I am trying to describe a moment in our lives that stands out. What it might feel like when it happens? And to know the difference?
The Living Truth is what I hear when I play back this recording once again! It seems impossible to fit words to this experience. It is something that feels so totally alive—but it feels momentary, and then it’s gone. That is how it seems to work!
I am trying to describe such a moment and I feel very inadequate to put words to this experience. It is so powerful, so palpable, and so true beyond words. This is what I yearn for in life. I am asking for it right here, right now, right in this moment.
How could that be framed as a desire? How can I invite my body to have this…..as a desire?…… like a prayer? This is what I am asking…..and at the same time being with the not-knowing…the how of it!
I am trying to describe a moment in our lives that stands out. What it might feel like when it happens? And to know the difference?
I have had such moments. That is all I can say. These are moments that felt so true that they have never left me and I suspect never will. They are engraved in me. That is just how it is!
So bear with me as I stumble through the attempt to describe something that is so vital and so far-reaching in its implications. The living truth!
We can allow a sense of desiring to become so much more than expected—even pleasurable. I asked myself: “how am I right now?” This time, something playful and unfamiliar seemed to emerge. At first there was the immediate tension in the throat, neck, and jaw followed by a familiar feeling of ‘resistance’.
The Resistance and Resilience of the Pleasurable
But something new emerged at the same time. It was vague and it sounded like the word…’resilience‘ It had a new energy that seemed different from the familiar resistance. Almost the opposite—or maybe complimentary—coming from the same source and yet vaguely different. It seemed softer and didn’t trigger the usual tension that immediately stops the flow. In fact, my toes began to flex! I was surprised and I liked it.
And it aroused my curiosity. I decided to play with the words—resistance and then resilience, and just notice what happens.
In Wholebody Focusing, we pause to hold the two—two different words that seem worlds apart. Holding both with equal positive regard.
But that was not what happened today. Both words seemed to be vaguely connected at the source, even the sounding of the words felt poetic. They seemed to want to dance with one another. As though there was something in it for both. Different ways of being, worlds apart and yet…
Mutual Benefit
Today I began to wonder; can these parts benefit from one another in this kind of mutual connection? Like a gentle curiosity that might be mutually supportive, maybe even complimentary or collaborative rather than divisive and combative?
Today, this part of me—the part of me that resists anything new as threatening—behaved differently. it seemed drawn to the warm and pleasing nature of the activity inherent in resilience.
It seemed as if the proximity of the two awakened a kind of collaborative possibility implicit between them. I saw my human consciousness as a light so that they could discover one another, perhaps looking for something mutually satisfying in this moment of connection.
The capacity to reach out to something more than me is where loving happens—something that is not of my own making.
by Kevin McEvenue
Once again, I can feel it all coming together in me because Perception is speaking directly to that experience. Something is emerging, coming to my consciousness as I speak, as I feel, and as I express in the presence of another person included in my consciousness.
This podcast speaks for itself directly, more that I could try to put words to. It describes a clarity of relationship between me, a wounded part of me, and a higher sense of me, all coming together here! A direct experience in myself that is often beyond words. And then maybe words come. The words that come seem to form directly from the experience.
This is me here: me who can actually reach out and engage with something beyond me. I am doing just that now—right now. It is an action step that I initiate by inviting a connection. And that is enough!
What is so amazing is that something actually does happen. It is like my wounded self is discovering the power of its own consciousness. This is the power in me, a part of me that can invite and receive, quite different from trying to possess, trying to take from, or trying to make happen. These activities come from very different places.
When I speak about the power of me experiencing this sense of me as powerful, there is some discernment happening at the same time. It is this power that I have been exploring and struggling with in this exploration of perception. What is coming here is the word Presence—to feel myself being present and grounded like how an electric plug needs to be grounded to the earth to make it safe to come alive.
The capacity to reach out to something more than me where loving happens—something that is not of my own making—is an experience that really can’t be described. That is it!
It is something I invite and then I pause, I stay with the desire, and make room for whatever comes—like whatever seems to be the next right step. That is how it works and it requires my consent. In short, I have reached out, something has come as a response, and I sayyesin some way.
This series, the Doors of Perception, seems to have taken on a life of its own. Something has come to a head; I have recalled the struggles of life and named the basic conflict that seems to always be there. I want so much and I can’t have it in equal proportion. How devastating this has been for most of my life.
Now I feel something has changed; just being with these podcasts seems to have made a difference, being transparent with you present in my awareness at the same time. Something has happened that perhaps could not have happened until I did this: speak out, pausing, waiting for the words to form directly from the experience itself.
This podcast really does speak for itself and I invite you to feel the change of mood and expectation. How something has happened here—how the perception itself has taken on a life of its own, independent of the patterns I so struggle with. I am enjoying that shift as I feel it in my own body this morning. I feel different. My body is feeling the warmth of itself, physically warm, a sensual feeling, gradually warming every part of me all over, warm and inviting.
What a good feeling that is, to feel myself in this way. And there is a natural pause to enjoy it as I realize I don’t have to know, I don’t have to understand, I don’t have to do anything. I can enjoy my life just the way it is.
And right now, I am enjoying my warm body being felt all through me. It feels like the struggle doesn’t need to be there—at least not now. It feels like an internalized permission, I don’t have to do anything, I can just be. My wanting, my desires—they have a place in me to be there. It is okay.
There is a fundamental change of expectation. More a sense of acceptance with delight and gratitude. Not a wishing, not a fantasy. There is a quality of hope here that seems to know what is needed. Like a bodily experience of who I am and what I am in my possibilities that seem satisfying. And yet there will be challenges here too, challenges that are manageable, that strengthen me, not drain me. So be it!
This podcast is self-exploratory as I struggle with a sense of empowerment next to having to learn to control at the same time. It is like creating a kind of empowering willfulness: I can do this.
By Kevin McEvenue
In this seventh preamble in the series I call The Doors of Perception, what is explored is the issue of power and the need for control—and how I have struggled with this conflict most of my life, passionately wanting something and holding back, that stops me with equal measure.
Again, I am being transparent in living in a direct experience of my own history as I give voice to these events from childhood to the present day and how the conflict is gradually resolving, offering something fresh, better than imagined! Humpty Dumpty, (wholebodyfocusing.com), is a witness to all those shattered pieces coming together—amazingly. My Humpty Dumpty came into the world with an intuitive kind of Perception, awakened very early in life: an encounter with a cat—not on a hot tin roof—but a cat looking for warmth right there, a warm breath, sitting on my mouth, stopping my breath that early spring morning! I am in a baby crib, outdoors alone in the fresh air.
It seems that much of my life was preoccupied with just that, holding back, tensing my body to hold back, not feel, not say. No room for the joy of the flow of just being, just being me. It seemed to suppress that deeper empowerment, that part of me that does know something and wants to have a life of its own. It still does! The fear of life seems to overwhelm the joy of living. That became my reality, my preoccupation to stop, to control and prevent. “I mustn’t!” There was no room for anything else, namely, to enjoy my own empowerment, there to be loved and appreciated.
Gradually the confusion is beginning to clear as my inner wisdom is finding its way through this apparent conflict. It needed rebuilding a whole new structure, starting from the bottom up, finding my feet, rather than trying to function from a top down that just didn’t fit.Gradually I am emerging as the person I know and love. This is me, coming home to me! The Love of me!
I awaken to a sense of myself; me, and then you, coming from that sense in the warmth in each other. This podcast explores this question with some surprises that speak from themselves better than I could if I tried to!
by Kevin McEvenue
We Want to Dance with One Another!
There is a pattern in these podcasts; they end with a question as though there is something more to be added and yet I don’t know what that is. And there is a sense that this is enough for now. Just accepting that; it is as though it seems to want time and space to fulfill itself in its own wisdom.
In this podcast entitled: We Want to Dance with One Another, I awaken to a sense of myself; me, and then you, coming from that sense in the warmth in each other. This podcast explores this question with some surprises that speak from themselves better than I could if I tried to! And then they open a door to something else that wants my attention. What stops me?
Once again, I am using my own exploration of giving voice to my own direct experience of an issue that is dear to my heart and perhaps to yours too—how to feel connected to myself and to life outside in ways that satisfies us and brings so much more to life around us when we can.
Guiding Suggestions: Please remember to become grounded in yourself first before you listen to make room another person’s experience.
What comes to me is appreciating that Gene Gendlin spent his whole life exploring what is already there from the get-go. What is already implied—the whole of it, being felt in our body, waiting for it to be more fully realized. It becomes the story of our life and how that is acted out—and its possibilities.
As Gendlin said, “Although basic to living, implicit knowing is often overlooked precisely because it is implicit.”
That is what I am doing here, right now: having a sense of what is there, being felt in my body, pausing, allowing what is being felt in me the space it needs to find the words to form, and then words come in speech. For me this is a demonstration of ‘felt sensing’ in action.
In this series of themes, I am attempting to express this process of saying out loud what is being felt from inside, pausing, and then allowing the vibration of such thoughts to flow from there.
By Kevin McEvenue
The theme that is presented here flows from the theme just before this, Perception. At the end of Perception, the next piece seems to go directly to The Fulfillment of Desire—that sense of wanting from the get-go.
I have suggested that this is a new series of Thinking in Experiencing, of something emerging directly from the experience itself, rather than trying to describe what that experience might be.
I realize now that this new series began in a podcast, namely: A very Persistent Love at the Heart of all Creation, followed by So Stuck and then it is Not, which was the first time that I spoke up and out with such passion! It not only shook up a very familiar stuck place, it was also followed by a flow of thoughts that arose directly from that physical awakening, associated memories that seemed to find their words too! Next came an exploration of the sense of Perception.
In this series of themes, I am attempting to express this process of saying out loud what is being felt from inside, pausing, and then allowing the vibration of such thoughts to flow from there. It may sound strange and unfamiliar, not smooth flowing. It is coming from a more vulnerable place as I wait for the words to form themselves from inside. They may sound unsure, hesitant, and yet just right. Some words come as a complete surprise.
In this theme called The Fulfillment of my Heart’s Desire, I go back to my first awakening, so very young, innocent, vulnerable. A consciousness that awakens a sense of me here. And yet, they all have one thing in common. These come as a surprise, a kind of discovery, a growing self-awareness of knowing me more in some way. What is also significant is that these moments are never forgotten; they are as present right now as they were then, nothing added or subtracted. They seem to be a direct experience of life itself.
Of course, there are many, many other kinds of experiences throughout my lifetime, but they will not have that kind of impression of everlasting and alive in the same way. They come from a different place. They are essential, another kind of knowing, useful to my growth and well-being. But the experience is qualitatively different, a kind of a learning process, maybe something I have to struggle with.
Finally, I am sharing something that I realize is a daily practice that seems to fit the kind of life that comes naturally to me, perhaps more reflective and internalized rather than socially outer-directed. They seemed the very opposite of what I was trained to do and think, how I must learn to be this other way in order to be loved and accepted. For example, my father was a natural athlete—I didn’t have that kind of spirit of competition. I was more curious about how things work together, how they fit in a way that seems complementary—that adds more to the situation because they are different. That felt more satisfying than being a winner!
Over time, what has emerged gradually is this bodily awareness that I experience now. When someone is true to themselves in some way, I can feel it in me. It is palpable! I suddenly feel alive in me too! It feels mutual—like a shared experiencing that feels good for all of us.
Listening suggestion: In these podcasts, you might feel the words first, letting your body experience the words, taking them in, and then letting the meaning flow spontaneously from there.
Today’s theme is on the nature of perception and how it seems to be a first response, a reaction coming from outside my world. What happens in me when I sense that or look for that? What do I do?
By Kevin McEvenue
September 28, 2020
The doors of perception, a direct experience of something that keeps knocking on my door for attention.
This is the beginning of a new series I am proposing, something that has become a daily practice in my life that perhaps might be useful in other people’s lives too?
In the spirit of Wholebody Focusing and Heartfelt connecting, I want to give voice to something as an experience of a mind-body expression as it pauses to give space for words and thoughts to come together to form what is happening inside me right now. It seemed to come from a different place of thinking; thinking directly from a felt sense of an experience, rather than thinking about an experience that engages into a thought about what, why or how, etc. It really is a very different activity and seems to come from a very different location in the body, and very difficult to describe in words. Do you appreciate that there can be a difference between the two?
These are themes that come in me from time to time that seem to want my attention. They just want to be noticed and for me to make space for them to do so. To being felt, giving it some breathing room for it to inform me in some new way for my own well-being.
Today’s theme is on the nature of perception and how it seems to be a first response, a reaction coming from outside my world. What happens in me when I sense that or look for that? What do I do?
Do I image it first? Do I sense it first? Do I look for a right action? Or do I just act because I must?
This is what I am exploring today as my natural process in coming to know something freshly. Maybe you would like to join me here, something happening there in you too? Perhaps just the sound of a voice that points to something familiar?
