Changing the World with Felt Meaning From the Personal to the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Changing the World with Felt Meaning

From the Personal to the Public Domain – bringing your fresh ideas to the world Mary Jennings

Dedicated to John Hume, Man of Peace

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Politician, community organiser, architect of Belfast (Good Friday) Peace Agreement (1998), trade unionist, citizen of the world, man

• f vision, thinker, father, husband,

Derry man (Northern Ireland)

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Died earlier this month at 83.

Dedicated to John Hume, Man of Peace

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Changed the whole agenda of working towards peace in Northern Ireland with ONE WORD

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A United Ireland to

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An Agreed Ireland

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A new concept that came from his deep understanding and felt sense

• f what people wanted – an Ireland

‘at peace with itself.

Changing the world – contributing with your felt meaning

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…With the so-called objective side - public language, public concepts, ideology….

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Gendlin was interested in healing this split between

u inside/outside u public/private u body/mind

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Here’s what Gendlin wrote:

Changing the world – contributing with your felt meaning

“ A felt sense can implicitly contain arguments- about the world. It is not just private, because we live- sentiently, bodily- in the world …..So it is obvious that the subjective, bodily side is not private. No, the( … ) is just as public and interactional as the language. Your felt sense is your body’s interaction with your situations…. “ E T Gendlin: Crossing and Dipping: Some Terms for Approaching the Interface between Natural Understanding and Logical Formulation

Changing the world – contributing with your felt meaning

We can develop a way of doing this by looking at two areas:

• 1. Creative practices

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Stories – carry general, publicly understood patterns

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Poems examples of going from the personal to public domain

• 2. Felt Meaning Practices

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Focusing has this personal aspect we are familiar with and …..

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Thinking At the Edge (TAE ) can help us bring felt meaning into the public realm

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• Crossing what does THIS show me about THIS….

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• Instance –where have I experienced something of this kind…..

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• explicating – saying more of the ‘implicit intricacy’

The Tricycle Effect – Disrupting the Public Meaning

The felt meaning about patience starts with a Focusing sessions and memory of young John Duggan on his tricycle, accompanied by his dad .. Listen to the story…..

The Tricycle Effect

Patience of THIS kind

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respectful

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tender

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calm

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steady,

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wisdom

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strength

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endurance

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quiet authority, example

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steadfast

The Tricycle Effect

Dictionary definition

u Concise Oxford Dictionary

defines patience as,” calm endurance of pain or of any provocation; quiet and self- possessed waiting for something; perseverance; forbearance”

The Tricycle Effect

Dictionary definition

u Concise Oxford Dictionary defines

patience as,” calm endurance of pain or of any provocation; quiet and self-possessed waiting for something; perseverance; forbearance”

My felt meaning definition

u Patience is not only tender,

respectful and loving, it holds its own ground. It has a calm, silent authority.

u It empathises with pain and

suffering but provides a way of going beyond mere endurance. You can trust its strength and

• wisdom. it’s right there with

you, offering you just the help you need.

The Tricycle Effect – The personal AND the public both sides

Bringing the felt experiencing into the existing definition

• Passive endurance AND active wisdom
• Waiting for change AND a way of making change
• Quiet perseverance AND silent authority
• I can better EMBODY this kind of patience, not just with myself but with
• thers – and so change something in the world…..

The Tricycle Effect

patience

The Tricycle Effect

On Your Tricycle!

Let’s take a moment as to what ‘patience’ means to you – let what I have said CROSS with your experience

• Let some instance of when you experienced, or showed patience come, recall

all the details

• Allow a felt sense of that whole situation or instance to form
• Do more words, gestures, images, stories, come from the whole felt sense of

that situation?

• How does this affect or inform what ‘patience’ means? Can you say what

words come?

• Is there something new or fresh in what has come?

Personal/Public – a look at the poetic process of using metaphors to ‘carry across’

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Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate, from Northern Ireland.

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A lyric poet, noted for his celebration of place, of the everyday, of nature and farming worked at the time of The Troubles, particularly in the rough 1970, 80s and 90s.

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A time when ‘loose talk costs lives’ was a public advertising campaign

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As a public figure, how do you comment on what was happening – without ‘loose talk’?

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Let’s look at extracts from one poem, MINT

Personal/Public – a look at the poetic process Mint (stanza 1) It looked like a clump of small dusty nettles Growing wild at the gable of the house Beyond where we dumped our refuse and

• ld bottles:

Unverdant ever, almost beneath notice.

Personal/Public – a look at the poetic process Mint (stanza 4) Let the smells of mint go heady and defenceless Like inmates liberated in that yard. Like the disregarded ones we turned against Because we’d failed them by our disregard.

Personal/Public – a look at the poetic process

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Starting with the personal memory, easily understood experience and allows it to cross, to be an instance of what is a very public issue – the danger of disregarding problems near to us…. When we notice or allow metaphors to come – and work to explicate them – they have the IMPLICIT INTRICACY of all that we want to sense and want to say

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The metaphor of Mint – hardly noticed, discarded, beneath notice…. CROSSES with the situation in his own community

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Warns us of the danger of DISREGARDING what is ‘ at the side of our own house’- it will ‘grow wild’, erupts into violence

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If we fail to notice, we are part of the problem

–Elements of Focusing and TAE – applying it to something you want to bring to the public domain

uPick a concept or idea (something that came in your Focusing or

something you want to say more about)

u Notice what comes by way of memories, snatches of song, images,

words, gestures

u Now pick ONE PARTICULAR instance of when you really had a felt

meaning – perhaps something that came in Focusing already. Tell the story…

u Feel the qualities, key words that come – make general statements u Ask about some words, what does “…..” mean in this situation; ask

what kind of thing it is

u Notice what has changed, what’s new, what has crossed in the public

meaning with your felt meaning of the whole situation.

Felt Meaning – From the Personal to the Public Realm

As the poet said: “The lines flow from the hand unbidden And the hidden source is the watchful heart” Derek Mahon Everything is Going To Be Alright