December 29 2009 – Tip #209

"Do we ignore spirit's messages?"
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Roy writes: "I love Focusing, and feel very strongly that a fully embodied
presence is key to growth and healing, and that we can trust the wisdom of the
body. My question is this: Do we ignore spirit's messages, or more
esoteric messages, images or hunches,  while we are focusing on the
body? Not that there is a separation, but sometimes I just know things,
or get an image or a sense of something, but not necessarily from or through
the body. I have some psychic training, and I guess I am wondering if there can
be some way to overlap them, or is it suggested to stay with the physical
sensations and body feelings?  If feeling is healing, is seeing
also healing?"

Dear Roy,
It's a fascinating question. And it may turn on a question of definition. What do we mean by "body"?

Let
share a little story. Mary is deep in a Focusing process. Her eyes are
closed, and her hand rests on her stomach, because earlier she found a
heavy feeling of sadness there. She has been spending time just sensing
this place in her. Now we see her face lighten–almost as if the sun
has come out. "Oh, I see," she says. "I've been carrying my mother's
sadness, and I didn't have to!" She feels that insight as a lightness
all through her body, and she takes time to savor the feeling of relief
and release that comes.

Now… what was that? I call it an "insight." Where did it come
from? Would you, Roy, have called it a message from spirit? Would
someone else have called it a thought?

Here's my radical
statement: What we call it doesn't matter. Where it came from doesn't
matter. What matters is that Mary sensed her body's response to it, and
her body gave her a sense of lightness, relief, and release. That's
enough to tell us that this is a genuine Focusing "felt shift."

Someone
might say that "I've been carrying my mother's sadness, and I didn't
have to!" is not a body sensation. True. But who ever said that
Focusing is only body sensations?

We say that Focusing happens in the body.
This "body" we are talking about is large. I heard Gendlin speak
recently, and here is what he said about "body": "What the body really
is, is a process in all of
our situations." And that process includes all that we usually call
"mind," "thought," "image," or "insight." Maybe "spirit" as well!

"Sometimes I just know things…"

Roy,
you say that sometimes you just know things, and get an image or a
sense of something, but not necessarily from or through the body.
Absolutely. That happens in my Focusing all the time. And then I hold
that "knowing" in awareness, and get a sense of it. Or, as you say, it
already is a "sense of something." That is body, the larger "body" that we mean.

Focusing
is a body-oriented process, but that doesn't mean body as physiology,
body as symptoms, body without mind or thought or words. The body of
Focusing is large, wide, interactive, responsive. The "feel" of a
situation may not be located in the heart or the gut–it might take up
the whole room! And that's still the body.

I'm not saying
there's no such thing as a message from spirit. But if I'm Focusing,
I'd want to sense from inside my response–even to a message from
something larger than me.