Power-Over leads to punishment and violence. Power-With leads to compassion and understanding, and to learning motivated by reverence for life rather than fear, guilt, shame, or anger.

The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking.

People heal from their pain when they have an authentic connection with another human being.

Every moment each human being is doing the best we know at that moment to meet our needs. We never do anything that is not in the service of a need, there is no conflict on our planet at the level of needs. We all have the same needs. The problem is in strategies for meeting the needs.

To do this, you can bring in nothing from the past. So the more psychology you've studied, the harder it will be to empathize. The more you know the person, the harder it will be to empathize. Diagnoses and past experiences can instantly knock you off the board. This doesn't mean denying the past. Past experiences can stimulate what's alive in this moment. But are you present to what was alive then or what the person is feeling and needing in this moment?

Often, instead of offering empathy, we have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling.

Public education for some time has been heavily focused on what curricula we believe will be helpful to students. Life-Enriching Education is based on the premise that the relationship between teachers and students, the relationships of students with one another, and the relationships of students to what they are learning are equally important in preparing students for the future.