Big Kindness

I want to share something that has been happening for a few years in my Focusing practice... and it’s about what I am calling big kindness. It happens like this: I’m exploring some theme around a difficulty, for example - my habit of spending too much time on the internet and researching products... and in that exploration I meet various parts of myself with empathy and understanding... and then in that exploration, it’s like I sense a bigger picture
… perhaps really taking it in that many people get caught in the same habit. In fact it’s a big issue for many many humans (well those in the so called developed world with “time” to spare!) So many of us are under the same spell of consumerism and distraction. If you like it’s a force or influence moving through our collective living. And then comes some big kindness. Like a warm compassion for being a human being at this troubling time. It is hard, even if we have so many resources, to live in this world. This big kindness seems to come whenever I dwell on some shared human experience, some existential theme.

A quote by one of favourite thinkers, Charles Eisenstein, Seems to fit here.

“A multiplicity of needs go chronically, tragically unmet in modern society. These include the need to express one's gifts and do meaningful work, the need to love and to be loved, the need to be truly seen and heard, and to see and hear other people, the need for connection to nature, the need to play, explore, and to have adventures, the need for emotional intimacy, the need to serve something larger than oneself and the need sometimes to do absolutely nothing and just be” (Page 147 - "The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible")

So we live in a bigger system and we feel this in our lives and in our Focusing.

For me it’s very helpful to reflect that my individual experiences and struggles exist within a bigger picture of our world. And even more important is to give ourselves some kindness or forgiveness for our struggles. We live in hard times it seems. It’s not all you fault or problem.

This is not a cop out or giving up of responsibility around my issue. I can still sense the need to change. And of course I can use focusing to explore what would I need to support that change and unfoldment? I can meet all those parts in me that get caught in this pattern.

And all the time. whilst doing that, remembering kindness!

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