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“The personal is political”

The personal is political. What does that mean?

Trump’s current attempt to exploit fear in order to convince people to vote for him is one manifestation of “the personal is political”. This tactic has been used by dictators the world over.  

For example, behavioral science is being used to “market” political candidates and opinions. According to the New York Times, the 2016 Trump campaign used Facebook data to create “a behavioral model powerful enough to manipulate people’s activity and, potentially, sway elections.”

If your Facebook personality profile showed that you were fearful, you’d get a message about how dangerous immigrants were. In 2020 you’ll probably get a message that “you’ll never be safe” if the Democrats win the election. 

As a result of this successful combination of behavioral psychology and marketing, our political system is not based on reasoned arguments. This form of manipulation appeals to knee-jerk reactions. 

You can move beyond these emotional triggers by learning to notice your bodily felt sense of a situation.  You’ll learn how to “accompany” your emotions from a place of “Presence” so that you can be aware of what is going on inside without being overcome by it. Focusing puts you in the driver’s seat of your life.

An experiment in “the personal is political”

Here is a short experiment in Thinking at the Edge with “the personal is political”. It’s based on an exercise from Donata Schoeller, a leading scholar and teacher of Gendlin’s Philosophy of the Implicit. Would you like to play?
1. First, please choose one of the following 3 words:
“police”, “election”, or “hospital”.
2. Once you have chosen a word, notice what situation from your life “arises from” or “comes with” that word.
3. Check to see if the situation that came calls forth a bodily sensation 
4. Describe the bodily sensation of that situation with words, metaphors, emotions, textures, colors, shapes, memories, gestures, sounds.
5. Now, take this description back to the original word and notice how it affects or re-informs the word you chose.
6. If it feels right to do so, reply below, or share your response in an email to me.

After this short form of Thinking at the Edge, can you sense the meaning of “the personal is political”?

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NVC and Focusing enhance each other

Focusing and Nonviolent Communication enhance each other

Many of us are dismayed about the violent rhetoric in politics and on social media. We need ways to be able to communicate across social, cultural, economic and political divides. Nonviolent Communication and Focusing enhance each other and when practiced, are accessible tools for change.

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Listening for Feelings and Needs: NVC and Focusing

Listening for Feelings and Needs in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) can lead to felt sense formation. For that reason, it’s useful to use Nonviolent Communication as a doorway to Focusing, especially if you are not used to the idea of self empathy.

Jackal language and Giraffe language

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) helps us notice when we are speaking Jackal language, i.e. naming, blaming, diagnosing, trying to prove who is right and wrong, etc.  NVC encourages us to speak Giraffe Language:

  • First, you describe an interaction without evaluating it.
  • Next you turn inward to notice your own Feelings and Needs.
  • Then you listen empathically to the Feelings and Needs of others.
  • As a result of knowing your Needs, you can make requests of yourself or others to meet your needs.

You can easily see the big difference in the two languages, right?

The Revolutionary Pause–an opportunity to decide which language we want to speak. 

When there is a conflict, the Revolutionary Pause is an opportunity to decide which language to speak. It’s difficult to pause in daily life! But after the initial difficulty, you’ll start to see what a difference the pause can make. You’ll start noticing when you are making statements that imply judgements and blame. Then you’ll start to notice the way you have been judging yourself! This helps you open to the notion of empathy toward your own inner world. As you start listening to your own Feelings and Needs, you’ll already be in levels 4 or 5 of the Experiencing Scale: http://www.experiential-researchers.org/instruments/exp_scale/exp_scale_long.html

Noticing our Beautiful Human Needs

In NVC, our Beautiful Human Needs are seen as something that unites us as human beings. A Beautiful Human Need is defined as “vital energy that motivates us to act and to grow.” This concept is new for most people, experienced Focusers as well as non-Focusers. Listen to your Beautiful Human Needs and how they feel inside. This lays the groundwork for you to notice naturally-arising felt senses.

Beautiful Human Needs can be physical or emotional, such as the needs for safety, respect, connection, authenticity. There are many more Beautiful Human Needs. We feel angry, resentful, sad, fearful, etc. when our needs are not met.

According to Nonviolent Communication theory, other people are not responsible for how we feel. Our Needs, met and unmet, give rise to how we feel. Everyone is trying to meet their Needs. Sensing into our own Needs and listening for another’s Needs, helps us understand each other’s motivations.

Listening for Feelings and Needs can help a felt sense to form. 

Through sensitive, spacious listening for Feelings and Needs, an inner space is created in which a body felt sense can form.  With practice and good listening, people are on their way to learning to pause and pay attention to the felt sense of the whole situation. The felt sense of a situation often extends far beyond what could be defined as needs and values. When people access the felt sense, what started as a conflict can transform into forward movement. The carrying forward, the right next step, is often something that could not have been conceived by either individual in a conflict.

NVC is a theory, the practice of which can lead to felt sensing. Felt sensing is pre-conceptual— fresh, intricate and unpredictable in every moment. A lot of practice and careful listening for Feelings and Needs are necessary before people can learn to trust the felt sense in all its transformative power.

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The felt sense is a wanting

“Don’t want too much,” the voices warned.

No. Want. Want life.

Want this fragile oasis of the galaxy to flourish.
Want fertility, want seasons, want this spectacular array of creatures,
this brilliant balance of need.

Want it. Want it all.
Desire. Welcome her raging power.
May her strength course through us.
Desire, she is life. Desire life.

Allow ourselves to desire life, to want this sweetness
so passionately, that we live for it.

Ellen Bass, “Live For It”

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Focusing and spirituality: body as teacher

Focusing and spirituality

Fr Ed McMahon’s amazing quote about Focusing and spirituality shows how our body can become our spiritual companion and teacher:

Resurrection was always meant to be felt as a continuing NOW deep in the cells of our bodies,

Where something so mundane

As simply pausing to own our feelings, in a caring way,

Could call forth,

From an eternal and timeless presence,

Such a PENETRATION of those cells,

That our changing body ITSELF, would become our spiritual companion and teacher.

–Fr. Ed McMahon

Fr Ed  shares his inspiring story in this 5-minute video. Thanks to Nada Lou sharing this video!

How can it be that our changing body itself becomes our spiritual companion and teacher? In Focusing, you pause and become aware of your feelings, in a caring way, as he suggests. relationship of Focusing and spirituality by doing exactly as he suggests, pausing and owning your feelings in a caring way.

Too often spirituality is associated with criticizing ourselves for how we feel, rejecting how we feel, blaming ourselves for not being spiritual enough, not disciplined enough, not compassionate enough.  Paradoxically, by owning our feelings, they are transformed. Key to this is getting a bodily felt sense of the situation. The body will reveal your truth. 

Focusing, spirituality and the Great Turning

More and more I get the feeling that the Great Turning is a spiritual transformation. It has to do with us realizing that we are all part of the miracle of creation. We are all in this together.

Our bodies were made to live on this miraculous planet. Our lungs were made to breathe the air on this planet, our digestive systems were made to eat what grows on this planet, our bones and muscles were designed to enable us to walk upright on this particular planet. As human beings, we are part of all creation.

– Learn Focusing and Listening for yourself!

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A felt sense feels right amid uncertainty

Snowden and the felt sense

Citizenfour won an Oscar for best documentary of 2015

A felt sense feels right despite the uncertainty of the circumstances. This illustrated in the documentary Citizenfour, a quiet, thoughtful, inspiring film about the week in June 2013 when Edward Snowden turned over thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in a Hong Kong hotel room. Snowden was a contractor with the National Security Agency. He had become increasingly concerned about global surveillance programs run by the NSA with the cooperation of telecommunication companies. He wanted US citizens to know that their data was being turned over to the government, as it would be in China. 

“…every time you wrote an email, every time you typed something into that Google search box, every time your phone moved, you sent a text message, you made a phone call … the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment were being changed. This was without even the vast majority of members of Congress knowing about it. And this is when I start to think “Maybe we need to know about this, maybe if Congress knew about this, maybe if the courts knew about this, we would not have the same policies as the Chinese government.” *

Snowden had tried to raise his ethical concerns through internal channels at the NSA but had been ignored. He knew that he had to set up his revelations very carefully. Instead of the more random Wikileaks style, Snowden chose to turn his information over to Greenwald and Poitras, principled journalists who had, themselves, been subjects of surveillance. He trusted that they would not sensationalize the issue. He hoped that his revelations would open the subject for public debate.

By hoping to alert Americans to their loss of freedom, he was setting himself up to lose his freedom completely

When they met for the first time in Snowden’s hotel room, Poitras asked if she could film their interaction. We witness their first uneasy meeting. Snowden deals quietly and poignantly with having left his partner of many years, his job, and his family without having revealed to them any of his plans. He has stepped out into an action space, not knowing what would happen next.

Greenwald’s initial article was published in the Guardian, then Poitras’s article was published in the Washington Post. The next day, Snowden followed his plan to reveal his identity. He wanted people to know that the information was coming from a concerned citizen and not from some unpredictable rogue entity.

In the first part of the film, we get to know William Binney, a mathematician/cryptologist who devised a lot of the data-intercepting methods that are used today by the government. Binney had expected that his inventions would be used in a way consistent with the US constitution. However, he saw that after 9/11, data intercepting systems were used to track everyone, indiscriminately. He resigned on October 31, 2001 after 30 years with the NSA. The FBI interrogated Binney after he contributed to a 2005 New York Times exposé on warrentless eavesdropping. In July 2007, the FBI, raided his home. They confiscated his computer, discs and personal and business records. Citizenfour also documents congressional hearings and court cases in which NSA officials flatly deny or deflect surveillance charges. Snowden had a lot of examples of what can happen to people who protest NSA policies. 

To see someone put his life on the line like the 29-year-old Snowden, is quite compelling. We follow him day by day until his escape to the office of the UN High Commission on Refugees and his eventual exile in Russia. 

A cinematic example of felt sensing

I am interested in cultural examples of felt sensing. The slow, sensitive nature of this film shows Snowden listening to a felt sense. The felt sense can often be at odds with practicalities, but it leads to an inner sense of congruence and truth. 

From minute 56 to 58 of the film, there is a moment that illustrates what a felt sense can look like. After the journalists have revealed his identity (but not his whereabouts) to the media, Snowden gets some worrisome news from his girlfriend about government efforts to find him. He stands up, walks to the window, and stares silently outside for awhile.  Then he turns and says “It’s an unusual feeling that’s kind of hard to describe or convey in words. Not knowing what’s going to happen the next day, the next hour, the next week, is scary….. but at the same time it’s liberating. The planning comes a lot easier because you don’t have that many variables to put in play. You can only act and then act again.”

Here are the elements of felt sensing that you can see in these two minutes from Citizenfour. Snowdene pauses and senses inside as he stares out the window in silence. He notices a feeling that is hard to put into words. Like many of the most dynamic felt senses, it is multifaceted and paradoxical in nature. On one hand, the uncertainty of his situation is scary. On the other, it’s liberating. He is no longer planning things in his head. He knows he must just act, then act again.

Felt sensing can never be done by computers

This is why I teach Focusing and Thinking at the Edge. Not all of us have Edward Snowden’s courage and commitment to act on our conscience in a public way as he did. And yet we have many felt senses every day. Paying attention to our felt sense can help us act with integrity in situations large and small. In Citizenfour, we can see the simplicity and the clear direction that happens when Snowden gives expression to his implicit knowing. The felt sense feels right, despite the uncertain circumstances. 

As a species, we need to develop and trust this innately human felt sensing capacity. We all have it, and we can learn how to listen to it. Felt sensing can never be done by computers. It is not based on “the numbers” of probability. The felt sense gives us access to the whole of our situation, in all its implications, so that we can act as human beings.

Felt sensing helps us pay attention to what makes us human. Our humanity must always balance technology. Felt sensing reveals new and relevant truth, and when it does so, we feel free, liberated. Balancing our inner truth with our technological knowledge enables us to find new possibilities, far beyond probabilities that depend on what has gone before.

*Here’s a link to a recent interview with Snowden.

 

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Monseñor Romero’s version of Focusing

Here is a beautiful quote from Monseñor Romero that could be used to introduce Focusing, the Pause, Thinking at the Edge (first in Spanish, then in English):

“Vivimos muy afuera de nosotros mismos. Son pocos los hombres que de veras entran dentro de sí, y por eso hay tantos problema. En el corazón de cada hombre hay como una pequeña celda íntima, donde Dios baja a conversar a solas con el hombre. Y es allí donde el hombre decide su propio destino, su propio papel en el mundo. Si cada hombre de los que estamos tan aproblemados, en este momento, entráramos en esta pequeña celda, y desde allí, escucháramos la voz del Señor, que nos habla en nuestra propia conciencia, cuánto podríamos hacer cada uno de nosotros por mejorar el ambiente, la sociedad, la familia en que vivimos.”

“We live very much outside ourselves.
Few people really enter inside themselves,
and for this reason, there are so many problems.
In the heart of each person there is a small, intimate place [like a monk’s cell], where God comes down to converse alone with us. That is where each person decides his or her own destiny, his or her own role in the world.
If each of us who have so many problems, in this moment, would enter into this small cell, and from there, listen to the voice of the Lord, that speaks to us in our own conscience, how much could each of us do
to improve the environment, the society, the family
in which we live.”
–Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero,
from his homily of July 10, 1977

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