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INTEREST AREA: EXPERIENCING THE SACRED
Focusing Upon Experiences of "God" in the World
Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director |
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INTEREST AREA: Experiencing the Sacred
Immanent Spirituality: The Experience of God in The World
Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening can be used purposefully to "attend to," "sit with," "articulate" the "intuitive feel" of spiritual experiences. But more importantly, the practice of Listening/Focusing opens our eyes to seeing the Sacred around us by encouraging attention to those moments when the Sacred enters our lives.
It's called Immanent Spirituality, God as experienced in the world, moments when the Sacred underpinning of the world "breaks through" and becomes visible, palpable, feel-able. Experiential spirituality is separate from any particular sect or creed. You can incorporate it into any religion and into every day living without organized religion.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat call it Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life (Scribner, 1996), and their book jacket reads:
"These remarkable readings tutor us in the art of lingering with our experiences and seeing the world with fresh eyes --- Life's meaning and the presence of Spirit are found in the shape of a child's foot, in an encounter with a wild animal, in the memories evoked by a rocking chair, in the process of doing a hobby, or in the messages on a computer screen."
Spirituality Is More than Religion
Elfie Hinterkopf, in her book Integrating Spirituality into Counseling: Using the Experiential Focusing Method (available in The Store at www.focusing.org ), makes the following distinction:
"It is important to distinguish spirituality from religiousness --- in this book religiousness will be used to mean adherence to the beliefs and practices of an organized church or religious institution (Shafranske and Malony, 1990). Spirituality will be used to refer to a unique, personally meaningful experience (Shafranske and Gorsuch, 1984). Although spirituality may be positively related to specific forms of religiousness, spirituality is not necessarily reliant upon any given form or appearance of religion."
And:
"The spiritual experience is one of bodily felt release, more life energy, feeling more fully present, a sense of feeling larger and being able to reach out to more parts of oneself, to more people, and to more of life (Campbell and McMahon, 1985)."
Bio-Spirituality
Jesuit Fathers Pete Campbell and Ed McMahon have made a life's work out of looking at the specifically spiritual aspect which can be present in any use of Focusing. They call their approach Biospirituality (Bio-Spirituality: Focusing As A Way To Grow ,Loyola Press,1985, 1997, www.biospiritual.org )
In any Focusing process, the Focuser will often experience a Felt Shift, an opening of tension release into forward movement and new energy. Pete and Ed tell us to pay more attention to the "bodily-feel" surrounding these felt shifts in experiencing. They show us that, if we attend fully to the feelings surrounding the felt shift, we will find feelings of gratitude, of awe, of being "graced" by the presence of the Almighty.
They elaborate upon Gendlin's sixth step of Focusing, called Receiving: thanking and acknowledging your Body's Wisdom for the new steps of healing that have emerged. They have taken the further step of noticing the presence of grace and awe and thanking the Greater Source from which felt shifts, spiritual and emotional growth, emerge.
Being Touched and Being Moved
Using Gendlin's Focusing process, we will refer to "bodily-felt experiencing," "bodily-felt spirituality." Whether experienced through nature or inspiring music or religious rituals in church or through watching the kindness of one person toward another, these spiritual experiences will be "felt." The existence of Something Greater or Something More will be fully and unquestionably known, experientially, rather than being only an intellectual theory.
I call it "being touched and being moved" (PDF article) and find it often marked by at least a sheen of tears in the eyes, along with an expansive feeling of one's own boundaries and limits dissolving for at least a moment of merging into a feeling of Oneness - with nature, with another person or other people, with music, or with the religious ritual in church.
As with personal growth and creativity, spiritual experiences can also be reached more predictably through the conscious use of the Intuitive Focusing process. If you "accidently" find yourself in the midst of a transformative, spiritual moment, you can enrich and enlarge that opening by consciously turning attention toward the "feel of it all" and making words and images for the power and meaning of it.
These words and images can stay with you after that magical moment ends and can be a road back to that spiritual experience, again by consciously turning one's attention to them in a Focusing way.
Agape: Experiencing God in The Other
For me, intense spiritual experiences of the love known as Agape also happen regularly through the experience of exchanging Listening/Focusing turns in a Focusing Partnership or a Listening/Focusing Community.
Through the use of Focused Listening, I am able to set aside my own stereotypes and prejudices and really enter into the world of the other person. In these moments of empathy, when the Focuser touches upon her deepest values and most profound truths, as the Listener, I am often moved and touched by the absolute uniqueness, yet universal humanness, of the Other.
In these moments, often with a sheen of tears in our eyes, it seems that the boundaries separating one person from the other drop, and we stand together in a shared, sacred space. I believe this is what is meant by experiencing The Christ Within The Other or Universal Oneness or Martin Buber's "I-Thou" vs. "I-It" experience. For me, there is no more sacred experience.
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Week Three: The Focuser Is In Charge to learn exactly what the Focuser does while being Listening To
AND/OR CLICK HERE TO VIEW A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION AND TO CONSIDER PURCHASING THE ENTIRE SELF-HELP PACKAGE FOR $39 (OR MANUAL DOWNLOAD ALONE FOR $5), WITH MULTI-MEDIA SUPPORT. It is my hope that, before the end of this four-week cycle, you will have found at least one other person to practice Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening with as the beginning of your own local practice group. The manual chapter gives many suggestions about how to find your first one or more people, how to present the idea, how to demonstrate the skills.
BUT ONLY YOU CAN TAKE THAT FIRST STEP OF FINDING SOMEONE, JUST THAT ONE, FIRST PERSON. From then on, you and your partner can support each other in enlarging the group, if you want. You can get online support and answers to your questions as you try to proceed in the Creative Edge Practice e-group at http://yahoogroups.com/group/creativeedgepractice .
Spend the summer starting your Focusing Partnership and/or Focusing Practice Group.
Interest Areas: Seven Places To Start Practice Groups !!!
The Interest Areas under "Is This You" at The Creative Edge Focusing website (www.cefocusing.com) give the First Ten Steps you might take to bring the model of Listening/Focusing into seven whole different areas of living: Organizations, Support Groups and Communities, Relationships, Parenting, Education, Spiritual Communities, and Helping Professions (psychotherapy, counselling, medicine, body work, etc.).
In the e-newsletters, I am introducing you to each of these Interest Areas and possible First Steps so that you might start a Listening/Focusing practice group in any of these areas. See e-newsletters
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QUICK LINKS TO E-SUPPORT, CLASSES, BLOG, ARTICLES, ETC.
Self-Help Package, CDs, DVD, manual English and espanol
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| About Creative Edge Focusing (TM)
Mission: bring Core Skills of Intuitive Focusing and Focused Listening, and The Creative Edge Pyramid of applications from individual to interpersonal to organizational, to all audiences throughout the world.
Dr. Kathy McGuire, Director
Location: Beaver Lake in Rogers, AR
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These materials are offered purely as self-help skills. In providing them, Dr. McGuire is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought. | |
| Creative Edge Focusing (TM)
Dr. Kathy McGuire
Director | |
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