Following up on last week’s Tip, Dana Ganihar wrote to give another example of saying we know something:
"I was focusing, and the process was stuck. I knew I was not in Presence, but didn’t know what I was identified with. It’s like the knowing you forgot something but not knowing what it is. So I said: "I acknowledge I’m identified with something" and right away I felt heaviness in my chest, and a young girl appeared there, what a relief, now I could turn to her…and of course a very meaningful process happened."
Focusing and Life Purpose
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Birrell asks, "Can Focusing be used to find our life-purpose? And/or the next step towards it?"
Dear Birrell,
So… let’s approach this question by the back door. Let me invite you to sit quietly… bring your awareness to your whole being as you sit there… and ask yourself, "How do I know I’m not already following my life purpose?"
That’s not a trick question or a rhetorical one. We seriously want to know where and what it feels like inside, the "knowing" that THIS (your life right now) isn’t IT yet.
I put the word "knowing" in quotation marks because of course this is not the typical conscious knowing that could be articulated easily. It is the funny Focusing use of the word "knowing" where plants have a knowing of their next steps, and so do we…
So this kind of knowing almost certainly doesn’t have words yet and feels something like uneasy, queasy, murky as you ask inside "What makes me feel like I need to find my life purpose?"
Often, you’ll find that the inner uneasy feeling becomes a "knowing" that whatever your life purpose is, it would have to include … that (fill in the blank).
But every now and then, from that same inner invitation ("What makes me feel like I need to find my life purpose?"), you’ll discover instead that it was outer voices that were pushing you about Life Purpose, and really, you’re perfectly happy just living your life one moment at a time.
For more about the concept of outer voices and the Focusing method of asking what you DO know, see the wonderful book by Helene Brenner, I Know I’m in There Somewhere, which I like so much I sell on my website.