This is an experiment. I hope you don’t mind me experimenting with you. It seems like I’m in a ‘po’ moment in my life. One ‘po’ moment is something I heard from a friend of mine. He told me that in the 1970s, companies came up with this concept of ‘po’ in response to uncertain times. If a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was asked and someone offered a ‘po’, the answer was actually: “Let’s face it: we don’t know. Let’s play with this a bit. Let’s experiment!” This is also an experiment in the spirit of Gestalt. And hopefully a reflection of Carl Roger’s concept of a “fully functioning person.”
Power in potential
Personal power has been a big topic for me for the past few months. I have come to know this moment and the personal crisis that I have been experiencing as a continuation of a process of what some spiritual writers call the death of the ego and an invitation to reclaim my own power and use it in the world. At first this may seem like a paradox, but it is not. As we will hear from Eckhart Tolle, our power does not reside in the ego, but in the Spacious Presence of Consciousness that contains and infuses all life.
I want to suggest that Eckhart Tolle’s conception of Spacious Presence is another way of conceptualizing the life force that gives rise to the “upgrade trend” that Carl Rogers observed in his clients. Rogers suggests that all living organisms have an inherent movement in them toward the realization of their potential. The life force is so great, so strong, so powerful, that even in gloomy conditions, it continues in the direction of fruiting. He writes about the potatoes that were kept in the basement when he was a child:
“Conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes were just starting to sprout, pale white sprouts, so different from the healthy green sprouts they sent out when planted in the ground in the spring. But these sad, spindly buds grew two or three feet long as they approached the distant light from the window. They were, in their strange and useless growth, a kind of desperate expression of the directional trend that I have been describing. They would never grow into a plant, they would never mature, they would never reach their true potentiality. But in the most adverse circumstances they strove to become. Life wouldn’t give up, even if it couldn’t flourish. ” (Rogers, 1990, 380)
My goblin teacher
Let me introduce you to Eckhart Tolle. Some of you may have been blessed to have met him already. I call him my pixie teacher. His teachings are simple but profound, and they come from a place of purity that is really quite rare. Eckhart really seems to be the embodiment of what he teaches.
Eckhart Tolle is a German spiritual teacher who had a profound experience of awakening in the midst of his own terrible suffering around the age of 30. His teachings are based on the experience of a Buddhist truth that the content of our lives – thoughts, feelings The situations, relationships, ideas, opinions and things with which we identify are impermanent, but we hold on to them as if they were the truth of who we are. There is an inherited, unconsciously compulsive part of us, which he calls our ego, that adheres to the impermanent conditions of our lives to find an identity. The ego clings to itself because it has a deep sense that it is not enough. Our consumer culture is based on the ego. There is an insatiable desire to consume more, to become more, that can never truly be fulfilled. The ego robs us of our power as it clings to our stories. Create the stories because without the stories, it is the deep fear of non-existence.
The truth, Eckhart says, is that we are not our stories. Who we really are is the spacious, living, and breathing presence that holds the stories, sustains, and infuses all of life, with grace, compassion, and lightness. And that is more than enough.
Regaining Our Power
We give up our power when we get caught up in the stories of our lives. It is the content of our lives that constitutes the content of our stories, but these stories we represent come from a myriad of sources: the dynamics we experience in our families of origin, what people in our early life said and did not do. ‘ say about us, social norms, gender roles, dominant myths and legends of our culture and the media, etc. Often our stories come from our pain; they are ways we can make sense of our experiences. Our stories generally limit us, keep us stagnant, and tend to provide us with basement conditions.
It has been of great help to me in my reading of Eckhart Tolle and personal reflections in recent months, to really see how my personal stories are actually shared stories, often universal stories. This is essential to my application of Eckhart’s teachings, as by depersonalizing your story, you immediately create a distance from it and you are no longer “in it”, allowing you to de-identify with it.
At the heart of these stories are our wounds. They are wounds that we share with the world, wounds that are transmitted to us when we are born in a wounded world. As we begin to disidentify from our stories, we find the space to encounter our wounds, and when we begin to see our wounds as personal expressions of a wounded world, then true compassion is born: compassion for ourselves, for others, and for ourselves. others. for the world, and we can begin to heal our lives and our world on a deep level. If we can begin to see our stories, the situations that we find ourselves in as we go through our lives, are actually personal expressions of more universal, sometimes more tragic stories, then we can begin to respond with compassion and regain our power. .
The ego judges
The ego is that part of us that makes us inflate or deflate in relation to others. Due to its deep sense of not being enough, the ego tries to justify itself by making others wrong and judging them for the way they are and the things they do. This happens to varying degrees in relationship contexts and at the societal level (eg, with racism and homophobia). An aspect that is unacceptable to our egoic sense of self is projected onto the other and pursued in him. This adds to a feeling of fragmentation. We are literally experiencing ourselves from the inside out. You can be sure that if strong feelings arise in response to another person, they are reflecting some disowned aspect of yourself, an aspect that is especially threatening to your ego’s sense of self. These disowned parts of ourselves form our shadow.
Coming home
When you experience a crisis in your life that causes disruption, great loss and suffering as a result of that loss, such as the death of someone close, the end of an important relationship or the loss of a large amount of money, then you are close to leaving. go their stories. In the midst of such suffering, there is nothing left but to surrender; and in that surrender is acceptance, and with acceptance is freedom. But while surrender may be easier in the midst of suffering, I believe it is possible in the here and now.
As we surrender, we move into the space around things, we relinquish our control over them. We accept things as they are and therefore put aside the stories that surround us. There is a process of letting go: the deeper we let go, the more deeply we allow ourselves to relax in the Spacious Presence of Awareness.
I call this space Home. You will know when you feel it. It cannot be adequately theorized or mentally understood; it is an experience. It can be known simply in the silence of stillness. Only be. It is the space around things, a space that contains all things and by which all things are connected. It contains the changes of the seasons, being born and dying, welcoming and letting go. This Conscious Awareness gives us a sense of connection with everything because it is the vital force that infuses and surrounds each being. And it is with this sense of connection that we can finally trust: we are enough.
It is from this space of Presence that we find the power with which to make decisions and create our lives and influence the lives of those we love. Because as this is the same presence that contains all forms, thus it gives birth and creates new forms. It is from this presence that we carry out a counseling process, listening with our whole body, our whole being, being present at the same time the pain and the joy, the feelings and the thoughts of our clients. Because this presence is who you really are, infinitely now: your essence, not separated from the essence of the universe; moving from the limitations of your stories towards the realization of your potential.
