Focusing for Spiritual Development

Module 2 – Spiritual Repair: Belonging to the World As Me

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In our pursuit of spiritual wholeness, we can have a tendency to want to cut away the part of us that has names such as “the habitual me,” a “partial self,” a “part” – in short, the part we don’t like very much and want to leave behind so we can feel good again.

It’s as if: “What! How’d that get here – there must be some mistake!

But core to spiritual repair – core to reclaiming our wholeness – is reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we instinctively cut off from our awareness. And reclaiming it means learning at the very least to acknowledge it: Yes, this is here, and it is a part of me – and eventually, to grow into a sense of warmth, friendliness, and even love toward it.

This sense of self-rejection is seldom something we can just decide to “let go of.” This cutting off from our awareness, this exile, this refusal to feel it – often occurred originally as a path to survival. Any “decision” to just “let it go” tends to be, at best, superficial.

What we learned in Module 1 gives us the solidity, groundedness, and sense of safety to gradually and gently open our hearts – our whole being – to the disowned parts of ourselves through learning to simply LISTEN to how it is for them NOW.

This is how we bring them into present-moment experiencing, so the trapped energy they are holding can gradually rejoin our life, as part of the wholeness of who we are.

Module 2 includes:

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• Learning to develop equal positive regard for both those parts of ourselves that have come into being to keep us safe and our larger Wholebody self

• Turning our focus even more explicitly toward the human relating aspect of our Wholebody self – core to healing our relationship with the world

• Learning to turn a friendly eye toward our favorite habitual social coping patterns that help us feel safe while at the same time preventing spontaneous, satisfying connection

• Exploring connection through the body's centers of awareness as we notice patterns of merging, and shutting down/shutting out

• Learning to be with another while staying anchored and grounded in our Wholebody being, open to “the other” without leaving ourselves

• Learning how to gently begin bringing the disowned parts of ourselves into our present-moment experiencing, thus beginning the process of reclaiming our connection to our own wholeness

• Learning to dance between the MORE that is already here for us, right now, and our disowned parts …

Module 3 – Partnership: Sitting in the Wonder Together

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When I first learned Focusing, I experienced a profound change in the quality of my life. But I struggled to express exactly what that change was. It wasn’t as simple as something like, “Oh, before Focusing, I couldn’t speak in public, and now I can!”

Over the years, I’ve come to recognize that the profound change was this:

It transformed my sense of being outside of my own life, while trying to get in with endless introspecting and analyzing, into a sense of having dropped down deeply inside of it. Moreover, from here, I could open up to what I found with kindness and curiosity – and from that more relaxed and grounded place, to a sense of the vast mystery at the core of it all.

One of the most surprising lessons I learned from my Focusing experiences was this: Much of the time, I have no idea whatsoever what is actually happening, much less why!

Module 3 includes:

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• More about Felt Sensing as the edge between what we already know and what we don’t yet know

• Exploring how the well-being of "me" and the well-being of "we" arise together through mutual recognition and embodied relationship

• More about consciously opening up to the Relational Field that arises as each of us sits in our own wholeness – holding much more than the sum of the parts

• More on sitting back inside yourself as you open to another – cues that you are leaving yourself, and remedies

• Deeply exploring with each other – what do I need from me to feel safe with you? What do I need from you to feel safe with you?

• More on how human connection supports safety, resilience, and emotional balance

• Further exploration of how pain and difficulty can be shared, witnessed, and held without projecting onto the other, fixing or analyzing

• How deep acceptance itself becomes a catalyst for transformation

• Becoming aware of our movements toward and away from connection, intimacy, self-expression while making room for all of those movements – all of that life – to be here and reveal more about itself within the Relational Field

• Receiving the gifts of the Relational Field

• Ever more practice in surrendering our difficulties and conundrums to that mystery we might call the Relational Field - that we might call something else

• Honoring what has unfolded through shared presence and exploring how this way of being can continue to nourish everyday life and relationships through ongoing Focusing Partnership, as well as continuing to bring these practices into our everyday lives