I have been planning a short piece on one of Eugene Gendlin’s key philosophical terms, implicit, which carries a lot of weight in Focusing.
But events of the past weekend totally threw me off. As I was settling in to write on Friday night, Elon Musk launched his coup d’etat and I became preoccupied with following it and developing whatever leads came through various trusted journalists and platforms. I am sure the story will continue to get more bizarre as he is a bizarre man.
Anyways, implicit is really interesting and important and I hope to discuss it quite a bit over the next few weeks.
At the end of last summer I planted some Zinnia seeds. There were just a few, and they were doomed to get lost over the winter, so why not? They germinated and grew, but only a few inches tall, and they flowered, but only with the tiniest flowers. I noticed that the sunflowers that spilled out from the bird feeders also developed along the same lines.
This illustrates an important part of Focusing: that every process (that is, everything) carries forward only as it can. The may seem obvious, but it isn’t when you connect this idea with implicit.
Where “is” the capacity to grow 7 feet tall, when speaking of a sunflower? Is it in the seed, in the sunlight. Or… in the length of the day or time of the season or temperature of the lengthening evenings?
Obviously it isn’t anywhere. Or rather, it isn’t “somewhere”. The growth “carries forward as it can” as it edges into the conditions of its growth. The potential isn’t somewhere, but it “is”. This is (in some ways) what Gendlin refers to as “implicit”.
More later…
Some news: my first podcast appearance:
And Able and Rae have started a new group, just in time:
