I have had quite a block writing this next blog and as I sit here I feel alive with threads of curiosity to express and also a leap that is needed to grab one and pull …. Ok I have one, and it is starting as Presence. I immediately go down to the bottom of my computer and want to switch or fiddle or check some other platform, even though my Presence, your Presence The collective Presence is so enchanting for me. I am in the middle of an incredible experience learning about the practice of Focusing which is cradled in being in Presence so that I am able to be with what emerges within myself and with emerges within you when we focus.
The Focusing mantra is that when I am not in Presence I am blended with my inner experiences and unable to be with them in an organic way that allows unfolding. These inner experiences are tricky to describe and may get lost in translation so I am best to use some words of others: Eugene Gendlin, the philosopher and psychologist who coined the term, describes it this way:
A felt sense is not a mental experience but a physical one. Physical. A bodily awareness of a situation or person or event. An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time—encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail. Think of it as a taste, if you like, or a great musical chord that makes you feel a powerful impact, a big round unclear feeling.
He continues,
A felt sense is usually not just there. It must form. You have to know how to let it form by attending inside your body. When it comes, it is at first unclear, fuzzy. By certain steps it can come into focus and also change. A felt sense is the body’s sense of a particular . . . situation. . . . It is a body-sense of meaning. (1981,10)
More to be revealed.
Much love,
Kate