"carrying forward"
Way Beyond Words 2025 9 9
We are back. This newsletter will be now be monthly, with some discussion of focusing, mental health, and spirituality, our calendar for the coming weeks, special programs, workshops, public appearances, and shout outs to allies and other interesting orgs.
Come visit our table at the Buckingham Friends School Peace Fair on Sept 20. We will be discussing the practice and philosophy of Focusing, handing out material, and talking about our program. It’s part of our outreach. We intend to make Focusing a presence in the Doylestown area. Wish us luck.
We have a number of programs about to be announced for the fall, including Buddhist Psychology, Intro to Focusing, Parenting the Whole Spectrum, and others.
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There is particular concept in Eugene Gendlin’s philosophical work that carries a lot of weight in his development of Focusing Psychology: “carrying forward as it can”. In simple terms, this means that some aspect of physical & mental life (our subjective experience) responds and develops to a new situation exactly as it can. These little sunflowers are wonderful examples of this. They grow, but only so tall, as the days are getting shorter; they bloom, but less than half the size, as the nights are cooler and the season coming to a close. Each flower understands, in a bodied way, precisely what the conditions of its life cycle shall be, and how it must produce its next cycle of seed as it can.
To get the newsletter up on its feet again, I thought I’d start in a poetic mode.
1.
Philosophers investigate words and concepts, and sometimes create new ones. Complacent words and concepts squirm uncomfortably under the gaze of the philosopher.
2.
Late Summer, the sunflower seeds drop from the bird feeder and grow. The days are growing shorter, their arrays are smaller, their stalks shorter. Just as bright, the stamens are packed every bit as tight. Their heads turned far east to far west, as the equinox approaches. In High Summer, they only look north this way and that way… a long Summer’s day they might turn a mere 100 degrees. The same seed two months ago would grow 7 feet tall.
3.
Today, their neck yoga is nearly 180. This is difficult for all beings except birds.
4.
All this effort to grow while the sunlight is constricting and the night air cooler, makes for constrained conditions. They grow as they can: shorter, smaller, tighter, going to seed earlier.
5.
As they can also includes ripening faster, hungry birds packing for Winter by picking them clean quicker and quicker, before those soft, grey ivory seeds make a hull.
6.
They seem weary as the shadows creep longer around their feet, heads nodding. Bees sleep on the sun of the sunflower. The bees only take what they can, and the birds do, and everyone is just doing precisely that.
7.
Your shadow = (how tall you are) x (angle of the sun)
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Inquiries about programs, therapy, & support groups:
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