Here is the ad hanging on our meeinghouse bulletin board advertising Focusing and our Focusing group. I like it because it succinctly describes what we are about.
Learn Focusing Focusing is an attitude, a set of skills and practices, a philosophy, and a world-wide network. Focusing is the brainchild of the American philosopher Eugene Gendlin. He developed it as a way to help people tap into an inner source of healing and direction that we all can learn to access. At its simplest Focusing is asking another person or yourself how you feel about a particular situation but asking it as if it were a real question, and then taking the time to allow the feeling to emerge and to articulate it in its unique specificity. Many people realize that they have never taken the time to discover how they really feel. This simple act has a number of benefits. First, it feels good when we can articulate how we feel. It feels like a gift. While some of the things that come up in a Focusing session can be daunting, focusing teaches a way to be with even the most frightening issues. Afterwards we often feel as if we have participated in something sacred. Second, once feelings are acknowledged, they often change. So where we were stuck in a response that wasn’t very helpful, we discover a new way to be, a way to be that is not just in our head, but that we feel all the way down to our being. We gain a kind of freedom to be different. Third, we realize that instead of acting from our true feelings, we normally respond from the stock responses and stereotypes that our social environment affords us. To discover our real feelings is an act of liberation from society’s or our own self-imposed constraints. It is what the existentialists mean by authenticity. Focusing is ultimately a political act. We do Focusing with a companion because it is easier to take the time needed to do this work if we have the support of another person. Also, a companion can sometimes help keep us on track when we get sidetracked, especially if we start speaking from our "head" and lose contact with the feeling. To provide that help, the companion does not need to know the content or what the feeling is about. She needs only to be aware of how the focuser is affected by that content. The benefit in that is that the person doing the focusing can maintain their privacy. We have a Focusing group that meets the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays in the evening. The location varies. Since Focusing is so different from the way people normally operate, we generally recommend that people have some training in the process before joining the group. Contact [email protected] or call Andy Hoover at 245-2887 for meeting locations or to set up an initial training. Also, you can visit CarlisleFocusingFriends.weebly.com for information about focusing and our group.
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As someone who has spent a lot of time investigating connections between the Quaker inward light and focusing, I am attuned to other ways that this way of knowing has found cultural expression. Guy Claxton has some remarks on focusing in his book Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind (p. 172) that mentions some connections he has found:
[Focusing] is very akin to the Japanese concept of kufa which D. T. Suzuki in Zen and Japanese Culture describes as: Not just thinking with the head, but the state when the whole body is involved in and applied to the solving of a problem . . . It is the intellect that raises a question, but it is not the intellect that answers it . . . The Japanese often talk about ‘asking the abdomen’, or ‘thinking with the abdomen’, or ‘seeing or hearing with the abdomen’. The abdomen, which includes the whole system of viscera, symbolizes the totality of one’s personality . . . Psychologically speaking, [kufa] is to bring out what is stored in the unconscious, and let it work itself out quite independently of any kind of interfering consciousness . . . One may say, this is literally groping in the dark, there is nothing definite indicated, we are entirely lost in the maze. It may also have been Gendlin’s felt sense which was referred to as thymos by the classical Greeks. Located in the phrenes, again the central part of the body - lungs, diaphragm, abdomen - thymos is that part of a person which ‘advises him on his course of action, it puts words into his mouth . . .He can converse with it or with his “heart” or his “belly”, almost as man to man . . . For Homeric man the thymos tends not to be felt as part of the self: it commonly appears as an independent inner voice.’ [E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational] It appears that, in other cultures and other times, ‘thinking with the abdomen’ was a routine and familiar way of knowing. In the previous blog, I mention that I had found focusing easier once I realized that Gendlin's "Getting a Handle" is a second kind of felt sensing. The first kind invokes and discovers an inchoate body sense; the second asks what the quality of that first felt sense is. The second step is not description but a waiting for something to emerge, something more distinct than the first kind of felt sense. I have started calling them feeling-1 and feeling-2. In reading an earlier version of Focusing prior to the book, in an article entitled "The Use of Imagery in Experiential Focusing." published in 1970, Gendlin describes this 2-step process:
The usual first step, as above, is for the person to let himself down into the directly felt sense of "all that", the wholistically felt sense of his problem, trouble, or how he feels now. This fresh, global sense, is easily had, it is like the "thud" with which a whole confused trouble can come home to oneself, as one first recalls it. To let oneself down into feeling it all freshly requires that one must stop talking, both out loud and to oneself, and attend to the way it all feels. The second step of imageless focusing is to "let a specific feeling peak up from this global feel of all that." The individual is instructed to ask himself "what's the crux of it?" or "where am I really still hung?", but not to answer himself in words, rather to wait for a specific feeling to form, which is this crux. Often this occurs instantly - the global feel lasting only for a few seconds and then becoming a specific feeling. But sometimes it can be difficult to get a specific feeling to form.
Focusing and the Quaker Inner Light both entail “Aha” experiences, moments of sudden insight. You see that in the way early Friends described their experience. They referred to immediate revelation as the basis of their religion. Penington talked about receiving the well and waiting for its springing.
Focusing has its felt shft. But the felt sense and the handle are also discoveries that are like Aha experiences. Many people don’t realize that the handle is an Aha too. From “Third Movement: Finding a Handle” in Gendlin’s Focusing: “Avoid forcing words into the felt sense. Let it come to you with its own essence.” “Let words or pictures come from the feeling.” “You want the crux of all that, the special quality that comes up from it.” “This is what you are looking for: something that comes along with a body shift.” Gendlin doesn’t use Aha language, at least not that I know of. But he does insist that the handle come from the felt sense and that it come with a felt shift. Why does it matter that it is an ‘Aha”? The reason that it matters is that if you knew you were looking for an ‘Aha’ you would conduct yourself differently. John Kounios and Mark Breeman in their book The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain, p.213, say that “. . . broad diffuse attention facilitates creative insight.” So if you were looking for an Aha, you would want to purposely get into a state of diffuse attention. How does focusing facilitate that? By purposely not thinking anything in particular but feeling all that goes with a particular situation. You see this especially in the instructions for a similar process called twilight imaging, developed by Ira Progoff, which also nurtures an 'Aha' experience: "We do not at this point “think” of our life, but we “feel” it. We feel its movement in a general and flexible way. We specifically do not think about it, for if we did, we would only have the same thoughts on the subject that we have always had. We know from our experience that the self-analytic, self-judgmental thinking process tends to move in circular grooves, turning in upon itself and repeating itself. We wish instead to open the way for something new to enter our experience. We therefore do not do what we have been accustomed to doing. We do not think our lives, but we sit in silence and we feel the inner movement of our recent experiences without judgment. We do not direct our thinking, but we let awarenesses present themselves to us regarding this present period of our lives." Iro Progoff in At a Journal Workshop
The central message of Friends is immediate revelation, that God can communicate directly to every person without the mediation of words, either from other people or the Bible or for that matter even from a chain of reasoning. In describing this experience, early Friends often use the term principle.
“And as touching doctrines, we have no new doctrines to hold forth. . . . Now whereas many are offended at us, because we do not more preach doctrinal points, or the history of Christ, as touching his death, resurrection, ascension, &c.; but our declaration and testimony is chiefly concerning a principle, to direct and guide men’s minds thereto. . .” Penington, Works, v.3, p. 357 “Now the main thing necessary towards the redemption of the soul is, after the revealing of this principle, and some sense and feeling of it, and the turning of the mind towards it, to wait to be made more and more acquainted with it, that in the stirrings, movings, and leadings thereof, there be a ready giving up to be gathered into it, and guided by it.” Penington, Works, v. 2, p. 395. Principle is being used here in a sense unfamiliar to most people and so they may miss the point. Early Friends use it in the way that Aristotle uses it to describe living things: “It defines the things by whatever in them goes beyond our organizing and doing, whatever in them organizes their activities.” (Eugene Gendlin, “Ultimacy in Aristotle: In Essence Activity,” ) Principle as Friends use the word is close to the "whatever in them." An example of this is a seed, which has within it the principle that controls how a plant will develop. The key point is that this principle is independent of us and has a life and dynamic of its own separate from our own “organizing and doing.” Below is a quote that speaks to that point. Smith was a contemporary of Isaac Penington and an important influence on Friends. There are a sort of mechanical Christian in the world, who, not finding religion acting like a living form within them, satisfy themselves only to make an art of it, and rather inform and actuate it, than are informed by it; and setting it such bounds and limits as may not exceed the short and scant measures of their own homeborn principles, then they endeavour to fit the notions of their own mind as so many examples to it: and it being a circle of their own making, they can either ampliate or contract it accordingly as they can force their own minds and dispositions to agree and suit with it.. But true religion indeed is no art, but an inward nature that contains all the laws and measures of its motion within itself. A good man finds not his religion without him, but as a living principle within him; and all his faculties are still endeavouring to unite themselves more and more in the nearest intimacy with it, as with their proper perfection. . John Smith, “The Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion,” ch. 3 The main contrast is between a religion that we figure out intellectually from our own ideas and a religion that we know experientially because it is living and in us while at the same time other, not something that we devised. We only discover it and then cleave to it. Principle translates the Greek term arche, which we know from the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word..." Arche gets translated as beginning in John. It's related to the word archon, which was the name for the rulers in Ancient Athens. So it has the sense of being both a beginning and a ruler, kind of what we mean when we talk about a new administration. This is closely related to the idea of the kingdom of God as a new rule or beginning, only in the case of Quakers, the kingdom is found within ("I will write my law upon their hearts." Jeremiah, ch. 31, verse 33): "Head notions do but cause disputes; but heart knowledge, heart experience, sense of the living power of God inwardly, the evidence and demonstration of his Spirit in the inward parts, puts an end to disputes, and puts men upon the inward travel and exercise of spirit by that which is new and living, and avails with God." Penington, Works, v.3, p. 357. While we don't control the power of God that touches us, we can cooperate with it by feeling after it and giving up to it. "And this sensible plant of God's renown being thus entertained, and being not afterwards grieved, despised, quenched, or hurt by the giving way to, and letting in that which is contrary to it, it shooteth up into a kingdom of righteousness, within the compass whereof, and under the shadow whereof, the soul sitteth down in peace and rest, and is defended and nourished with that which is pure and living, and full of the pure sap and virtue, and so becomes strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, against the power and strength of darkness. Now, this all men may experience (at first in some low measure and degree, and afterwards more and more) as they come to feel after, and have a sense of that which is of God and good in the heart, and come to join and give up to it." Penington, Works, V. III, p. 257. I was asked to be a stand-in for a friend two weeks ago at a neighboring meeting. They were looking for someone outside of their meeting to talk about meeting for worship during a Religious Education hour. I didn’t realize at first that they wanted me to speak about meeting for worship so when they asked me for a title, I suggested “On Being a Born-again Quaker.” Among liberal Quakers I figured that that would be a provocative title but I also thought that it would give me an opportunity to talk about this intriguing quote I found in an 18th century book by a guy named Joseph Phipps. The book has been described as the most important Quaker theological work of the 18th century. The author, Joseph Phipps, is fairly unknown today, but according to at least one Quaker historian, almost every meetinghouse in America at one time had a copy of Phipps. My shortened version of the quote goes as following:
the soul of man hath not only a faculty of cogitation, by which it ordinarily thinks, unites, divides, compares, or forms ideas, but also a latent power of internal sensation, or of perceiving spiritual objects by an inward and spiritual sense, when presented through a proper medium; which, till the beams of Divine light shine upon it, it must be as totally unacquainted with, as the child in its mother’s womb is with its faculties of sight and hearing. . . . Thus born of the spirit, into this proper medium of Divine knowledge, the soul is made acquainted with that spiritual sense it could neither discover, nor believe pertained to it, whilst in its natural state. This is no new natural faculty added, but its own mental power newly opened and brought into its due place and use. Words are inadequate to the expression of this internal sense felt in the soul under Divine influence. It cannot be ideally conveyed to the understanding of the inexperienced; for it is not an image, but a sensation, impossible to be conceived but by its own impression. Joseph Phipps, The Original and Present State of Man, I wanted to use the quote as a lead-in to talk about the strange kind of knowing that is peculiar to Quakers - a knowing that is sensed or felt, that is bodily, that is strange, and that is in some way independent of our own will. And I wanted to suggest that Focusing points to the same kind of knowing and that Focusing provides an effective way of helping people come to experience this strange kind of knowing. But the thing I find truly amazing is to find the leading Quaker of his day saying that coming to know this way of knowing is the entry to the kingdom of God. And that this way of knowing is available to everyone, but that the problem is that they just don’t realize that it exists. Which is exactly what my experience of this way of knowing was - it was always there but I didn’t know it existed; I didn’t know how to access it. And it has been a key to my life being transformed. Discovering this way of knowing is like being born again. I didn’t include this in my handouts for the talk but there is another lovely quote from Phipps that helps to illustrate the kind of affective experience we are seeking in meeting for worship and in Focusing. It has echoes of Paul from Romans 8.28: Our Lord shewed his Disciples, that the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, should not only bring to their Remembrance what he had told them, shew them Things to come, and lead them into all Truth; but it should likewise, reprove the World of Sin, of Righteousness, and of Judgment. Whether this Divine Visitor appears to the Mind of Man, in Words, or without Words, by the Sensations of Compunction and Remorse; whether in the Sharpness of Reproof, or the healing Touches of Consolation; whether it manifests itself as Light, or sheds its Life and Love into the Heart; whether it darts upon it as Lightning, or settles it in a Holy Serenity; fills it with Faith, or inflames it with Zeal; in all these Ways, seeing it proceeds not by Messenger, but by its own immediate Communication to the rational Soul of Man, it is properly stiled internal immediate Revelation. This Divine Principle is a living Source of Truth and Virtue in Man, without which Laws and Precepts would little avail, and when, through Faithfulness thereunto, it is enlarged and advanced over all in the Soul, it is found to be a sure Foundation, which neither the Wisdom of the Wise, the Reasonings of the Confident, the Jugglings of the Crafty, the Derision of the Reviler, the Rage of the Persecutor, nor even the Gates of Hell can prevail against. At its simplest focusing is asking yourself how you feel about a particular situation as if it is a real question. This involves
- healing - feels healing to own our “real” feelings - growth direction - can come to sense a new way forward; way opens - New light - Comes with a sense of discovery - feels new or fresh and like a gift For example
American philosopher Eugene Gendlin had a thesis about where new “meaning” comes from. The book based on that thesis is called Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning. Gendlin wanted to try out his thesis on psychotherapy as he figured that successful psychotherapy involved altering current meaning construction. He worked with a research group at the U. of Chicago centered around Carl Rogers who was developing what became client-centered psychotherapy. What the group at Chicago found was that college freshmen could learn to identify who would have a successful experience in psychotherapy after 2 sessions. They discovered that success didn’t correlate with the therapist or the theory behind the therapy; rather it correlated with a kind of skill, something some clients already knew how to do when they entered therapy. Gendlin wanted to know if you could teach that skill to people who didn’t already know how to do it - the crux was that they seemed to be validating their words against some kind of internal “experience”.
Focusing is the result of that effort to try to teach that skill that successful psychotherapy clients already seemed to know how to do. It was designed to give therapy away for free. Focusing is a (1.) Scaffold for learning how to do this - Gendlin’s 6 steps; (2.) An accumulated wisdom of helps and hindrances in doing this. (3.) A skill/resource you can call on as needed and that becomes more skillful with practice. |
AuthorI am Andy Hoover. I was first exposed to what would later become focusing as a college freshman in 1972. I can't say that I understood then what it was about. About a decade later, when I came across the Focusing book, I was researching "right-brain" practices as the key to religious experience. Focusing was a perfect fit. I became a Quaker because I came across Quaker writings that sounded a lot like Focusing. Archives
May 2019
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