Communicating with understanding.

Posted by Aundra

My experience indicates that blunt honesty with my feelings gives me greater empathy with other people’s feelings. My feelings appear to be a truer register of another person’s feelings than my intellect. To better get at what is going on in him I sometimes ask myself not, “What is happening in him?” but “What do I feel is happening in him?” In order to see more clearly what he is feeling. I at times have to stop listening to what he is saying, and what I am thinking, and look inside myself. Then if I speak from this feeling within, and tell him what I understand him to be saying, he will usually set me straight if I have not got it right.

I must do these things in order to communicate: Become aware of you (discover you). Make you aware of me (uncover myself). Be ready to change during our conversation. And be willing to reveal my changes to you.

For communication to have meaning it must have life. It must transcend “you and me” and become “us.” If I truly want to communicate, I see in you a life that is not me and partake of it. And you see and partake of me. In a small way we then grow out of our old selves and become something new. To have this kind of sharing I cannot enter a conversation clutching myself. I must enter it with loose boundaries. I must give myself to the relationship, and be willing to be what grows out of it.