What is focusing?
Do you ever leave the house and suddenly notice that something is not working?
If only ever…
You can ignore this feeling or stop; give yourself time and connect with the guide inside you and.. . yay! That’s how you realize you forgot to take your keys…
Do you only connect if you stop to listen?
…And in these five seconds of connection with yourself, the body, which noticed this something, has made it known to your consciousness.
Wasn’t that mere intuition?
This connection process is focusing, systematized by the philosopher Eugene Gendlin, with whom I studied in New York.
And can you learn?
And teach, and for the first time here, in Montserrat. It is more than intuition because Gendlin studied it and systematized it.
How did he come up with it?
He noticed that his father made decisions without a logical basis, but correct, as a child in Vienna: he thought-intuitive-decided, like when you stop and remember where the keys were.
Body-mind connection?
And a whole system to which he gave formal and philosophical rigor. Having emigrated to the USA, he worked with the psychologist Rogers in “body approach”.
Why is it more than just reasoning?
Because the process of experiencing, feeling life, living… is prior to reasoning and contains it. To connect with our self in this way is to connect with experiences not only of ours but of ancestors and, in the DNA, even Neanderthals…
Grandma’s experience is now mine?
And the questions and answers of his life are in this connection; but the body is slow and intermittent when it emits its signals, weakened by stress, rush, anxiety…
We live dependent on ubiquitous screens.
Because we are more aware of external messages than of what happens inside us… That is why it is urgent to reconnect.
Do you need to take time and give yourself time?
But immediately! 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 can this connection be achieved?
Explore your sensations in the now – heat, cold, nerves or relaxation: any and all – so that their energy, which you will capture if you attend to it, will move you forward in the process of being you.
Doesn’t mindfulness also try?
Mindfulness is paying attention to be in the present; focusing is identifying and attending to these sensations until you connect with the crew you carry inside.
Is it about transcending the ego, as Buddhism preaches, or connecting with it?
Buddhism tries to discover that there is an infinite play within you that is greater than your finite ego. Focusing helps you discover it.
Will this connection make me happier?
What we are saying is that you place yourself in the present, because in the present there is your body and there is you and in you there is a life process that has a memory, but that has not ended.
And where is it headed?
Focusing is also based on the philosophy of humanistic psychology and the updating trend. All living beings are penetrated by a current of life that tends to its balance and its fullness…
Also the animals and plants?
…And if we listen to him we will develop who we are. This life stream, 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…
This way we would return to the cabal of Vienna.
And to Buddhism and mindfulness: to transcend the ego and our false identities to return to being with an identity that is much greater and that I cannot control; and while I try to control it, I can’t reach it…
What to let yourself be?
And you have to leave the ego to be able to discover it and listen to it, because it will surprise you. When we start the focusing process, what usually comes out that I didn’t think would come out…
What comes out of it?
This wisdom that I carry inside, which is my biological body and the framework that is my biography and that of my ancestors. It is a method of listening 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, rushes, anxiety, ambitions, disappointments… Focusing helps us to trust in the goodness of every living being.
Maybe it’s experiential; also ethereal.
Painters, writers, creators have an inner need to express themselves which is focusing. They have a life, an experience and they need to express it…
Beyond data?
Much more, since they are intuitions of intuitions that they realize… It’s focusing.
