While Marshall doubted that Giraffe was providing the flow in communication, that he liked, he came across the distinction of natural vs. habitual, made by Ghandi.
Time codes
00:00 Will people join us if we speak Giraffe to them?
We decide if there are jackals and if people join us
00:15 From the perspective of the Giraffe they are changed instantly – there are no jackals
Don’t mix demands and requests
00:31 When we keep speaking Giraffe the other will join us, unless they hear a demand
01:09 Wives – inspired by Giraffe communication – encounter husbands, who hear demands
02:06 When jackals hear a demand, they see their only choices as rebellion or submission
Don’t mix habitual and natural
02:46 I think Giraffe is a natural way for human beings to communicate. (Ghandi helped)
03:05 Gandhi said that natural is that what you gravitate to spiritually.
03:20 Gandhi said: “Don’t mix up that which is habitual with that which is natural.”
Empathy turns even a super-jackal into a giraffe
04:18 A woman in Stockholm: “My father is a jackal’s jackal.”
05:38 She put on giraffe ears: “Dad, are you worried because you want to be sure that I’m saving enough money to protect myself?”
06:03 The magic of giraffe ears! The other person will join me.
More from this workshop – see here.
Notes
Giraffe supports our natural tendency to make life more wonderful for ourselves and others. The phrase ‘making life more wonderful’ is another way to speak about the ‘love’ in the religious context, the ‘agape’ of the Greek or ‘compassion in word and action’. While we can be tricked into believing to find happiness in status, greed, sex, possessions, power and control of many kinds, the wisdom of a spiritual life often begins with seeing the illusion behind these strategies to a meaningful and fulfilled life.
Relationship thrives in true connection, felt connection in the here and now – and it depends on our true consciousness, on our awareness, on our focus – what is in our mind and in our heart. And thus – as Marshall put it in the introduction to this workshop – Jackal thinking and awareness actually interfer with a compassionate being in relationship, as he found out. It may be our habit and it may be tought at home, at school and at work and in the world at large, but Giraffe is actually in true support of the kind of relationship, where receiving and giving melt into the same concept, as Ruth Bebermeyer so beautifully put it in her song ‘Given to’.