Once again I've learnt about a preposition. Through. I claim to teach folk about focusing, I have had to learn some more. Focusing on I'm still confident about. You pick on a nicely labelled something, and away you go, looking at definitions, factors, specifics, perspectives, arguments, persuasions...language is the tool for the mind, and what a useful tool it is. You can actually get somewhere, and feel you have got somewhere. Academic research is good at this.
Then, focusing from your living. A little more abstruse, but you still have the tool of language: your beliefs, your attitudes, your values, your core, your platform, your family, your spiritual context, your genealogy, your freedom, your peace, your activistic inclinations.
Now, focusing through your living.
That's difficult, and let me expalin why. You go into an experience, maybe out of choice, maybe out of circumstance, and you lose control of the outcome. Yes, you lose control, because you are truly not in charge.
I am a realist. I cant' be a gambler, becaue I only bet on dead certs, which isn't a bet at all.
This year a close friend of mine died, and all my certainties were overthrown.
I can't work out why, it's purely emotional, and the tool of language failed. It didn't help at all. I came to a subjective place of despair, with no help to move forward.
I was reminded of how I fell in love for the first time, which was also about death: a friend's brother died, and I suddenly knew with all my heart I didn't want her to suffer this. People die all the time, so why the connection? I don't know. At any rate, she didn't fall back in love with me, so that was that. But I remember turning to my long-standing friend who died this year, for comfort, and help. He wasn't really aware, I think, but he was there for me, and gave a a whiskey or two, which helped.
When you focus through your living, you'll soon come to a very real place of intellectual failure, emotional intensity, and requirement of commitment.
I went through a rigour of testing my commitments. I discovered that I am totally in love with my wife, that I value family, that I seek community, that my awareness of God, which I won't discuss here is paramount, and that when my spirit is broken, my language is also broken, and that I have to re-learn how to use it.
In short, I have been through an impassably narrow place, am still coming through, will always be coming through, because living and dying are incomplete in each other for the time being, (thanks Brian Weiss) but are summed up, (thank you Jesus, who is not the Jesus of organised religion) in a trustworthy way.
I think that most people are doing the through focus, but keep a distance, because it's severe. They distract themselves, and become a market for whatever distracts attractively, even if short-lived.
There isn't a short-cut or cure for "through". I don't love "through" but I wouldn't evade it, because then you haven't lived. I have learned to look for the Presence that guides you through. You're lost without this.
So, with a greater grasp of focusing through your living, you may be the lens through which a real light shines. It's not fun. Crucifixtion is at the core, so is resuurection. Jesus has taken the brunt, but you won't escape, entirely. All deaths are mine, yours, all resurrections, too. The whole planet, solar system, stellar constellation and beyond will no longer be there, some time way ahead, when time no longer matters.
Squeezing through an impassable place puts pressure on the language-speaking soul.
Good.
The time for truth is way overdue.
Then, focusing from your living. A little more abstruse, but you still have the tool of language: your beliefs, your attitudes, your values, your core, your platform, your family, your spiritual context, your genealogy, your freedom, your peace, your activistic inclinations.
Now, focusing through your living.
That's difficult, and let me expalin why. You go into an experience, maybe out of choice, maybe out of circumstance, and you lose control of the outcome. Yes, you lose control, because you are truly not in charge.
I am a realist. I cant' be a gambler, becaue I only bet on dead certs, which isn't a bet at all.
This year a close friend of mine died, and all my certainties were overthrown.
I can't work out why, it's purely emotional, and the tool of language failed. It didn't help at all. I came to a subjective place of despair, with no help to move forward.
I was reminded of how I fell in love for the first time, which was also about death: a friend's brother died, and I suddenly knew with all my heart I didn't want her to suffer this. People die all the time, so why the connection? I don't know. At any rate, she didn't fall back in love with me, so that was that. But I remember turning to my long-standing friend who died this year, for comfort, and help. He wasn't really aware, I think, but he was there for me, and gave a a whiskey or two, which helped.
When you focus through your living, you'll soon come to a very real place of intellectual failure, emotional intensity, and requirement of commitment.
I went through a rigour of testing my commitments. I discovered that I am totally in love with my wife, that I value family, that I seek community, that my awareness of God, which I won't discuss here is paramount, and that when my spirit is broken, my language is also broken, and that I have to re-learn how to use it.
In short, I have been through an impassably narrow place, am still coming through, will always be coming through, because living and dying are incomplete in each other for the time being, (thanks Brian Weiss) but are summed up, (thank you Jesus, who is not the Jesus of organised religion) in a trustworthy way.
I think that most people are doing the through focus, but keep a distance, because it's severe. They distract themselves, and become a market for whatever distracts attractively, even if short-lived.
There isn't a short-cut or cure for "through". I don't love "through" but I wouldn't evade it, because then you haven't lived. I have learned to look for the Presence that guides you through. You're lost without this.
So, with a greater grasp of focusing through your living, you may be the lens through which a real light shines. It's not fun. Crucifixtion is at the core, so is resuurection. Jesus has taken the brunt, but you won't escape, entirely. All deaths are mine, yours, all resurrections, too. The whole planet, solar system, stellar constellation and beyond will no longer be there, some time way ahead, when time no longer matters.
Squeezing through an impassable place puts pressure on the language-speaking soul.
Good.
The time for truth is way overdue.
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