Impact of Jackal Institutions

Today I have been thinking about the effect upon us from living and working in Jackal organizations. For those of you who might not be familiar with the term, "jackal," here is a definition I like from NVC trainer LaChelle Charde:

"In NVC we use the term jackal to refer to any type of thinking, language, or behavior that disconnects from feelings and needs. Some common forms of jackal language and thinking include: judgment (“you are a loving person”), demands (“I don’t care what you want, just do as I say!”), denial of responsibility (“I have to, it’s my job”), and deserve (“You deserve a promotion”)."

Approximately three years ago I said "goodbye" to my last jackal workplace (i.e. my job). While this particular workplace had many attributes that I appreciated, and many people who shared my values, in essence it operated like most organizations in this world -- under the domination paradigm.

Walter Wink writes extensively on this topic, and also NVC founder Marshall Rosenberg often speaks about the difference between the domination paradigm and the partnership paradigm.

I have created a chart that differentiates these two paradigms and you can see it here (PDF) or here (Word).

In any event, I see a number of my friends and colleagues who are involved with NVC attempting to live in both worlds -- holding a job in a jackal institution while also sharing NVC part-time... and the craziness this can create in our lives.

I spent the better part of 9 months nearly going insane myself -- working my day job from 9-5 four days per week, and squeezing in teaching NVC in the evenings and weekends. I became incredibly fatigued, not just due to working 60+ hours per week, but largely from attempting to navigate these two paradigms, back-and-forth, on an ongoing basis.

Recently, I led a teleclass through the NVC Academy designed to support and assist people wishing to make NVC a livelihood. I feel hopeful that I can help others establish a sustainable income stream so that they can minimize the craziness I experienced.

NVC Barnstorming Tour

Lately I have been both exhilirated and overwhelmed by the amount of NVC training I have been facilitating. At the moment, it's Saturday evening and I just completed 1 1/2 days of a 2 1/2 day training in St. Louis, MO with my partner, Rhonda Mills.

We have a group of approximately 15 participants, including people from Iowa; Chicago, IL; Carbondale, IL; and Indianapolis, IN. I am enjoying the ease with which I find myself modeling NVC skills and living the consciousness -- all of this dedicated effort since April 1999 is paying off for me!

Over the past month, I have led a number of NVC sessions -- for the Community Arts and Media Project; 2 sessions at the Soul-Esteem Center; 3 for social workers in Southern Illinois; 2 for a Religious Science Church in St. Louis; for Earthsave in Cincinnati; and now this weekend training.

I feel gratitude for being able to give my deepest gifts through this work, and living in alignment with my mission in life. Now my task is to learn how to remain in balance, given that I have more available work than I have time to do.

Are Jackals "Bad?"

In NVC circles, we use the jackal as a symbol for language that separates and alienates from the life in ourselves and others.

Myself, I cherish and adore the use of animal symbols and puppets for teaching purposes -- they create aliveness and playfulness that contribute to connection in many learning environments.

Yesterday, after a 2-hour presentation of NVC for Earthsave of Cincinnati, Ohio, one woman expressed to me her discomfort with casting the jackal as a "bad" animal, and worried that this might actually translate to real-life jackals being punished or harmed as a result.

I am grateful for her feedback, because it reminded me of how much I want to be clear when using these animal symbols that there is no such thing as "good" or "bad" when living NVC consciousness.

In my view, to suggest that Jackal communication is "bad" is to reinforce the very kind of thinking we are trying to transform when we practice NVC! ...the kind of thinking that would lead us to "jackal" ourselves whenever we are unable to muster giraffe consciousness.

Nonetheless, it can be challenging for me to be entirely free of dualistic thinking around Jackal and Giraffe consciousness (another way to say this is Life-Alienated and Life-Serving communication). Despite my continual reminders to myself, occasionally I still fall into the trap of thinking that Jackals are bad and Giraffes are good. Eeks!

Coming back to this woman's concern about wild jackals being treated in violent ways -- I share that concern, and want to continue to liberate myself from any dualistic thinking about jackals so that I can purely present these animal symbols as two ways to approach communication, with predictable consequences, rather than a right way and a wrong way.

Experience of Community with Like-Minded, Like-Hearted folk

Last night I co-facilitated a monthly NVC community practice session with my partner, Rhonda Mills, at the home of our friends, Jim and Michelle.

Nine people participated, and I enjoy this group so much because it is informal, practice-oriented, and an experience of community that nourishes me. Since I moved to St. Louis nearly 2 years ago, I have been frequently been lonely for like-minded, like-hearted community.

Part of that is due to my intense and frequent travel schedule, both for NVC trainings I present all over (both in the U.S. and now in Japan and Korea) and for the first year for my graduate program in Spiritual Psychology I traveled for 9 times each year to the Los Angeles, CA area.

And yet, it has also been a struggle for me to connect with people in St. Louis who share my values and visions about life. Last night was a very, very nurturing experience of connecting with others who are on a similar path. I am celebrating community and the joy that it brings to me!

Apparently able to muster enough presence

On Tuesday of this week, I facilitated the first session of a 4-week class at the Soul-Esteem Center, a New Thought-oriented church in the St. Louis area. The co-founder and lead minister, Phyllis Clay-Sparks, uses the term, "spiritual confidence," which is inspiring to me.

I went to this class tired, spent, and a little burned out from a lot of trainings lately, and honestly was worried that I would be able to muster enough presence in order to connect with the participants and give them a taste of the magic of Nonviolent Communication.

In fact, I arrived just a few minutes prior to the class start time, only to find several of the participants wandering around the building, attempting to get inside -- except I had the key to open it. Quite an auspicious beginning!

Thankfully, I remembered something that have been a saving grace for me countless times when presenting NVC -- my own vulnerability. I didn't have much in my tank other than this, so I began the class by telling people my name and my present feelings and needs. I said something along the lines of, "Hi, my name is Jeff Brown, and I am the facilitator of this class. I am feeling a great deal of anxiety and nervousness, both because I don't know any of you and I long for connection; and also because I feel agitated from not taking care of myself. In fact, I am mourning how I have not been nurturing myself and feel scared that this might impact your experience of the class tonight. I'm curious how it is for all of you to hear this -- could a few of you tell me how you feel right now, after hearing me tell you this?"

What happened is what usually happens -- a long silence. Having gained some energy from revealing myself vulnerably, I had enough energy to silently empathize with people. I imagined that they were somewhat shocked to hear a presenter begin a class in this fashion; that they were integrating what they heard and needed a little bit of time to process it; and also that they might be feeling nervous about revealing their own feelings to other people they didn't know yet either.

I remained in silent empathy for what I would guess was 20 or 30 seconds -- it seemed like a half an hour! -- and eventually someone spoke and told me that it was refreshing for them to hear the "authority figure" (i.e. the teacher) be so open about his/her feelings like that. Another person chimed it and said that it helped them relax and feel more comfortable being there.

I am continually struck by the, "Power of Vulnerable Honesty," and the effect it seems to have on relationships. My friend and fellow NVC trainer, Glenda Mattinson from Toronto, calls it, "Compassionate Honesty," and I like that term very much, too.

I have found that I become a very powerful being when I am able and willing to open myself up and share what's inside of my heart, absent any blame or judgment of others (or of myself). This represents a radical shift from what I was taught as a boy -- namely, that vulnerability is a weakness and that it's something shameful. NEVER allow yourself to be vulnerable, I learned. What a radical paradigm shift!

NVC in Rockford, Illinois

This past weekend (May 9-10) I was in Rockford, Illinois for a few NVC events. Rockford is a place that Marshall Rosenberg traveled to twice each year for 20 years during the time he was developing NVC while living in St. Louis, Missouri (my current hometown) and elsewhere in the 1970s and 1980s.

I led a 3-hour introduction to NVC on Friday evening, and asked for a show of hands of people in the room who had been with Marshall in person, and several people raised their hands and shared anecdotes of how they went to one of his trainings 30-some years ago. I was honored they had chosen to be with me that evening!

Driving through Rockford for three days was striking -- such poverty, abandoned and burned-out buildings, poverty abounds in this Midwestern town that depended on the manufacturing industry, most of which has moved to other countries.

I also experience warmth and kindness that moved my heart. One time, I was in a carload of people being driven by Steve Meyerhardt , NVC practitioner from Columbia, MO, and a man driving a taxi gave us directions while we were both driving down the road.

Another highlight of the weekend was a meeting on Saturday of the Alliance for Nonviolent Communication, a regional NVC organization based in the Midwest that was begun by Myra Walden from the Chicago area.

The group is becoming increasingly structured and I feel the momentum and energy building -- it's palpable. There were people in attendance from four states (Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, and Georgia), which included Mark Feinknopf and Cynthia Moe from the Atlanta, GA area, who provided some insight and guidance based upon their experiences with the Georgia Network for NVC and Compassionate Communication of Central Ohio.

Sometimes, even though I criss-cross the country sharing NVC, I feel such loneliness and long for NVC community that I can sink my teeth into. I was so nourished by heartfelt connections with others this past weekend!

shared NVC with social workers

Yesterday, I led a 3-hour session on NVC for a group of about 25 social workers in Southern Illinois. These folks were involved in situations where children were being abused, neglected, and otherwise treated in ways that are not in alignment with my view of love, caring and dignity.

I was struck by how much pain the social workers seemed to be in, both about how painful it was to see so many children experiencing these situations, but also how frustrating it was to not be experiencing support and partnership with their supervisors in the way that would enrich their lives.

Ironically, three months ago I led a day-long session for these very supervisors (about 45 of them!), who were in a lot of pain about how the people they supervised (social workers) were not responding to them in ways that they experienced partnership and cooperation.

I find this to be the case frequently -- that people who are seemingly in opposition to each other have the very same needs!

I provided empathy to several of the participants, and also used honesty in balance with that. This is a growing edge for me, because in the past I would have been more inclined to stay with empathy... and stay with empathy... and then stay with empathy some more... but I discovered that this wasn't meeting my need for balance, nor others' needs for learning and effectiveness.

I find that when I remain in either mode (listening with empathy to others, or expressing my own compassionate honesty) over and over, before long I feel a nagging uneasyness that urges me to shift over to the other mode. And of course, the third mode of self-empathy is something that I draw upon before, during and after in order to provide a solid foundation to remain in the empathy/honesty dialogs with others.

I am happy that I get to work with the supervisors again, as well as another group of social workers, over the next two weeks.

Financial abundance and Nonviolent Communication

This past weekend I led a 2-hour teleclass through the NVC Academy titled, "Creating a Successful and Sustainable NVC Business."

I have long been struck by the discrepancy I perceive between one of the underlying beliefs of NVC -- that of abundance consciousness -- and how many trainers and facilitators who wish to share NVC with others in a way that also brings them support and sustainability for their efforts.

In short, what I'm talking about is that we are teaching abundance consciousness and living poverty consciousness. I have discovered a number of limiting ("Jackal") beliefs in myself along these lines. Here are just a few examples:

* Money is the root of all evil;
* Spirituality and money are incompatible;
* To be spiritual is to eschew money and abundance;
* Wealthy people don't care about the needs of others, only about making more money (and destroying the environment in the process);

No wonder I struggled for years with financial security and stability when thoughts like these were running my mind!

My dream is for anyone and everyone who wishes to create a livelihood sharing NVC to be able to do so and meet their needs for support, sustainability, and even abundance! I'm talking about first getting to a place where our basic needs are met, and then creating enough abundance to have the resources to create NVC retreat centers, communities, and other endeavors to make NVC all the more available to people around the world.

For example, what if there was $3 million available to open 7 retreat centers in Eastern Europe, each of which had funding for bringing trainings into the medical profession, education and nursing? Or, what if we had $500,000 to do the same in India or other countries with an economy that prevents many people from being able to afford traveling places for NVC training?