What is focusing?
Have you ever left the house and suddenly notice that something is not working?
If only ever…
You can ignore that feeling or stop; give yourself time and connect with the guide that is within you and… wham! That’s how you realize you forgot to take the keys…
Do you only connect if you stop to listen to yourself?
…And in those five seconds of connection with yourself, the body, which noticed that something, has let your conscience know.
Wasn’t that mere intuition?
That connection process is Focusing, systematized by the philosopher Eugene Gendlin, with whom I studied in New York.
And can it be learned?
And teach and for the first time here, in Montserrat. It is more than intuition because Gendlin studied it and systematized it.
How did you come to think of it?
He realized as a child in Vienna that his father made decisions without a logical basis, but correct ones: he thought-intuited-decided, like when you stop and remember where the keys were.
Mind-body connection?
And a whole system to which he gave formal and philosophical rigor. And already emigrated to the US, he worked with the psychologist Rogers in “body focus”.
Why is it more than just reasoning?
Because the process of experiencing, feeling life, living… is prior to reasoning and contains it. To connect like this with our self is to connect with experiences not only ours but also those of our ancestors and, in our DNA, even Neanderthals…
Is my grandmother’s experience mine today?
And the questions and answers of your life are in that connection; but the body is slow and intermittent when emitting its signals, weakened by stress, rush, anxiety…
We live pending ubiquitous screens.
Because we are more attentive to external messages than to what happens inside us… That’s why it’s urgent to reconnect.
Do you have to take and give yourself time?
But now! Because Focusing, as a philosophical tradition, knows that what happens happens in the moment and that if we want to change something in the future, we have to change it now, because you are living now, not later.
How to get that connection?
Explore your sensations of the now – heat, cold, nervousness or relaxation: all and any – so that their energy, which you will capture if you pay attention to it, will make you advance in the process of being you.
Doesn’t mindfulness also try it?
Mindfulness is paying attention to be in the present; Focusing is identifying and attending to those sensations until you connect with the crew member inside you.
Is it about transcending the ego, as Buddhism preaches, or connecting with it?
Buddhism tries to discover that in you there is an infinite game greater than your finite ego. Focusing helps you discover it.
Will making that connection make me happier?
What we are saying is that you place yourself in the present, because in the present is your body and you are there and in you there is a life process that has a memory, but that has not finished.
And where is it headed?
Focusing is also based on the philosophy of humanistic psychology and the actualizing trend. All living beings are immersed in a current of life in which they tend to their balance and fullness…
Also the little animals and plants?
…And if we listen to it we will grow to be who we are. This vital current, and this is already spirituality, has a wisdom that connects with the past in memory and beyond memory with all times. It is a wisdom far greater than mine or yours…
That is where we would return to the cabal of Vienna.
And to Buddhism and mindfulness: transcending the ego and our false identities to be again with an identity that is much bigger and that I cannot control; and while I try to control it, I can’t reach it…
Do you have to let yourself be?
And you have to leave the ego to be able to discover it and listen to it, because it surprises you. When we start in the Focusing process, what we didn’t think would come out usually comes out…
What comes out?
This wisdom that I carry inside comes out, which is my biological body and the framework that is my biography and that of my ancestors. It is a method to listen to your wisdom, because you know more than you think if you learn to listen to yourself. We spend our lives looking for gurus outside when we have everything inside.
Why don’t we focus without learning?
Worries, haste, anxiety, ambitions, disappointments… Focusing helps us trust in the goodness of all living beings.
Maybe it’s experiential; it is also ethereal.
Painters, writers, creators have an inner need to express themselves, which is focusing. They have an experience, an experience and they need to express it…
Beyond the data?
Much more because they are intuitions of intuitions, sensations of sensations that they carry out… It is focusing.
