Thinking at The Edge – The aliveness of experiencing - 25th September
by Marta Fabregat
Have you ever felt that what you were experiencing about a theme in your life was too difficult to share? That the words you knew felt incomplete or insufficient to describe that experience which lives in your life? As if it was almost not possible to describe it in a way that people would understand the exact, direct experiencing that lives in you?
If this resonates with you or even if you have had many moments socially where you were trying to express something and no matter how hard you tried, despite even whether people understood you or not, there was still something inside that was not totally at ease with the expression of that experiencing. Then yes.... you get that felt experience.
I am sitting here at my kitchen table, about to bring my daughter to the school bus to Galway. Last night there was a deadline to have this article done and as I was sensing the enquiry I was embarking on I could feel the many ideas and knowledge, information coming in to be there with me from all the things I knew about Thinking at the Edge...
To write this piece for the IFN newsletter I sat with this quote from Eugene Gendlin´s article An Introduction -Thinking at The Edge:
"You need to stand again in your own experiencing ... in your own felt ongoingness, which is that intricate complexity inside of life ... to put into the world what hasn't been said yet, that you are carrying from your particular experience.”
so...how to write about TAE from my own experiencing as I sat here in front of the computer, knowing that Elaine is there waiting to receive this article to complete the gathering of all the pieces for this season Newsletter.
The first thing that comes when I ask that question is my first attempt at a formal TAE practice with Beatrice Blake. I am sitting with a task that asks me to share - in no more than 500 words - an account of a personal experience, a few paragraphs about Thinking at the Edge.
I sigh...
There is something there already about all of this, this experincing at this time, space, moment. The phrase that comes is different forces.
One force is like many things together, some of which stand firmly and congruently in line, while some are all bunched together and its difficult to differenciate among them. Things I know I have experienced ongoingly within my own process with TAE.
There is another force that is more subtle and has a strength that is very noticeable in my stomach and connected with my head. It feels like a hot air balloon with the balloon being my head with lines going down the torso and a big container that is hollow and alive in its sensation, vibrating subtlely.
The first force is really strong, it wants to “get this done!” and also knows how to do it; it has the discourse, the power with strong meaning; and it is also of course connected with previous and past experiencing.
And the other force is like - wait... a blank page - the word infinite contact comes in relation to this force and I stay here.
It seems that the quality of my sensing, or my being in contact with the different forces or paradoxical experiences is allowing the space in my belly to host those two forces and within that moment something new comes that was not there before...
It is showing me the now, in this alchemical process of birthing ongoingly from a fresh edge of direct experience.
Giving steps on how to continue expressing what TAE really is, How it can be a raw, direct and fresh-in-the moment tool for the creation ongoingly of new steps in our life, new living paradigms, and somehow it is showing me how the creation of this inner space can be created in all of us by allowing the paradox of the living moment to relate, convive and distill what is necessary for this moment.
It is new!! Hooray ….a great relief and a sense of joy and love joins my whole body. Hold on! Something more wants to join me here...its you! The reader, the listener.
Even though you are not here with me in this moment explicitly, somehow I feel you already there as an infinite, ongoing contact with this encounter.
Eugene Gendlin in collaboration with Mary Hendricks and Kye Nelson joined forces to come up with a number of steps where experiencing in Focusing could also go into the public domain.
By bringing our own personal experience, and what we all carry within us that has not been said yet and that is difficult to put into words, we may be able between us to bring about a new world, a new way of relating and ultimately a new ongoing birthing and evolution of humanity.
I bow to Focusing for this as it makes possible a life which is greater and fuller and above all because it brings me back to the intricacy of sensing life as it is...with all of that and all the more in it.
If you want to explore TAE I can only wholeheartedly recommend Beatrice Blake. You can find her ongoing TAE courses here: https://possibility-space.com/learn-focusing-and-tae/
And of course you can find much more about TAE on the TIFI Website here: https://focusing.org/felt-sense/thinking-edge-tae
And there is this article that can also bring a little more clarity... although maybe it would be better if it did not, and served instead as a great starting point to your own, unique experiencing.
https://focusing.org/sites/default/files/legacy/pdf/tae_intro.pdf
