“Something in me doesn’t want to stir things up, or rock the boat.”
A student in a class today said to me: “For the last week and a half, whenever I start to do Focusing or even think about doing Focusing, there is a feeling of resistance, like I don’t want to go there, or something in me doesn’t want to. Like not wanting to stir things up, or rock the boat. There’s a peaceful feeling, or at least it seems that way — and it doesn’t want to lose that.
My response:
Something in us that has “resistance” — or as I like to re-phrase it, something that “doesn’t want to…” — always takes precedence. It is asking for a time-out, it says “wait, not yet, I need more time” — and that request always has the floor.
One way I like to phrase this is to say, “We cannot move faster than our slowest part.”
I don’t mean we shouldn’t move faster, I mean we CANNOT. We can try… if we’re taken over by an impatient part of us, we can try to muscle past the slow, reluctant, “I need more time” parts and try to make something happen!
But that simply doesn’t work. We won’t get where that part hoped we would. If they are not respected, the slower parts have other methods up their sleeves. We’ll find ourselves spacing out, going to sleep, shutting down entirely. For Focusing to work, we HAVE to be Self-in-Presence. There is no other way.
So a part that doesn’t want to “go in there” gets to keep its foot on the brake. OK, we say, we won’t “go in there” until IT is ready.
What to do in the meantime:
So what are you doing, when you don’t go faster than the slowest part? Do you just stop Focusing?
No, not at all. You are still Focusing. But you are Focusing with IT.
You don’t go past it…you stay with it. You sense how IT feels. You let it tell you or show you what it is worried will happen, if you “go in there.” Maybe it wants to let you know its tired of turmoil. You would let it know you hear that… and listen for more.
Staying with this part, to get to know it better, can actually shift the whole system. We are respecting it, we are not going into the place it doesn’t want us to go — but we are also not merging with it.
If you don’t turn toward a part like that with awareness, it can keep you away from your process indefinitely, without anything happening at all. But if you respect it, acknowledge it, and stay with it, then ITS process emerging becomes what your whole being was waiting for.
