Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Organization for Nonviolent Communication, often said in his training sessions that love is a noun not a verb: it is a word that describes a way of being. When love is perceived as a verb, we see it a as something we can put in a bucket and give to someone; when it is viewed as a noun, we experience love, we see others as love. Love describes them. Love describes a consciousness.

As long as you perceive love as a verb, you are thinking of another person as a separate object to give love to. When we are truly in love, we are in a simple state of “being” love.

—Ram Dass

Nonviolent Communication teaches us how to live this consciousness Ram Dass is talking about. Being love makes all the difference. It changes the way we think and how we filter our experiences. When we are being love, we are living a life of consistent peace, joy, and compassion. It is a way of being. Living as a being of love, we are able to see others in their light as an expression of being love, rather then seeing them in their darkness with information that allows us to treat them or speak to them in violent ways. We see the enemy image when we look at them through that filter and justify our judgements of them.

Blessings as we strive to live this love our teachers speak of . . .