Watching Ourselves, Episode 202
Genuine communication is a kind of intimacy in which we let ourselves be changed and affected by the gifts brought by the other person we're communicating with. In this way it's different from other forms of speaking (convincing, making a point, offloading). And it requires of us a certain kind of receptivity not just to the other, but to what's going on with ourselves as we speak and listen.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might watch our capacity to receive while we're in the midst of conversation, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here's our source for this week:
“To communicate is to enter the other, while watching ourselves carefully, to enter without usurping…to usurp the other is to annul them, to prevent them from returning the gift; it is the refusal to accept their discrete word; it is to violate his inner home without allowing him to enter ours; it is the arrogance of someone who believes themselves to be an entirely fecundating force and refuses to receive. The univocal gift, without reciprocity… is not communication, but violation.”
MF Sciacca
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash