Searching For the Waters of Antiquity

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~ Mother Teresa

“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
~ Albert Einstein

From a spiritual standpoint, communication is probably the most important thing we do everyday. We all think we do our best to convey our thoughts about ideas to each other and for the most part we do. We send out a message to someone and sometimes we are lucky enough to find out that we have been heard. We may even feel that the other person has interpreted our message exactly in the way we meant to convey it. Only when things are not working do we stop to assess.

What typically happens is that the receiver gives a nod or eye contact and we believe the receiver understood us. Unfortunately that is not always the case. So there we go down a rabbit hole in an endless cycle of messages that go haywire leading relationships, business and families down a sinking hole of mistrust. This is why communicating well is so important to us. But how does it affect our spiritual selves? What makes it so essential to our daily lives, personal, business and spiritual? More importantly, why is it so difficult to make ourselves understood by the opposite sex, or in business and even within the same family? Because we all come from different perspectives, using different lenses to address the issues at hand. We wear diverse hats with varied backgrounds, come from sub- cultures and different perceptual experiences.

Each of us in our individual professions such as law, accounting, medical, business, human resources, construction, marketing, social services, (the list is endless) has a culture and language of our own. We have shortcuts to talking to each other and each of us comes to the table looking through the lens of their profession. Crossing over to the perspective of another profession, a culture within itself, is complicated. Then factor in all of the other subcultures: race and ethnicity, corporate culture, regional culture (where you live), personal style, gender, and the waters get muddier. It is a wonder that we communicate at all! (more…)