I'm really excited. I feel like I am tapping into something which may have the power to change my entire life. I'm really really really really excited. I'm reading a book--I may have mentioned five million times already--called Nonviolent Communication. It was written by a man named Marshall Rosenberg. It feels important for me to get out the very very basic information, because I'm so excited my whole body is shaking. And I find it difficult to type and to be coherent when my whole body is shaking.

My partner and I are only on chapter 5 of this book. We're working through approximately a chapter a day. Every chapter so far has revolutionized everything about the way I even think of communicating. And communicating is the primary thing I do, even when I'm not communicating with people.

I wish I could be more coherent than this, but it's three-thirty in the morning and I'm terrifically excited. I think that this book will be extremely important to how I communicate in the future. And communication is central to everything about the way that I function, the way I process information, the way I interact with people, the way I relate to myself. It's really central to everything that I am and become. This book seems to be about how to be Buddha ("aware," mindful, compassionate, conscious of the interdependent-ness of all living beings, etc.) when I'm communicating, which may be the path for me into becoming Buddha in the rest of my life. Because communication is so central to who I, personally, am, it may be that finding more Buddha ways of communicating may put me more in touch with my entire Buddha nature. That may be the direction for me; it may not be for me to try to get at the vast entirety of Buddha nature first and waiting for that study to affect all different aspects of my life, such as communication, and the like. It may be that this is the way for me.

(It should be noted here that this book at no point in the first five chapters has mentioned the word Buddha or Buddhism at all, at least not that I can remember. I don't think that Marshall Rosenberg considers himself to be Buddhist. That I find his method of communicating very much connected to Buddha nature is my own thing.)

Not only do I think that this book will be extremely important to how I communicate in the future. It may be more than that. Reading it, I've been feeling like I'll need to read this book at least twenty times before I absorbe everything that there is for me to learn from it. (Maybe more than twenty times.) So, I looked in the back and it has references for where one can get more training in nonviolent communication. So I went to the website, which is just full of exciting, exhilarating resources. There are all kinds of trainings in Nonviolent Communication that happen all over the world. Now, I'm nowhere near mastery of this method of communicating, but already I feel passionately about my desire to learn and absorb and then spread the wonder of it. So, I continued ferreting about on the website and eventually I found a link to BayNVC, the Bay Area Center for Nonviolent Communication. It's In My Town!! A whole center with all sorts of ongoing programs oriented towards helping people learn and internalize and gain fluency in this method of communicating. And fees are on a sliding scale and there are work exchanges available and scholarships and the like and at some point, if I continue along with the loving this as much as I do, I might be able to take the trainings to become a certified NVC trainer and then help to teach people how to communicate in more peaceful ways and really hear and listen to one another and really express what they mean without hurting each other--it seems a really extraordinary path towards making the world a more peaceful place! And I'm really excited. This really could change the *entire* course of my life! Do you see?

Check out the book. You can order it on it's own website, http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com. I warn you that it's a little cheesy around the edges. And there are clouds on the cover of the book. Don't be daunted. Plunge on. I really think it might blow you away.