December 8, 2013

December 8, 2013

Dear Reader, 

 

In NVB we always come up with some kind of problem, which, supposedly, needs to be solved. In SVB there are no problems and we like to keep it that way. SVB is effortless and can only be maintained by being natural and at ease. We have not  had much SVB. We have had moments in which aspects of SVB were available, but we have not had it in the sense that it continued. It could not continue, because it was not clearly defined. The belief that everything has already been said is a falsehood that is produced by NVB. At best, we had bits and pieces of SVB, but we can only know what it is unless we are capable of maintaining it for a period of time. Although our partial experience indicates the possibility of SVB to us, it can never really lead to it. In fact, partial experience of SVB has only caused us to have even more problems.

It is crucially important that we recognize that SVB does not cause any problems, but that accidental, momentary experience, as opposed to continuous, deliberate experience of SVB, creates problems. We think it solves problems, but it doesn’t. To only have glimpses of SVB is a curse from which we will not be liberated until we have the necessary skills to produce it on an ongoing basis. This curse is at work under circumstances in which oppressed people push for change. They want to have the power, because they think it will allow them to force the change they want to see happen. Historically, much, if not most, change was, in one way or another, coerced. An inevitable, long-lasting aspect of this process is that it is verbalized. However, that we can verbalize things does not really mean that we communicate. In NVB, we are verbally very busy, but we are not communicating at all. Again and again, the illusion is created that we are communicating, but sooner or later the bubble bursts again. 

SVB demonstrates that our political way of interacting is totally ineffective, destructive and outdated. It does not matter which political view we represent, as long as we produce NVB, we predetermine our communication in such a way that we will continue to increase our problems. Even the practice of non-violent communication is NVB. Regardless of what wonderful plans we have had to create a better world, our communication has not changed and could not change, because we did not know the difference between SVB and NVB. Indeed, the biggest opponents of SVB are those who are into peace and justice, who are religious, righteous and zealous. 

Ultimately, our claim to power is our belief and conviction that we know how to communicate. Because something more than this assumption is needed, we have remained incapable of changing our ways of communicating. All claims to power are false, because they signify that we do not know what communication is. Those who, with their wealth and influence, dominate the communication agenda, are as incapable of establishing and maintaining SVB, as those who believe that they are in the process of achieving wealth and influence, only in order to do exactly the same.  

Rich and poor, educated and uneducated, men and women, are equally deprived of SVB. The notion that we do not know what communication is, is embarrassing. It is appalling what we are capable of doing to escape our embarrassment about this. We kill each other over this matter. Our refusal to communicate is our most destructive habit. We believe our way of communicating is right, because others can be made and have been made to communicate our way. In NVB we believe in our own lies, because these lies have been reinforced. It is not that these lies can exist by themselves. Lies are maintained by people who were taught to have NVB.   

Once we are having SVB, we see that our religion, country, culture, political view, in short, our identity, is nothing else than our way of communicating. Once SVB is established, we can put our finger on things which previously we were incapable of addressing. Since our theoretical perspective will have changed, we can then finally have the conversation in which we together let go of our identity, which was verbal, not nonverbal. We will no longer be hypnotized by and fixated on the words, which refer to things and experiences, but which themselves are not these things and these experiences. We will re-establish the importance of the spoken word with SVB. 

We are carried away by written words, which supposedly describe and represent our reality. Our reality is more evident when we listen to the sound of our voice while we speak. Because production of sound is in the here and now and listening to our voice is in the here and now, SVB is making us and keeping us conscious. NVB was keeping us unconscious. We are disembodied communicators as long as our language is believed to exist separate from us. We are the givers of meaning to our words, which don’t make any sense in a language in which we are not skilled.    

Let me go back to speaking with you, my dear reader, in a more personal fashion. We both know when we have communication with each other or not. As long as one of us doubts whether we have communication, we are not having it. That we have not paid any closer attention to this very common situation, in which one of the parties involved in the communication is losing track of the other, is because nothing was stimulating us to do this. Now that you know the difference between SVB and NVB, you listen to your own sound while you speak. If you do not do this, you lose touch with yourself and others. Moreover, you will not even notice that you have lost contact. You will only notice that you have lost touch with yourself and with others after you restore it, by listening to your own sound. 

SVB is so simple that we fail to notice it. We miss it because we are conditioned to listen to others. We do not have much behavioral history in listening to ourselves. As already stated, the extent to which we were listening to ourselves has created more problems for us than it solved, because it did not and could not lead to the learning process that must take place so that we can maintain SVB for longer periods of time. Consequently, we associate self-listening with mental health problems. Since our experiences that make up our behavioral history have over and over again strengthened the link between listening to ourselves and all sorts of problems, we are not inclined to listen to ourselves. Furthermore, because listening to ourselves also signifies our failure in making others listen to us, we avoid it like the plague. Self-listening is considered to be for the weak, while NVB is for those who are strong, who can dominate others. NVB therefore is always based on the false promise that at one point in the future, the speaker is capable of completely dominating the listener. 

The wish of the speaker for absolute control over the listener is why most spoken communication is based on an ongoing struggle for attention. We want to be listened to and in our coercive attempts to make that happen, we create and maintain NVB. The control we seek in our communication is based on our misunderstanding of it. In SVB there is no need for control. Since we are not aversively influencing each other, the issue of control is considered as preventing SVB. NVB prevents SVB, it is just that simple. NVB has to be stopped before we can have SVB.  If we accept NVB and prevent ourselves from seeing it for what it is and what enormous havoc it has done, we again, like we have done before, will prevent SVB, real human interaction.