Reflections inspired by Transpersonal Psychology.
Have you ever wondered why children are so attentive when they play? So focused, interested as if they have become one with the game. This ability of theirs makes them good players and helps them enjoy every moment, forgetting about time, space, and dimensions as we adults perceive them. We adults, with our constant doubt which distracts us and diverts our attention, which takes us away from who we are and why we are here.
Attention, or our consciousness, is a most important attribute that we have. Our attention is also our ability to care, to love, to evolve. The attention we give to something, to a process, shows that we are there, our love, our presence, our embrace.
In relation to how important attention is, I would like to share a few words about a method called ”Focusing”. The method was developed by Eugene T. Gendlin. Focusing encourages experiential listening, or looking into the body, which unlocks deeper processes of awareness, as every part of our body participates in this process. According to Gendlin, the body has its own way of understanding the world, it just speaks in a very subtle and difficult for us to access ways.
According to Gendlin, focusing, or observing, occurs at a very deep level of consciousness, deeper than our feelings, and addresses fundamental states. For example, when we have a problem and feel pain somewhere – that pain could become the great mysterious doorway. The entrance to our inner world, to everything that is uncomfortable and difficult for us. This door opens when we have acceptance for our body, for what is in our subconscious. As we manage to step in there, deep within ourselves, through our body, the space expands.
In relation to this, every organ, every cell communicates with us through images, energy, experience. Being able to focus into this process, or to observe it, can bring to the surface what we most need to become aware of, what we most need to know.
Another method, that of Prof. Jorge N. Ferrer, called “Embodied Spiritual Inquiry” (a subject of my dissertation) perceives the human body and the worlds connected to it as ways to access knowing. He thus proposes a revolutionary way to conduct scientific research through the body, especially in exploring topics such as “What is the Nature of Human Boundaries ?”. In his view, a deeply conscious relationship with our bodies, energy and consciousness provides access to the knowledge that we carry within us. He introduces this approach to research at the California Institute of Integral Sciences and explores different topics of interest with his students for 15 years. Research results bring forth extremely interesting findings, providing evidence that a deep connectedness with the body, can open our awarenss to knowledge that we carry innately within us and also to the experience of deeply coherence and connectedness with ourselves, eachother, all life. Ferrer’s method is inspired by the research of Ramon Albareda and Marina Romero who have dedicated their lives to the relationship between body, energy and consciousness. Below is an excerpt from a lecture of theirs “Born on Earth“ (2001) related to some psychosomatic conditions of the body.
The Pride of Mind – The pride of mind can manifest in various ways. Essentially, the mind creates a vision of life and, unaware that this vision is partial, it thinks it can guide a person’s development without taking into account other aspects such as the body, instinct or heart. Sometimes this can be tragic, because the mind can construct an extremely complex but false cognition of reality. The pride of mind builds the white clouds that separate Heaven and Earth.
The Shame of the Body – There are many levels of shame, but here we are talking about shame which is energetically inherited in all human beings and which operates, often unconsciously, at an organic level. Organically seeded shame manifests through unconscious energetic contractions that block, or inhibit many of the body’s major energy channels.
The state of struggle of the heart – This state of struggle can manifest in many different ways. One type of struggle is the rejection of our own reality through a desire to be somewhere else, perhaps influenced by external standards of what is right. If sadness begins to arise in the heart, this may show, that the struggle of the heart is beginning to shatter, or dissolve.
Why am I sharing all this? To bring to your attention to how important the body is to our overall awareness and how our maturity as human beings cannot happen while we are in denial of our body. Our body is the gateway to connecting with our inner creative worlds. In my work, I apply these methods of being open, present and aware in the body. There, we find our inspiration and begin to realize who we are and why we are here. The connection between spirit and body, heaven and earth is crucial to our development, to our coming into ourselves as individuals and to our evolving as human beings, born on earth.
