“Can I invite a part to come forward that might have insight for me?”
Lesta writes: “I would like to know if the following would be OK.
“If I’m in the middle of a focusing session working on an issue, and a few parts feel resolved into a good place and nothing more is happening, then is it OK to ask for a part to come forward who (for example) has to do with or connected with what a particular experience I had on Tuesday that is unresolved with this person that I’m having this issue with?
“Or to ask a part to come forward who might have insight to a dream or vision I had about the same issue that feels yet unresolved?
“Or to ask if a part would come forward who might have some insight on what my contract is with that person I’m having an issue with. By contract, I’m referring to an agreement two beings made together before coming into this lifetime.
“If you could shed any light on this, I would most appreciate it.”
Dear Lesta,
When you’re doing Focusing, and one issue or topic feels ‘done’ for now…and you have more time…it’s of course fine to invite something else.
But you wouldn’t invite a part that has insight for you about something.
Instead, you invite a felt sense to form of some new topic or life situation. If there’s a person you’re having an issue with, for example, you might say, in your body, “I’d like to invite the whole thing about how it’s going with John right now.”
Or you could say, “The conversation with John didn’t seem to go well. How am I with all that right now?”
Then you don’t answer the question. Instead, you wait, with your awareness in your body, for your body to respond by giving you a felt sense. A felt sense is the fresh way you’re holding this issue right now — the “feel” of it.
If we’re used to getting thoughts or words, a felt sense doesn’t feel like much. It might seem to be just a tightness, or just an uneasy feeling. That’s it, though — that’s how it starts. From there, once you feel that, you make contact with it by describing it, acknowledging it, and then starting to sense how it feels from ITS point of view.
This is important because Focusing is about going beyond your usual thoughts and concepts into the direct here-and-now experience. That’s where real change can come.
You can get insight from Focusing, but you don’t invite that from a part
Yes, you can get insight from Focusing. But it wouldn’t be a Focusing process to invite a part that has insight.
In a way, ALL parts of you have insight, in the sense that they ARE your inner knowing about something in your life, something you are going through.
But if you invite “a part that has insight about X,” you are in danger of bypassing the Focusing process. You wouldn’t get a felt sense, and you wouldn’t have the opportunity of contacting the fresh, here-and-now, generative quality that makes a felt sense so powerful as a direct source of change.
Focusing brings insight AND change in a positive direction, all in one movement. That’s one reason we like it so much!
