It is often taught as a set of steps and phrasings for difficult conversations at work or at home. Rosenberg saw that view as a starting point, not the whole picture. In his words:

Rosenberg was clear about his intention for NVC. He saw it first as a spiritual practice: a way of manifesting love and compassionate giving.

Many people come to NVC as a talking technique for solving a problem. Rosenberg observed that the practice itself tends to take them further: "Even though we don't make a point of mentioning this, people get seduced by the practice." Over time, he said, "they begin to see that it's more than a communication process and realize it's really an attempt to manifest our spirituality."

Rosenberg's search began with dissatisfaction. He found his chosen field, clinical psychology, "pathology-based," and said it "didn't give me a view of the beauty of human beings." After his degree he turned toward Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, and asked himself "the scary questions, 'What are we and what are we meant to be?'" Finding little written about this in psychology, he took "a crash course in comparative religion" (Rosenberg, 2004, section "So NVC evolved in part from spiritual origins?"). He also drew on empirical research in psychology on the characteristics of healthy relationships, and on studying people who lived as loving people (Rosenberg, 2004, section "NVC came out of your desire to manifest love?").

His name for God is "Beloved Divine Energy," which he defines as "Life, connection to life." At first he called it simply Divine Energy; he added "Beloved" after reading Eastern religions and Eastern poets, whose "personal, loving connection with this Energy" he loved (Rosenberg, 2004, section "What does 'God' mean to you?").

This is not a distant deity. Asked about his favorite way of knowing Beloved Divine Energy, he answered:

The NVC focus on needs can sound selfish or needy. Rosenberg traced that impression to how we are educated:

For Rosenberg, needs are universal: "Needs are universal. All human beings have the same needs." He was exact about what a need is: "Needs do not contain any reference to specific people taking specific actions." Because they are shared, needs are common ground, and getting in touch with them resists domination. As he put it, "people do not make good slaves when they're in touch with their needs" (Rosenberg, 2004, section "What prevents people from just saying what they need?").

He linked this to his reading of the Buddha, whom he paraphrases as saying: "Don't get addicted to your strategies, your requests, or your desires." In NVC terms: "be careful to not get your strategies mixed up with your needs." We do not need a new car; a new car may be one strategy for meeting a need for reliability or peace of mind (Rosenberg, 2004, section "What religious beliefs, teachings, or writings have had the greatest influence on you?").

Rosenberg describes love as "giving of ourselves." He names two ways of doing it.

(Rosenberg, 2004, section "What do you mean by 'giving of ourselves'?")

The honesty he means is "honesty from the heart, not honesty that implies wrongness" (Rosenberg, 2004, section "How do we express what's alive in us?").

Rosenberg's confidence in the process came from his mediation work, and he described its outcome with one word: "inevitable."

In his account, when people connect at the level of their needs, they end up enjoying giving to one another. He reports seeing this between Serbians and Croatians, extremist Israelis and Palestinians, Hutus and Tutsis, and Christian and Muslim tribes in Nigeria (Rosenberg, 2004, sections "How do we overcome this conditioning?" and "We gain this connection to each other by knowing God?").

His confidence had its moments of trial. He recalled sitting with Serbians and Croatians who had lost family members to each other:

After three days of rage and pain, on the last of seven days the two groups danced each other's dances and sang each other's songs.

He also named the limit on speed. Of his work in prisons he said: "It may take quite awhile for someone being punished for a crime to really trust that I'm sincerely interested in what's alive in them" (Rosenberg, 2004, section "…isn't it hard to actually live by?").

One of Rosenberg's most important spiritual teachings is a warning against rigidity. He altered a Buddhist parable: a person uses a raft to cross a river on the way to a sacred place. The raft is a handy tool. But the parable ends: "One is a fool who continues on to the sacred place carrying the raft on their back."

Attachment to the raft has a cost: "If we get addicted to the raft, attached to the raft, it makes it harder to get to the place." Learners who decide NVC is "the 'right way' to communicate" risk the outcome he names: "If they get too locked into the raft, the process becomes mechanical" (Rosenberg, 2004, section "Then you believe that the language of our culture prevents us from knowing our Divine Energy more intimately?").

The booklet's title names its point. Asked whether religion and spirituality promote passivity, Rosenberg answered:

Seen through its creator's eyes, NVC is more than a set of communication tactics. Rosenberg presents it as a practical spirituality: a way to work against what he, following the theologian Walter Wink, describes as about eight thousand years of education that disconnects us from our compassionate nature (Rosenberg, 2004, section "Is this lack of connection to Divine Energy responsible for violence in the world?").

Its aim is giving that comes from joy. Rosenberg cites Joseph Campbell's summary of the world's religions and mythologies, "Don't do anything that isn't play," where play means "willingly contributing to life" (Rosenberg, 2004, section "What religious beliefs, teachings, or writings have had the greatest influence on you?").

This perspective invites a radical re-examination of our interactions: