Joe Shirley

After all was said and done, The Fall became Appreciation. Appreciation by me for others, and by others for me, all around every which way, filling the human universe. It feels really, really good.

But that wasn’t the last of it. I moved the final parts of The Fall on Friday last week. On Saturday, however, I found myself stewing in a bit of a funk, different from The Fall, seemingly a new layer of work to address.

But this layer seemed more simple than any in the past. It seemed very primitive as well. Definitely pre-language, and somewhat amorphous. A feeling of sadness. A generalized fear. And a distinct feeling of inhabiting a world in which I was not welcome.

These seemed to be the three parts of a witness self, without the normally accompanying set of nine states forming the embedded identity. Strange. Sitting with these three states during the day, I found myself at times sensing back in time, way back to infancy. This felt like my earliest template, the imprint which was to shape all the compensations, defenses, and distortions to come. Was this some kind of “Original Witness?”

I quickly mapped and moved the three states on Saturday evening, and the results have been breathtaking. So much so, that I feel challenged to say any more at this point.

Everything is up for grabs it seems. I am re-evaluating my relationship to my work especially. I am falling into sweet ecstasy in my renewed relationship. I am appreciating each moment, and taking my time with things.

So for the moment, the commitment for daily posts here is off. I may return to that, but priorities are shifting quickly. I shall wait until things settle down to make any further commitments. I need to discover what new voices are calling me.

(The image of the sun is similar to the ideal first witness state in the Original Witness. I call it So Here.)

Leech World becomes Universal Breathing

The path I’ve chosen is a solitary one. While others do choose to enter the darkness within as a way to bring forth their inner light, most do so within a community of practice which provides container, guidance, and support.

Me? I have created my own container. So I must be my own guidance and support. Nobody knows feeling psychology the way I do. And because I am committed to plumbing its depths, I restrict myself to Feeling State Imaging as my primary tool for mucking about in the underbelly of my psyche.

And man, when the underbelly is really under there, it can be tough.

The set I’m working on now, “The Fall,” has been particularly challenging. Sometimes working a set is straightforward. The various states reveal themselves up front and it’s a simple matter to map and move, map and move.

Not this one. The witness, for example, a three-part set which is the overseer or frame for our experience of self, had three different configurations of gradated severity. Tough to track down. And yesterday, after mapping a bunch, I was having great difficulty moving any until I identified an underlying anxiety and shifted it.

Third Witness: Leech World becomes Universal Breathing

This set I’ve been doing by hand, drawing with colored pencils and pens. It doesn’t scan into such a great image, and it’s hard to read, but I want to share this one anyway.

Leech World has thick tentacles coming at me from every direction, green like vines, powerful, trying to pry into the cracks into Hardened (the reactive Second Witness). It is the inner experience of “bottomless need” exhibited by someone close to me.

Leech World, in its more intense version, is Violence. I had a dream recently where Violence was revealed to me. In the dream was a baby, playing with some wild animals, a big ball of writhing animalia. But the animals were getting wild and aggressive, and the baby was caught in their grasp. I got close, to make sure the baby was OK, and saw he was getting an arm torn off and it was bleeding. At that point, I “fell in” to the baby and awoke with a terrified start from the feeling of being devoured by an out-of-control wildness.

That is a good description of Violence, and Leech World is a milder form. The essence is, the beings close to me in the world take control of me and I am helpless to defend myself from them. In my early childhood, that was my parents. In working this set I had flashbacks of being caught up by my father especially, to be spanked for something I did not understand and had no control over.

This deep, archetypal influence has been with me even now, today. The whole set is about “The Fall” from the garden, but even more, a sense of rupture in my world. There is more to say, but I shall keep things short for this post.

Leech World shifts to become Universal Breathing. It is an energy / breath, as if the universe is breathing in and through me. Slight iridescence in and through everything and everyone. Sound of deep, universal breathing. A sense of, I am OK. There is no lack or need, anywhere, in anyone. I can simply be, and simply breathe, always. This shift has made today much more open, soft, present. I am grateful for this work.

Anyway, my point is simply to mark the fact that sometimes this gig of developing a new paradigm and methodology is a lonely and difficult road. I’ll be very, very happy when I begin to have a community, or at least a team, of people sharing these discoveries and experiences with me. Yeah.

The Many-Headed Hydra

I’m discovering that having a commitment to post something every day is helping me stay focused on my progress. Against the intention to extract something worth writing falls my propensity to pursue many tracks at once. At this moment I have 13 tabs open in my research browser (I use Opera) representing about four potential posts. In addition, I have handwritten notes from the past three days marking another four or five things I wish to write about. I’m learning I need to rein in the many threads of exploration if I am to make progress in my writing. (A bit of a monster, really. Like dealing with the “many-headed Hydra!”)

Of course, this is just this blog I’m talking about. Then there is the more ambitious goal of getting FeelingPsychology.com under way. I am seeing this blog as a place to capture and develop material for final posting on the other site. Some of what I explore here will go nowhere. Others will invite branching and merging toward the end results. Seems like an excellent way to use a blog.

The Fall, depicted in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo

In the last few days I’ve become more aware that in shifting the “Isolation to Connection” set, I cleared the way for a deeper configuration to surface. This one goes way back into childhood as well. I’ve been having flashbacks to certain moments involving physical punishment, feeling the betrayal, the disruption, the confusion I felt as a child.

I’m calling this set The Fall. The central theme involves losing my bliss, again and again. For me, bliss came in moments of communion with nature, with objects and stories, with ideas and images. This part of me, the dreamer/mystic/scientist, was strong from a very early age. I used to think of my tendency to get lost in reverie, fantasy, and mystical trance as an escape, a defense from the oppression of my home. I used to think of it as dysfunctional.

In this set I am seeing the possibility that this highly sensitive dreamer is close to my true nature. And I am moved to liberate this aspect of myself, to bring it back into my everyday life.

For me, the space of my Eden was held by my mother. But in my young experience, she failed me time and again, allowing the intrusion of my bullying father to jolt me out of my bliss. I believe I grew to despise her weakness, her failure, her inability to protect me. But this contempt was dangerous for my little psyche to contain, and impossible to express. It went far underground.

Now that this set has risen to the surface, it is causing serious problems in my relationship. I am unable to feel safe, to be close, and I have withdrawn in a way that is hurtful to our connection.

The only way out is through. This set has sabotaged many relationships in the past, and has caused problems in this one from the beginning. I want to end its influence in my life. At the moment I am still tracking the parts, finding the various feeling states. I’ve mapped a couple, but it feels like it will be a few days or more before I wrap my arms around the entire set.

Wish me luck.

Full Depiction of Ideal States for the Connection Set

This time last week I was finishing up some big inner work. The Isolation to Connection set felt very big at the time. But in the days since then, the shift has only increased in magnitude.

The most significant aspect of the experience has been the strangeness. I have moments of awkward hesitation, where I’m not sure what to do or say because the old pattern is no longer there. In these moments, I have an odd sensation I can only describe as inhabiting the wrong life. This place is not where I’m supposed to be. This job is not how I’m supposed to be spending my time. Etc.

Fortunately I do have a sense of rightness about some things. Continuing to share my work in the new form of Feeling Psychology feels right. And fortunately, along those lines, I also am experiencing a core difference which makes working much easier.

I no longer feel pressed. There is no urgency. No desperation to achieve or else. I have a sense of being in the right place at the right time with my work, and the path is clear in front of me. All I need do is take the next step. The rest will take care of itself.

I’m also enjoying a shift in how I experience being in my body. I’ve been feeling relaxed, profoundly so, able to release my muscles into sleep or rest. I have always, as long as I remember, had an underlying tension throughout my body, as if I were prepared to act at any time. Or as if it were dangerous to fully let go.

But no amount of focus, meditation, stretching, or physical activity seemed to release that dynamic energy. This week, I’m feeling more at ease, more grounded. And that feels odd.

One last experience: Although I have named the transformation of this set Isolation to Connection, the connections are in flux. It’s as if the connections I have had to people, practices, places have been unplugged. And the cords that connected me are now floating about in the air, ready to be plugged in for a new pattern of connection. At the moment, though, that’s all they’re doing. Floating.

I’m looking forward to reconnecting.

Have you ever experienced this after a profound inner shift?