“Focusing is not just about me or my issues (or you and yours).”
Could some of the painful feelings we get be from OUTSIDE of us rather than INSIDE?
In our Guest Tip today, my friend Manjudeva, a gifted Focusing teacher and practitioner in the UK, writes about his realization that his sense of “wrongness” is not about something wrong with him.
The following words came to me during a recent focusing experience.
This sense of wrongness I carry inside is about what is wrong “out there.”
The “out there” I am talking about is the world — in particular, all that does not feel right in the world. And let’s face it, there are many situations out there that we know about that do not feel right. Climate change, the economic situation, the unsustainability of how we are living in this culture, wars, conflicts, abuse of women and children, human and animal hardship of many many kinds…the list goes on.
Strangely, a feeling of relief followed. So often, some part of me thinks that if I feel something icky and difficult that it is because of me, or because of some fault in me. (This part needs some company for sure!) But here was a clear message that this particular sense I have was not about me…It was about out there. Following the relief came a big sigh…about how huge the difficulties are that we face as a species.
So why is this important?
It points to a couple of key points.
Firstly the body we sense in Focusing is not just the physical body. It is the body in the world. We can never really separate the body from the world it lives in. Though we may go about our lives thinking of ourselves as some kind of unit, controlling out there, the reality is something very different. It is really not that separate at all. Just reflect on what we need to take in from the world in order to live; air, heat, food, water, and reflect on how the lack of those can take our life away in a moment or affect it profoundly. It goes further than this. The body we sense in Focusing is the one that is connected to and feels the whole situation it is in (and was in) in a definite and perceivable way. It has a knowing about it and about us in it. It has this always.
Secondly, Focusing is not just about me or my issues (or you and yours). People often associate Focusing with personal development and healing personal wounds — and it has much to offer these realms — but it is way bigger than that. It is about sensing the situation we are in — and in particular it can show us how something does not fit, or is not right or is missing…and it can show us some next steps, a way forward, even if they are small steps.
I am not saying that you alone have the answers to all the difficult things out there, or that it is easy to even sense what would be a right thing to do in the the face of such huge problems. What I am saying is that I and you sense that something is wrong with the world and it needs our energy, passion and body to help it.
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