I've been discovering Focusing lately--the book, the technique--and I've had some lovely results with it already. It works well for me in that it is body-0riented, allows a lot of space for my feelings while encouraging me not to drown in them or get lost in my thoughts and in analysis of my problems. It allows the wisdom of the body to speak. As I've started using it, I already find myself modifying it some to work for me.
Last night I did some Focusing on the feeling of a very angry child within who is holding onto my pain for dear life. I could feel that she is holding onto this because it feels like the only thing left i have to hold onto, and because it is a way of lashing out at life/the Divine for mistreating me, a form of revenge. "I will be in pain and shut down as a way of retaliating for being treated unfairly by life. I will refuse to shine and give my gifts to the world." It's a way of feeling some last shred of control in a world where i feel i have none, and of hanging onto something in a world i feel takes everything away. And it's a way of expressing my anger. It's a big Fuck You to the universe, and so that part of me says, "No way am i giving this up." I still feel robbed by life in some part of me, and i'm furious about it. And the anger is also a protection against feeling the loss too deeply.
I wasn't able to really shift it in a big way, doing the Focusing, but i was able to open some space around it, to bring some compassion and awareness to it. And that is very healing.
Awareness is the healer. I am seeing this more and more. It may work quickly sometimes or very slowly and gradually, but it is the gentlest and most effective healer--just bringing awareness to all these thoughts, feelings, behaviors. Awareness as a form of love and compassion. Like i tell people in my Contact Improv classes if they are feeling some pain in a part of their body, some stiffness or soreness or injury or lack of range of motion, to just bring a loving awareness to it, not to try to change it or need it to be different. This spacious awareness is both powerful and gentle, yielding and strong.
Sometimes i lose faith in it for myself, thinking i need something more dramatic to heal me, fearing i will never change these old bad habits, this painful conditioning.
Last night as i was feeling into wanting to hold onto my anger and pain in order to hold onto control, and the feeling of having no control over my life, i thought again about the metaphor of the dance that both my dream and E used. Life is like a dance. We don't know what's going to happen next. As my dream told me, the joy and fun are in the not knowing, responding moment to moment, feeling our aliveness and capacity for creative response. As E said, when we dance, we give ourselves fully to the dance, even though we know it will end. And this is how it is with life. Impermanence does not have to limit our engagement; it can enhance it. I've been having trouble with this.
But i realized last night that it's not true that i have no control over the dance. I looked again at how i am in my best dances. I have a tremendous amount of creative input and influence on how it goes; i can play with intention and allowing, as i have my students do in Contact Improv. We are not just passive subjects, being done to by our partner/life. We are half of the dance. So when i feel i have no control, it's really not true. I am a co-creator of my life. I can't dictate exactly how it will go, and that would take the joy out of it. But i can play with my desires, intention, creative input, and enjoy that play. In fact, life wants me to engage this way, responding with all of who i am to the dance.
Realizing this intellectually is one thing. Getting this in my body is another. This is where Focusing, dancing and other practices come in. I still don't want to give up my pain and anger.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Being Receptive
I've been thinking that the I Ching hexagram The Receptive is not only about the importance of deepening my connection with the feminine in me and with the Divine Feminine, but also simply about being receptive--listening, being open to divine influences and messages, receiving rather than doing.
So I come outside to sit on the porch again this morning, even though it's a cold, wet, windy morning. I bundle up, so i can sit and listen to the wind, which is very active this morning, so i can be outside. Important to get out of my head at least partially and more into my body, though I sit here writing.
A light rain begins with a sudden shhhhh through the leaves. Everything is soaked from rain all night. Now the rain turns heavier and the sound shifts. It is beautiful, simple, alive, real. Compare this to a computer screen. What are we doing to our lives?
I need more love in my life now, and it seems the way back to it is by falling in love with the world. I asked the dictionary several days ago (bibliomancy) what question to be asking re my unhappiness over J not calling me, and I got something about "solvere: to loosen" (within some etymology of a word). I took that to mean the question is "How can I loosen up around this topic and loosen my grip on it and him?" So I asked that question, and got the word "pansexual" as a response. I think it means the answer is to fall in love with everything.
Now the light shifts, brightens considerably. These changes are not signs we must decipher, but rather the story of the world being told, a sacred story that i am a part of, though it's become hard for me to feel my place in it. All i can do is listen, open myself to the wind and rain, these forces moving through the world, moving in me, if i wish to find my way back to my place in this pattern, to a self i can be happy inside of, to a love for the world and from the world. I can bring my pain and emptiness out here and lay it at the feet of the world.
It's not about reassembling a self, as i had thought. It is simply a paring away to get to the divine essence, to who i really am already and always have been, and letting that shine forth in all its radiance.
I sit here a long time without writing, listening to the rain, watching the way the wind moves the treetops, and i am soothed and stilled. I could sit here all day if i could be warm enough and patient enough and have the time, and i would learn and learn and learn in the gentlest of ways. Everywhere is evidence of Her beauty and of the inherent harmlessness of the world.
There is a profound dance going on out here between the wind, rain, trees and other life. I still feel alien to that dance, outside of it, having no place in it, so unlike it, but that is a lie, a misperception that needs healing. I look and think, How can i possibly be beautiful and wonderful and amazing like these trees dancing in the wind? I feel clunky, a mess, confused, awkward, out of joint with all this beauty and wisdom and perfection? How can i be party of it? How can i be made of the same stuff? How can i belong?
But the same thing that made these trees and rain made me. Somehow i do fit in, though i can't feel it. And my lack of feeling it is the origin of my loneliness and separation from self, others, Divine, world, and can be healed through connection with these divine forces dancing the world, dancing me. We are the dance; Life is the dancer. Let me be danced. Let me surrender. Let me feel the dance moving me.
So I come outside to sit on the porch again this morning, even though it's a cold, wet, windy morning. I bundle up, so i can sit and listen to the wind, which is very active this morning, so i can be outside. Important to get out of my head at least partially and more into my body, though I sit here writing.
A light rain begins with a sudden shhhhh through the leaves. Everything is soaked from rain all night. Now the rain turns heavier and the sound shifts. It is beautiful, simple, alive, real. Compare this to a computer screen. What are we doing to our lives?
I need more love in my life now, and it seems the way back to it is by falling in love with the world. I asked the dictionary several days ago (bibliomancy) what question to be asking re my unhappiness over J not calling me, and I got something about "solvere: to loosen" (within some etymology of a word). I took that to mean the question is "How can I loosen up around this topic and loosen my grip on it and him?" So I asked that question, and got the word "pansexual" as a response. I think it means the answer is to fall in love with everything.
Now the light shifts, brightens considerably. These changes are not signs we must decipher, but rather the story of the world being told, a sacred story that i am a part of, though it's become hard for me to feel my place in it. All i can do is listen, open myself to the wind and rain, these forces moving through the world, moving in me, if i wish to find my way back to my place in this pattern, to a self i can be happy inside of, to a love for the world and from the world. I can bring my pain and emptiness out here and lay it at the feet of the world.
It's not about reassembling a self, as i had thought. It is simply a paring away to get to the divine essence, to who i really am already and always have been, and letting that shine forth in all its radiance.
I sit here a long time without writing, listening to the rain, watching the way the wind moves the treetops, and i am soothed and stilled. I could sit here all day if i could be warm enough and patient enough and have the time, and i would learn and learn and learn in the gentlest of ways. Everywhere is evidence of Her beauty and of the inherent harmlessness of the world.
There is a profound dance going on out here between the wind, rain, trees and other life. I still feel alien to that dance, outside of it, having no place in it, so unlike it, but that is a lie, a misperception that needs healing. I look and think, How can i possibly be beautiful and wonderful and amazing like these trees dancing in the wind? I feel clunky, a mess, confused, awkward, out of joint with all this beauty and wisdom and perfection? How can i be party of it? How can i be made of the same stuff? How can i belong?
But the same thing that made these trees and rain made me. Somehow i do fit in, though i can't feel it. And my lack of feeling it is the origin of my loneliness and separation from self, others, Divine, world, and can be healed through connection with these divine forces dancing the world, dancing me. We are the dance; Life is the dancer. Let me be danced. Let me surrender. Let me feel the dance moving me.
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