ARCHIVED—Threads of Thought

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Extending and deepening the horizons of psychological thinking and new philosophical ideas.

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Dianne Juhl May 2, 2011 at 12:30pm

Just think what would happen if you step into the fullness of the emptiness... not just as an observer but as a "dancer" who moves and witnesses, invites embodied active imagination, an receives the grace that comes with thinking through the body ;)

~ Abundant regards, Dianne Juhl - founder/owner of The Feminine Face of Money, an organization and community where "thinking through the body" is invited!
Ed Koffenberger May 2, 2011 at 12:02pm

Dianne,

Your quotes will keep me thinking for awhile. But I did have an experience that was brought on by dance. It was when I discovered that I have two types of tears. Those tears that run down my nose from my eyes are tears of pain, anxiety, anguish of incompleteness. Tears that form on the outer corners of my eyes are "soul tears." Those that form after extreme moments of grace, beauty, and experienced truth. And the one place where my soul tears are most evident is in observing dance. There is a congruence of abstract form and physical body, ensouled soma that speaks on all levels simultaneously. No doubt that where I hear the word "grace-full" the most is in describing dance.
Dianne Juhl May 2, 2011 at 11:45am

"Right on, Judith." is what I'm saying to myself when I read your posts in this thread. I especially welcome your invitation to others of naming an experience of grace.

For me, I experience the dynamics of grace in action any time I dare to step into the fullness of the empty space.

As as a long-time practicioner of Authentic Movement & Witnessing, I'm privileged to experience how in moments of grace, the clarity and the mystery became one. This contemplative discipline offers me an experience of grace when I enter into relationship with three interdependent realms of experience: the individual body, the collective body, and the conscious body.

Janet Adler says it best, so I use some excerpts from her book titled, Offering from the Conscious Body:

The first realm concerns the study of the individual body. With a longing to be seen in the presence of a witness, a person moves into the emptiness of the studio with eyes closed, learning to track her movement and her concomitant inner experience. The mover discovers an infinite range of physical movement, sensation, emotion, and thought as embodied experiences happen into consciousness. In this process, there is a discovery of movement that is authentic, truthful. As her inner witness strengthens the mover opens toward a longing to see an other...

Practice focused on the collective body, the second realm, concerns still another longing, a longing to participate in a whole, to discover one's relationship to many without losing a conscious awareness of oneself. In this realm of study and practice people bring their experience of the ground form into a circle of movers and witnesses. Here individuals move with eyes closed as members of a moving body and sit in stillness with eyes open as members of a witness circle. In the beginning and ending of each round of work, the circle is empty. As individuals commit to witnessing the emptiness, the vessel strengthens in relationship to the development of embodied collective consciousness.

As the circle expands toward work within the conscious body, the third realm, the form itself becomes more transparent. Personality shifts toward experience of presence, empathy shifts toward compassion, and, in moments of grace, suffering becomes bearable. Practice toward presence develops into moments in which the body as a vessel is experienced as empty.

Another longing, a longing to offer, emerges out of this emptiness. The body moving becomes more transparent, becomes dance, and dance be-comes an offering. Words, becoming transparent, transform into poetry, and poetry is an offering. When energetic phenomena, which can be known in the body as direct experience of the Divine, concentrates within and moves through the conscious body, the energy itself becomes an offering—to the mover, to the witness, to our world evolving, to our world longing for consciousness. As the collective receives and, at times, enters the offerings, we are reminded that this discipline grows from ancient ground.
Judith Harte,Ph.D. May 2, 2011 at 7:44am

Ed..your response triggered something important for me about this business of grace...The idea of invisibility. Seeing, and being seen, felt, acknowledged by that which is invisible. The need for the experience of grace may in fact be insatiable especially for those whose sense of self has faded out of view. Don't want to take this discussion to psychotherapy's land of the false self. So I will leave it inside the not so empty void where all that is invisible exists.
Ed Koffenberger May 2, 2011 at 7:29am

Interesting Judith, and your sharing of your thoughts on grace can only open the possibility of grace to be experienced by others. I also believe that grace may come in many different environments, from the most confined to the most expansive. I also agree that once grace has been experienced AS grace, the opportunities for experiencing it again are increased. I have two that I will share, one almost "scripted" the other not. The first was sitting on the beach watching the sunrise. A man started out the jetty and when he got to the end, he took out bagpipes and began playing Amazing Grace. Additionally, he was silhouetted by the rising sun. Couldn't have written that one any better. The second was after being in a job where I felt completely invisible sitting at a picnic table. I was writing some sad journal entry about not being seen. A sound of leaves came from my feet and there was a squirrel no more than a foot from me, up on its haunches looking at me. I did not see this for what it was and attempted to shoo the squirrel away BUT it did not move and kept gazing at me. I suddenly felt a warmth envelop me and I couldn't help but smile and tear up. I was being seen. As soon as I realized this, the squirrel scampered off. Grace and more grace.
Judith Harte,Ph.D. May 2, 2011 at 7:16am

I awoke this AM to and with thoughts of grace.After ready many of the posts about the subject, my sleeping mind has indeed been titillated. I think of grace, not in a religious sense, or as particularly defined, but rather for me as a place, a zone, a state, that is psychic, psycho-spiritual, indefinable, yet that can and may be experienced as interpersonal, environmental and/or imaginal. A rare , perhaps one to a customer per life time event, that once experienced may be re-entered, but sadly never recaptured and yet is everlasting. I got to thinking about those instances and things that might trigger/invoke the experience of grace? Mine found me one day on the Santa Fe desert. Where/how was yours?
Ed Koffenberger April 30, 2011 at 4:05pm

Thanks Ian. I'll put Rollins on my list of reads. I noticed he has a rich web presence already as well.
Ian Pitt April 30, 2011 at 3:03pm

Thanks, Ed, for your replies to my naive comments. I do recommend the work of Rollins, such as 'The Fidelity of Betrayal,' which to my eyes (i.e. not well-informed about religion) appears thoroughly postmodern yet passionately religious.
Ed Koffenberger April 30, 2011 at 2:48pm

Any questions and challenges are welcomed!!! The Moore distinction you make is interesting and I will chase it down in more detail. I appear to be closer to the directionality of the soul (though I would be prone to use inner and outer metaphors) you mention but not in the directionality of free agency implied in the spirit part. From what I have read about the Emerging Church, it is still too young to truly be an identifiable entity with agreed upon doctrine, unless a lack of any doctrine is the point. I have, however, enjoyed the recent uproar about Rob Bell's comments about hell.
Ian Pitt April 30, 2011 at 2:31pm

I suspect I know too little of these matters to properly join your discussion - sorry for butting in! On my understanding of Moore, spirit is something like agency, which seeks to control and transcend, i.e. act in a top-down direction, and soul is what flows through agents, i.e. acts in a bottom-up direction. The relationship between these directions is then fundamental to religious concerns - is that the relationship you're referring to? And is postmodern Protestant Christianity related to what is sometimes referred to as the emerging Church, such as the work of Peter Rollins?

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Extending the application of Jung's Psychological Types from clinical experience.

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