Measuring our skill of presence for Jim Mankse’s matrix table of skills and skill level

Jim Mankse’s matrix table of skills and skill level doesn’t really name NVC at all, let alone relate assessment to NVC. Yet NVC is the core of the author’s lives and professions. So I wanted to fill the gap with joining them up with requests to measure in terms of NVC features, listed below.

I’ve said the foundation of NVC is empathy and honesty. The four components of NVC are OFNR (observation feeling need request). 

empathy (https://youtu.be/iMi7uY83z-U?t=748, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWdQ7mKsQIc&list=PLPNVcESwoWu4lI9C3bhkYIWB8-dphbzJ3&index=4) 

honesty (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPx4YLxulTc&list=PLPNVcESwoWu4lI9C3bhkYIWB8-dphbzJ3&index=3)

nvc missing from Manske

In addition, the mechanism in NVC is attention. The objects in NVC are self, other, humanity (including groups), within whom the core is needs. The skills in NVC are sensing and discerning needs, and freedom and imagination to choose responses or strategies meeting needs. The forces countering needs include the ‘jackal’ which a term for conditioning either to ‘domination culture’ (judgement, deservedness, punishment, reward, atomicity/isolation, etc), or to ego (innately creating similar to domination culture, and other avenues of disconnection).

(In moments of deepest self-reflection, Marshall Rosenberg portrays the energy behind needs as originating from divine energy, probably from his religiosity. For discussion and evolutionary purposes, I use the word ‘striving’ for a good enough collective term for non-partisan energy, whether it be behind needs or behind jackal. Marshall selected the term giraffe as the being expressing needs, and as the alternative to jackal – And he states our giraffe is not nice (A couple of minutes before https://youtu.be/UEqmZ2E1o64?t=6394), it is demanding and forceful in its striving to meet its (my our) needs)

(I like to conceptualise jackal as being left hemisphere, specific, model of self, ego. and giraffe as being right hemisphere, holistic, nonpersonal, model of everything. Ian MacGilchrist equates left hemisphere to being predator, targeted, specific, narrow attention, acquisition. And right hemisphere to being prey, broad attention, alert, pattern and anomaly seeking, big picture. Left hemisphere synesthetically equates to jackal. But right hemisphere doesn’t to giraffe, so I conceptualise giraffe as whole self, including left and right hemisphere, and therefore speaking and seeking needs from every part of self except jackal. This arises from my EsSample.com, where I model ego as a sub model of the whole model of self)

Here’s Jim’s short description of Presence with the ‘Integrated’ skill being unconsciously competent:
Relaxed alertness to what is happening in each moment, with a deep sense of purpose and choice; openness to what is, with resourcefulness, interdependency and a perspective of past and future.

When preparing session slides around this description, I felt impatience that a fairly seminal piece of NVC work was omitting words from NVC which enliven me, and which I felt important to communicating the essence of NVC with participants having less NVC in their life. So I added my words, and felt enlivened adding them.
At the same time I started preparing this LH weekly e-mail, and wondered who other host wanted to express anything or add a message. And then I wondered how we felt about my lines, shared them, and received answers of more enlivening!
So here we are with it in this weekly email!!

Here’s a longer description of Presence with my NVC words added
Relaxed alertness having no significant interference or hijacking from my jackal or my unconscious …
alertness to what is happening in each changing moment …
in the empathy, honesty and needs of myself and other and others around me …
with a deep sense
of purpose to work at that level …
of choice to attend, or not attend, to any associated response or strategy …
of openness to, and unconditional acceptance of, what is …
with resourcefulness to freely imagine responses or strategies meeting those needs …
with interdependency among myself and others and other groups and …
with a perspective of past and future as part of my holistic awareness, care and understanding.

References: Pathways to Liberation https://pathwaystoliberation.com/the-matrix/
Self-Assessment https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KPIvCD_XIGThKEsqZ-qKQwY0Op5pSe_r7uqksetW5FQ/edit?gid=10#gid=10

by unconditional acceptance, I mean with the greatest willingness to experience the situation, willingness to notice many resistances and distracting thoughts and to have honest intention to note them and let them go (and perhaps revisit them later). To be immersed in the situation without reservation holding back.

In theory, fullest acceptance with maximum antennae alerted, might result in no substantial response, and being able to leave the situation without memory of substantial response. But most of us by definition have a form, a shape some of which is sticky ego/jackal (wanting things its own way), most of which is structural ego protecting our whole self (such as evading unwanted drugs, or navigating out of unwanted violence, etc)

you can be fully present in environments of danger, where you are fully attending to physical needs of survival. But I said that such circumstances aren’t why we practice these NVC sessions. We practice these NVC sessions to connect without resistance or distraction. So I reckon being present in order to survive should be noted, but isn’t relevant to our sessions. when in trance or psychotropic drugs, much of our cognition especially conscious, is disabled or subverted so any report of being present in conscious attention wouldn’t probably be true. Introspecting to sense feelings and needs is mostly in the conscious sensing leaks from the unconscious of emotion and affect, with that 6th a sense of enteroreception of our own mind. by definition we can’t sense in our unconscious were trance and psychotropic change things

since I don’t feel jackal ego has the same (depth of) roots as giraffe (needs), then I feel they speak and be in different ways.

I feel it is your whole self who is alert, alert for both (shallower) chimp jackal sticky ego level, and (deeper) being’s needs (divine energy) and for the world and patterns which are neutral of both these two beings.

the first shallower part of us self-appoints as guardian of its interests, and we have to appoint a giraffe as spokesperson for that deeper part’s interests

yet i’m feeling that to anthropomorphise the deeper part with a form, even of giraffe, is to create friction and material that gets in the way of flowing into the energy and love below it where we come from. So I formulate and materialise giraffe only when there is a hardness in request & demand to meet needs, from myself or others. Otherwise I don’t materialise giraffe, and let myself flow and connect with that energy acceptance and love which it speaks for.

Thank you again Amy. The modalities you listed are places we can place our attention on to see if something is alive there. The wavelength we listen for with our attention are those feelings (jackal or giraffe) which smell of needs and that energy (and of affirmation in the wavelength of my EsSample). There are lots of other interesting sensations we might experience in other wavelengths, but we are focused on this nvc wavelength. I enjoy puzzle resolutions, creating, light bulbs, model resonance and matching, etc and so have to set these aside in sniffing out the taste of energy, affirmation and needs.
So you give us the palettes to attend to, and we develop our antenna and attention for detecting nvc stuff