More on Opposites and Focusing
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Janice asks: "I thought I understood what a 'felt sense' was until the 'tip' question about opposites. Now, I am no longer sure whether what I've been calling a 'felt sense' may be just feelings. On any given issue I can sense in one part of me a something that says 'yes' and over in another corner something is feeling 'no'. Seems like opposites. Sometimes I even notice peacefulness exists with the same issue that brings up anger."
Dear Janet,
Sure, we can find "opposite" experiences inside us. And for some purposes, that may be a useful thing to do. But the richness of Focusing opens up a field that is way beyond opposites.
Let me briefly give an example of what I meant when I said in an earlier Tip (June 3) that the concept of having an opposite works only when we abstract from, or move away from, actual lived experience. Let's say you are sitting at a café table talking to a friend. Are you the opposite of your friend?
You might be a woman and your friend a man. In that sense you could be considered opposites. But only if you are thought of as abstract categories–"woman"/"man"–separated from the complexity of your lived experience. The truth is that YOU as a whole person are NOT the opposite of your friend. Living beings do not have opposites–we are too complex.
And felt senses are like that too. Exactly like that. A felt sense is as rich and intricate and inexhaustible as a person is.
So let's take your example of "peacefulness" and "anger." As nouns used to describe emotional experience, those are also abstractions. Nobody ever feels JUST peacefulness. If you stop to really feel it, you'll discover it has texture, it has richness, there's a sense of the kind of peacefulness that it feels like. The same with "anger." It's really "like a kid throwing a tantrum anger" or "burning like ice anger." And even after saying that much, there is more.
I'm not saying anger doesn't exist.
I'm saying that "anger" is a category, and an actual felt sense is a unique individual. This is important, because most of us are in the habit of treating our own emotional life as abstract categories. We give our feelings labels. We don't know, because we don't stop and feel, how rich our inner life really is.
Focusing takes us away from categories to the subtle and deep textures of the here and now. That's real life. And that has movement and change inherent in it.