten Tolboll.  It has an accuracy reading of 94.2% I have also read the book “Nonviolent Communication” by Marshall Rosenberg, and it has an accuracy reading of 17.4% and a vibration of 215 on the Hawkins Scale – not a bad energy reading for a book, but horribly inaccurate and certainly not worthy of the attention it is receiving in the outside world.  It’s basically the energetic and accuracy level of most New Age Spiritual Bullshit. 

What’s interesting is Tolboll put aside his disdain for the practice and instead focused on the facts and goes on to write a very effective critique of both NVC and the New Age Spiritual movement.

I really need to do a better job of integrating this into my own practice.  Here’s an example – Destin Gerek recently had a radio interview with a guy named Robert Kandell, who is another in a long line of people who claim to be New Age spiritual leaders who are full of BS.  This guy claims to be leading the “New Masculine,” which as far as I can tell is where weak, accommodating men get together a recite feminist jargon in the hopes of getting approval sex from women.  Oh, and he charges a bunch of money for his “coaching” to help men be as lame as he is if not more so.

So what, right?  The community is full of people like this.  And given Destin Gerek’s network of professional contacts, it was only a matter of time before he brought a spiritual BS artist on his show – it certainly won’t be the last, it’s almost impossible to avoid finding them.

So why did this evoke anger in me instead of amusement or just “meh?”  I could make up a million stories that aren’t true – oh, it’s because I’m writing this book about evolved masculinity and Kandell’s BS flies in the face of the real work.  But that’s not true.  If anything, that would just inspire me to work harder to beat the BS artists at their game.  It’s the energetic disconnect, that this guy’s energy is dragging people to Loserville, and that place doesn’t need any more citizens.

But the truth of the matter is, he’s not leading anyone anywhere.  He’s taking people who are already buried over their heads in spiritual delusion and denial and giving them the spiritual heroin they need to feel good as they continue walking their circular “path” in Loserville.  This guy couldn’t possibly bring anyone there because to do so he’d have to get far enough away from it himself to attract people who aren’t already stuck in spiritual denial.  One look at his Facebook group and it’s pretty obvious everyone’s heavily in spiritual denial, and nobody is a “new resident” brought in from the outside.  He’s in the middle of the circle jerk and making some money in the process.

So why get angry?  Amused, maybe.  Annoyed, sure.  But angry? I guess if I assumed this guy was more of a leader than he really is (which I initially did, based on my introduction to him) then I’d be disappointed to find out he’s just as bad as the others (which I was, but again only because I gave him status he didn’t earn based on false information).  So then shouldn’t I be a little miffed at Destin for introducing me to this guy as an elite leader when he’s a joke?  Yep.  And I was for a while.

Then I realized this was all my lesson.  I need to read the energy myself, I need to do the work myself and in an objective and clear fashion.  The anger was derived from my being lazy and relying on others to do this work. 

Same thing with NVC.  This was originally recommended by a coach I assumed to be high-level (turned out to be a nice person, but not a good coach, as most coaches aren’t, so I was pissed I wasted the money) who told me this shit was the best.  It turned out to be shit, and a waste of time. But the only reason I was angry was because I allowed myself to turn off my own judgment and ability to evaluate things from an energetic perspective and accepted someone else’s opinion, which turned out to be false.

In each case, the overall truth is the same – follow my own heart, make my own judgments.  Do the work, don’t try and delegate my journey to others.

NVC is BS – no big deal.  Good to share this information, but not worth getting worked up over.  Lots of coaches are spiritually damaged, most on a massive scale.  Again, not worth getting worked up over, just accept it.  And walk away from the BS, walk my own path.