Have you ever wondered how something as precious as a pearl is created? It starts with something gritty, like a grain of sand or a parasite, entering the soft, sensitive tissues of the oyster. To deal with the discomfort of this ‘irritant’, the oyster generates a natural substance (aragonite) which it normally uses to produce and maintain its hard and shiny shell. It is this substance that the oyster then coats over the irritant to protect itself from the discomfort. And thus a pearl is formed…
To me there is such a profound analogy here. Sometimes life can get a bit gritty and I may get “triggered” by an “irritant”, i.e. someone or a situation that is getting under my sensitive skin. What I hear the oyster is saying here to me, is that instead of reacting adversely to the irritation and upset that it has triggered inside me, I can bring my own “aragonite” into the equation – an embodied sense of the ground and aliveness of “Me Here”, which then can be felt beside or around the inner disturbance.
Of course, every analogy breaks down somewhere and the oyster analogy cracks its shell here: unlike the oyster coating over the irritant with its aragonite, so it doesn’t have to feel the gritty discomfort anymore, there is no smoothing over of what has been triggered in me, as that wouldn’t be Focusing. Instead, I can let both the physically felt sense of “all that about being triggered” and the embodied sense of ‘Me Here’ be there “with equal positive regard” and kindly and curiously listen to what wants to happen.
That may initially feel strange and somewhat counter intuitive, but it does make inner space for the energy of the triggered turbulence to move forward towards “its rightness”, as Gendlin would describe it in his well-known quote: “Every bad feeling is potential energy toward a more right way of being if you give it space to move toward its rightness…”.
And as it moves forward, I often feel the energy pent up in the inner disturbance begin to unwind, release and re-align with the aliveness of “Being Here” in this moment. I feel more alive and present, more Here and Now. And in this alchemical way, Presence deepens and grows in me. What was stirred up in me by the grit of Life, has now been transformed into a pearl of Presence.
It feels freeing to realise that each time I am “triggered”, there is an opportunity here to let the pearl of the Presence that I am grow stronger. Life is becoming a win-win experience!
From this perspective, every gritty moment in my life is grist to the mill for everdeepening Presence. Those people or situations, those “irritants” that trigger me, do not need to be my enemies or antagonists; instead, I can allow them to be my teachers of Presence!
Addie Van Der Kooy, 30th August 2025
This message seems to say it all fully and completely that sense of me here and the experience of life inside of me and the struggle, and holding both with equal positive regard. What a beautiful image of how a pearl is created out of our inner conflict and our suffering that transforms itself into something remarkable and something we could never do on our own. The mystery of life. Kevin.
This message seems to say it all fully and completely that sense of me here and the experience of life inside of me and the struggle, and holding both with equal positive regard. What a beautiful image of how a pearl is created out of our inner conflict and our suffering that transforms itself into something remarkable and something we could never do on our own. The mystery of life. Kevin.
Posted by Diana