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Alternate focusing instructions
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Alternate focusing instructions
These are focusing steps specially designed for people to whom words come easily and feelings only with difficulty:
Actually, this will be entirely to yourself, but suppose you were going to tell us, as best you can, in a sentence or two, what is of most urgent concern to you right now in your life - what would those sentences be? You can pretend to be talking aloud if it helps, and just talk around until you get a sentence or two which would let you or us know what you're concerned about.
(1 minute)
(In trying to get the sentence, some of you may get, or have gotten, a picture, instead of sentences. If you prefer, you can keep the picture, instead of sentences. ) Try now to settle on several sentences (or a picture).
(30 seconds)
Now, (that picture) those words of yours, refer to something. They aren't just words (or lines and colors stuck together). They're something about YOU - there is a feeling in them. What do those words mean to you when you say them (what is the feeling of that picture)? DON'T let ANY words come right now. If some come, ignore them and turn your attention again to what the original words (or picture) refer to - that something, there, that they mean, that there which makes them not just meaningless, that is a felt sense. Simply note it there. Don’t do anything with it for the moment. Just feel that meaning there. If you have a label already, then you probably haven’t got the felt sense. Let the label go and get back again to that which is in those words (or picture), that makes them be something real for you. You will not know yet what that is, but you will feel that something is there.
(30 seconds)
Now, focus on that feeling. Sort of slide into it and see if words form out of it (or if the picture changes from out of the feeling). Stay in the feeling. See if words come out of it or if the picture changes. The words may be startling, unexpected, illogical. That's OK.
(45 seconds)
If that feels finished, if all the words or changes in the image that are going to come out of that feeling have come, then see how now the new words or the new changed picture makes you feel.
(20 seconds)
Now see what words or changes in the picture come out of that feeling.
(45 seconds)
Keep alternating. See how the new words or image makes you feel. Then see what words or image changes come out of the feeling. Do this now for the next two or three minutes.
(2 or 3 minutes)
If one works patiently with these instructions, focusing and the whole range of private inner process usually begins to open.
Self attitudes that go with focusing
Whatever you think of yourself, when you focus be nice to yourself. Many of our most important feelings are like shy people, they sink back and get silent, if one yells at them, or treats them unkindly. You have to ask in a friendly way, or some feelings can’t come, and can't say what they are.
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Just like shy people, these feelings just stay back and one never hears from them. Instead, certain other feelings that aren’t shy at all attack us all the time. It's like a group in which always the same three forward people do all the talking.
Most people aren't on friendly terms with themselves. They treat their inner person inside as they would treat some roommate they are mad at. It's like, well of course that person is there, but you try to have as little to do with them as possible, and if you have to address them you do it angrily, like, " Why the hell don’t you shape up? How often have I told you…? Why can't you do or be…, you no good so and so… " Usually the inner person then says nothing, and only feels bad and dull.
For some people, it may be years since they said a kindly word to themselves, and they may never have sat down and asked to hear from themselves.
Also, if any feeling you haven’t seen before comes up, you need to take a friendly attitude towards it (even if you don't like what it is. You won't do anything you don’t choose to do, anyway, promise yourself, so you can stand to hear what it says. It's OK if the feeling is a wish to stop coping with things or to stop working or whatever, you will go right on coping if you so decide, or if the feeling says you're too scared to do something courageous that you have to do, you will do it anyway if you so decide, later. For now, you can listen. )
So, don’t right away get mad at the feeling, argue with it, tell it why it's wrong. Keep your opinion to yourself for now, and let it tell you what it is.
After all, most of the time you can't find out what's wrong, what's in the way of your being OK. So here now is something that will tell you! So, you feel happy and grateful that it's here and you don’t want to make even a small noise, lest it scare the feeling away and you won’t get to find out.
Imagine you're the government. There's a guerilla movement derailing your trains and blowing up your bridges, scaring your farmers and burning crops. Your police have been shooting them on sight. You never therefore heard from them why they are doing this. They'd love to tell you their grievances, but your police shoot so fast, you can't find out what they want. What would you do? Wouldn’t you try and make it safe for them to come and tell you what's wrong, why they are doing it? Feelings are like that - some of them can't come and tell us because we shoot too fast, criticize and argue immediately, won't listen. No feeling is there for nothing, they all have some important reasons in them, something we wouldn’t want to ignore, if we could know. They make some kind of sense, something is good and constructive about them.
Of course, you don’t decide what to do, on the basis of one feeling. Whatever you learn, you then still also care about everything else, too. But for now, listen, in a kindly way, to whatever feeling will come, and to whatever it says.
Being nice to yourself while you try to focus also includes a few other points: in order to hear oneself in a kindly way, one has to turn off the self-criticizing, at least for a few minutes. The self-criticizing is like the police in that story about the government. Before you can even sense what you feel, the self-criticizing begins shooting. “You’ re probably just doing this… “, it will say, accusing you of something or other. If you were to prove that it isn't so, this self-critical part would then only come up with some other bad thing. It doesn’t seem to care much what it says, as long as it's bad.
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Although this is just what gets in the way of hearing oneself, and making touch with feelings, still it helps to give even these voices some room. It helps one to see how stupid they usually are. Instead of cowering and feeling bad, when such a voice comes on, we can let it become a clear sentence or two. Then we can see that it is almost always not true or not relevant. It comes from feeling that one isn't any good, or is always wrong. This feeling is worth focusing on, to see what's in that, what all is involved in having that.
People then find the different things in that, different for each person. Maybe you are angry and down on yourself because of some very specific aspect of your life (and not, as would seem from the words, that everything you do is wrong... ). Perhaps you find there that you did live, for years, in some family in which they did, in fact, tell you you were no good, and at that time you had no way to know better. Or, maybe you're scared to make a mistake, and this critical part is trying to help you (a lot of help it is …! ) Then you can ask what kind of mistake you're so scared of making, and that may release it some.
However, we cannot and should not wait until the selfcritical voices are gone. That can take some years. Meanwhile, if you've heard them enough, if you've heard it all a million times and you know by heart the kind of thing it is, then, as you try to focus on your more shy feelings, you can put your selfcritical part to one side. Here is how you can do that:
You can tell them to shut up. " I've heard it all…" you can say, " now just go sit over there and shut up and let me do something …” you can say, just as you would, perhaps to some nervous person that lives with you and gets terribly worried and nagging. " Just sit over there and wait a while. "
Or, if that doesn’t work, let the babble go on, but you turn to how you feel instead of listening. Like, " OK, sit over there in the corner and babble to yourself, while I try to do something. "
Once you've heard it all, over and over, you don't have to be so attentive to that kind of thing. That sort of repetitious stuff isn't feelings at all, just a self-torture routine.
You won't be " not facing" things, if you ignore this thing, because you've heard the kind of thing it says enough times.
If it were to say something that might really be right, even then you need it to stop hurting and bugging you, so you can check into your feelings and see if and how it's right, and what to do from there. This, again, is like having some worried person with you who is talking non-stop about some danger or undone task. “Ok, OK, " you say, " I've heard you. Now shut up and let me do something about it. " And, if it keeps on talking and screaming, you can say, " You will just have to shut up and wait, or we can’t fix it. ”
Then, whatever you may think is true, go and try to sense how you feel whatever it is about. Only there can you find exactly what is really true, and just how it goes.
Another way we stop ourselves from sensing our feelings is by calling them names, and insulting them. “This is just self-pity, ” or " Oh, quit being sorry for yourself, " we say. Then everything gets tense and dead inside, we don’t feel better, just stuck.
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Probably, there are reasons why you can feel sorry for yourself, what you went through, or lost or whatever. To call it " self-pity" is to imply that there aren’t such reasons. It's much better to see them, then after that, your life energy will return. Don't worry, you won’t just lie there forever.
The only way to get rid of a feeling for good is to let it open up to you. Then you come out the other side. To fight it means you stay on this side of it, and it doesn't release.
Anytime you say, “This is just such and so…” the word " just" shows that you are trying to pretend it doesn't matter or doesn’t count or is all wrong or " just” foolishness. Feelings never are just foolishness. They are always specifically just what they are, maybe not all true or the whole truth, but some part of the truth.
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