The awareness I received from my Focusing session “The Next Day … “ moved exponentially to deeper spread. It is touching on how is Focusing perceived and used among us. And Gene’s words constantly echo from my felt sense. Almost as if he wanted to make sure that we understand there is more to Focusing than meets the eye.
He is saying about himself: ”The relation to the ultimate is NOT my mission to talk about. You know, Focusing is a little door that’s what I know about, and once you’re through the door you’re on your own. I go through that door sure I do. But I’m a customer when I get to the other side. I’m looking for what I need just the same as you.” *1
The point he is making – finding your felt sense and Focusing – you will feel better. Or at least different than when you started. No doubt about it. But that only opens a new door. Gene says “What you do there is up to you. I am customer there too.”
It resonates. Yes. It feels it is like a gift and opportunity.
Situation we are presently living feels to me like planet is groaning and also pulsating. Everything is changing. It seems everything is upside down.
I notice on the desk beside me my saved Australian beer coaster souvenir which says “I believe the world is round & down under is on top”. A smile … let’s have a lighter spin on it. Are we, as evolving human species, re-learning what is up and what is down? What is right and what is wrong?
Many things are right and will carry on the same. And also what is gone is gone – what can be replaced with is wide open? And in the middle of it as we are, the signs are already showing up …
The sky above Wuhan turned from grey to blue – almost overnight. As if the earth is saying “Phew!! And people there are saying “Oh Wow”!
We are forced to learn that isolation can save us from the tiny virus …
And perhaps force us into finding our own responsible selfhood?
The rules and laws imposed on us right now from “above” – authorities and governments is civic novelty for many. Our “free to chose my own damn ways and to hell with anybody else” attitude suddenly becoming punishable. And all at once, we realize that we are not really isolated but working alone together for the bigger global purpose.
Tiny virus – with power greater than all we developed through millennia?
Not all we developed is all that good after all – seems to resonate. Some is floating away.
And then I muse … well if that tiny virus can get attention of the whole planet, can there be a space for Focusing “molecule” to bring balance out to societies?
How? Is the question. But … it is already happening … it is not always called Focusing but it is moving in the life forward direction.
It seems that in Gene’s work “Action steps” are missing. He repeatedly acknowledged it. There is probably important reason he did not develop that action step #7 for Focusing. I can see that from Gene’s Philosophical position, action steps were not viable to conceptualize at the “edge of not knowing” and “…” .
Yet in some ways he did develop action directed practice with TAE – an opportunity to do something at the newly opened door. He is pointing to it over and over.“*2
At the first “Inception of TAE” workshop he is exhaustingly trying to bring that point through. In my memory from the first workshop in 1999 there was a lot of ingrained resistance from focusers present at the workshops. Originally including me at the time. My unease came to me as – “what is Gene doing with the sacred felt sense as we understood it”? Others at the workshop are challenging him too. You can get the feel of this experience in clip “FELT SENSE has unfolding possibility *3”.
After the second annual TAE workshop a great insight came to me. What he called the felt sense, direct referent, “…” is a much larger … neck of the woods. In a Focusing session we just find a bridge into this magnificent reality …
When big things happen big changes follow. It appears as Chaos. There are so many loses we all experience. Life is hard. Lot of suffering. We are all in it. And there are some big possibilities wide open to change the unavoidable expectations. What is each of us going to do at this newly open door?
What am I doing?
Well, I am taking courage to write this article and publish it.
From where I am the antidote to Chaos is to do my best to look for new order and “Stand up straight with my shoulders back” and face the future … for now.
Thank you JBP.
Nada
*1 MY RELATION TO ULTIMATE
SEE Gendlin on Youtube on Nada Lou website
*2 THE NEXT DAY
nadalou.com/the-next-day/
(“Universe found you (the one who is noticing something that got your attention), like a matching possibility, for something that is ready to be added to the world…)
*3 FELT SENSE HAS UNFOLDING POSSIBILITY
Gendlin – The organism is a kind of validity that we need to get clear, that attends to anything that carries forward…Come here and see that every articulation of a felt sense, is valid in the sense that it carries that person forward. And it’s also valid for me in the sense that I can cross with it…
*4 12 RULES FOR LIFE: An antidote to Chaos, Jordan B. Peterson
