RE: [ET2] Easy?

 Hello,
 
Many thanks to those who responded to my post.
 
I suspect my major difficulty is going to be having faith in the
existence of an energy system I have no certainty exists, for long
enough to prove to myself it does.
 
Energy body -> neurology -> physiology is an interesting concept; but
it's just that, for me - a concept that has no grounding in experience.
Whereas the formula I've been following for a decade or so is:
 
Things happen - I think about them - I feel okay - I carry on with life.
 
Or
 
Things happen - I think about them - I feel grotty - I consciously
change my thinking - I feel slightly different - I change my thinking a
bit more - I feel vaguely better - I lapse back into unconsciousness - I
return to thinking and feeling much the same - I go and eat some
chocolate or watch television.
 
Always, though, for me, it's been clear that my mood - whether fine or
foul - is the direct result of my thoughts. Thoughts happen so fast,
it's easy to miss them; but they're there, I've found.
 
I did wonder why, when 'things happened', a certain pattern of thoughts
always came up, but I put it down to habit. Optimists had one sort of
habit; pessimists another. I definitely lived by Hamlet's maxim of there
being nothing either good or bad but thinking made it so.
 
That's still true, of course; but now I have to seriously consider the
idea that the state of my energy body, which I can't feel - at least not
recognizably - is what determines the way I think.
 
It's quite a scary thought: that I am 'controlled' by a part of me I
never knew existed.
 
All this is of particular interest to me as I'm an occasional teacher
of the Alexander Technique. I was first attracted to this because I saw
it as a way of getting out of my head and back into my body. It seemed a
very physical approach, then. Pretty soon, I discovered (or thought I
discovered) it was actually more mental than physical. The way we were -
stooped, bent, slumped, poised, alert, buoyant - seemed to depend on how
we were thinking, where our attention was, what intentions we had in
mind.
 
Then I attended a Zero Balancing workshop. Zero Balancing is an offshoot
of acupuncture, utilizing the same meridians (I think) in a quirky hands
on format that was sufficiently similar to parts of a typical Alexander
lesson to intrigue me. The workshop leader, on hearing of my connection
with the Alexander Technique, said: "Ah. Pure energy work!"
 
I was mystified. What could he mean? I'm still not sure. All I know is,
in the Alexander world, the concept of an energy body underling our
psycho-physical reality is not welcome. There's an email group where
I've raised the issue once or twice and had my head bitten off.
 
I take the point about Emotrance being far, far easier when a person is
not alone but with a friend or a practitioner who can assist in
directing their wandering attention. It's only too easy for me to go
through the motions of scratching around for a feeling or two, think
vaguely of it softening and spreading, drift off into fantasy land for
twenty minutes, come back to my senses to find the feeling hasn't
changed, and convince myself nothing's worked. Of course it hasn't
worked if I haven't really done anything!
 
Unfortunately, my shelves are stacked - as are the shelves of the Oxfam
shop in the last town I lived in - with books I've bought detailing
various self help methods of change. None of them has worked, not even
slightly, but they're lovely to read. I'm a total sucker for them, as
they give me the comforting illusion of experiencing a new way of being,
by association with its future possibility, without actually doing
anything now. The fact I never quite get around to doing whatever is
necessary, I'm curiously blind to. Especially when in bookshops, as I
reach out for another promising volume.
 
Yet, weirdly, whenever I can, I do my own plumbing and electrical work;
I sweep my own chimneys, mend my roof, repair my car. To do this stuff I
have to bone up, using workshop manuals, etc, and it takes time and
effort. I can do this alright; so a big question mark does hang over why
I can't follow the far simpler routine of a Cognitive Therapy or Lucid
Dreaming manual.
 
I suppose the major difference is I can live the way I am. I may be
dysfunctional; but I'm not at the stage of cracking up, yet. I couldn't
live in a house with no tiles, leaking taps and crappy sockets; or drive
a car with fouled points. So, I fix these things; or, in extremis, pay
someone to fix them.
 
So, how do I convince myself that I am sufficiently badly maintained to
warrant the same careful, prolonged attention I gave to making a garden
gate a few weeks back, a task that took maybe 20 hours of time, and
required the sort of attention doing anything new needs if it's not
going to be made a hash of, when having or not having a garden gate at
all is supremely unimportant, in the overall scheme of things?
 
I made the gate for thirty quid spent on wood and bolts, after getting a
quote for several hundred. Obviously, I wanted to save money; but the
best I've ever felt in my life was after a brief series of hypnoanalysis
years ago that left me, for months on end, unworried by anything. I paid
a garden gate sum for this; but there was no way I could have done that
hypnoanalysis on my own.
 
The trouble was, the effect didn't last; which is why I am drawn towards
self help approaches, whose effect hopefully becomes second nature in
time. I appreciate this can only happen if those self help manuals are
followed, to the letter . which leaves me in the curious position of not
wanting to pay for professional services to produce results that might
not last, on the basis I'd prefer to produce those results on my own, if
I could only get round to it, which it seems I can't.
 
I'm not sure this kind of thinking aloud is useful for anyone but me; or
even if it's useful for me, unless it results in action, which, in fact,
it may be helping me evade. Really, instead of sitting tapping away at
this, while the rest of the house is entranced by the TV, I should be
doing a bit of Emotrancing.
 
 
Nicholas
 
 
 
 

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Received on Sat Feb 08 2003 - 14:46:18 GMT