THE MAN WHO COULDN'T WORE

"I'm having a lot of trouble finishing this book I'm writing," said George. "It's because I have to do it. If I didn't have to, I could. But this way, I sit there and I'm sort of stuck—disconnected like. I can't seem to turn on my mind. All I do is sit there and stare out of the window. I can't do the actual writing. If I do have an idea, I sit there and sort of tell myself, 'Well, George, it's great that you have an idea here,' and then I feel like going and reading a mystery novel."

I said, "That body sense of 'stuck,' 'disconnected' -- what is its quality? Focus on it."

He was silent for about a minute, sitting, eyes closed. He started to say something and then stopped: "It's a feeling of—no." Evidently he had a feeling and was trying to let words come from it. Words were coming, but when he checked them with the feeling, they weren't exactly the right words. They made nothing shift.

Suddenly, he had it: "Contempt!" He repeated the word, trying it again and liking it. "It's like this boob isn't the real world, it's just in my head."

George is a college professor. He has a reputation for working harder with students than most professors do.

He went on: "This feeling of contempt -- well, it's like everything I do sitting at my desk is crap. It's in my head, in my private space, instead of out in the world. That's what makes it crap. Head work isn't out in the world where things happen. It's all inside, like it isn't really happening at all. It isn't real or important. What's important is what I do in the world. That's real-teaching classes, seeing students, taking care of my family. Ah, I've had this for years, off and on. Head work is nothing."

I repeated the gist of what he had said. "So there's in-your-head and that's contemptible," I said, "and there's in-the-world and that's real, that's taking care of things."

"Yes. No. Well -- uh -- "

This is what focusing is like. The nature of the prob­lem changes with each shift. You make contact with a feeling and you say, "Yes that's it!" Then you feel something below it or behind it or alongside it and you say, "Well, no, that isn't it after all." The problem, when you finish, is not the same as you thought when you began. The felt sense of the problem changes.

George sat quietly for a while, focusing. Then he said, "There's something else here. It's crazy, paradoxical. This being in the world, taking care of things, it isn't the important part of me at all. Taking care of things, teaching, earning my salary -- that isn't the main thing for me. I always arrange it so I can get it out of the way, get back to writing my book. It doesn't make sense, does it? Writing is contemptible because it's all in my head, but it's still the main thing, the thing I most want to do."

"What is the whole unclear body-sense when you say, 'this thing I most want to do'?"

"It feels like I have to do this writing. It dominates my life. It would be awful if I didn't do it, even though I have this contempt feeling about it."

I said, "All right, go back to it and say, 'Okay, right, it would be awful not to do this writing.' Then ask what that whole sense of 'awful' is."

George often goes past a feeling without letting a whole felt sense form. That is where I usually help. He knows it is important to accept every feeling that comes, not argue with it, not challenge it with peremptory demands that it explain itself. You don't talk back to the feeling like an angry parent demanding that the feeling justify itself. You don't say, "What do you mean, such-and-such would be awful? That's nonsense! Just why would it be awful?" Instead you approach the feeling in an accepting way.

George accepts his feelings, but this is not enough. Just getting in touch with one's feelings often brings no change, just the same feeling over and over. One must let a larger, wider, unclear felt sense form.

George had said "it would be awful." We didn't yet know what there was in and with this "awful." To find out, and to let it shift, the whole vague body sense of all that goes with "awful" had to form for him.

George focused on the felt sense and its quality. Then he said, "It would be awful not to write because -- if I didn't do my book I'd be a failure, a parasite -- well, no, not exactly that" He paused to let the right word come, and finally it did: "A playboy." "A playboy. Now ask what that is." "Ah..." George sat silent for a long time. "Yeah," he said at last, "yeah, this is a very evil path this leads me down. Wow. It feels -- it feels like it's immoral not to do this serious work, writing." George breathed a huge sigh. "It's sexual," he said. "That's what it feels like. Not to have to work at writing: that's sexual. Like masturbating all the time, or -- wait, no, it's more like being a kid watching adults making love. Yeah, that's what it would be like. It would be like having the grown­ups tell me I could just sit there and watch."

"And that would be all right?"

"Sure! That would be fine!" George's felt sense of the situation seemed to have given him permission to stop writing. But then that permission was withdrawn. "Wait a minute," he said. "I don't know if that would be fine after all. It would -- well, ah, it feels both good and bad."

"Sort it out. See if you can get a felt sense of what would be bad about it."

"Well," he said after a while, "there's a feeling of blankness. Like, if I stopped writing I'd be facing a big blank. I'd have nothing to do but read mystery stories. I mean, if I didn't feel compelled to do this writing, I could do whatever I wanted -- but I wouldn't find any­thing to do."

George had a "handle" word. If actually released from work, he'd get a "big blank." Because such an empty space is frightening, people who find one inside themselves often run back into work and other time-filling activities that they don't enjoy. Like Fred, the man with the knot in his stomach, they may drive them­selves so hard to avoid the blank that they make them­selves physically ill.

Focusing allows you to approach any such blank with equanimity, like anything else. For a blank is also a feel­ing. Instead of backing away from it in fear, you walk right up to it, and find out what is there.

I encouraged George to do just that. "Be with the body sense of that blank. What is its quality?" I asked.

George sat quietly, feeling around the emptiness. Then he said, "It feels like there are things I want to do, but -- I'm not allowed to see them. Like when I was a kid, my father had certain books on the top shelf of a bookcase, and I wasn't allowed to look at them."

He paused again. I didn't push him. He asked into this sense of "not allowed." After a while he drew a deep breath and let it out noisily, and I knew something else had shifted inside. "Yeah," he said, "Yeah, of course. I'm an adult now, right? I can look at anything I want to look at. Sure, I -- wait a minute.... Things are coming to me. Sure. One thing I'd do if I didn't have to work on this book -- I'd jog. I've been wanting to go jogging but whenever I feel like it, I have to go and sit at my desk instead. Yeah, and -- " He paused briefly while something else came up. "And I'd write a book about birth control! I've been wanting to do that for a long time. There's a point about birth control that no­body has ever brought out before, a really crucial point. I'd love to write that book! This book I’m stuck on now, it isn't anything I'm really excited about. But I can fin­ish it too, I bet, if I let myself write what I want. This birth-control book -- ah, that would be great!" He paused for a long time. Then:

"Wow, yes, now this finishing this book is OK too. Yes, it feels all right. The point wasn't to finish the book, it was not to have to finish it. Under that have-to-but-can't feeling was all my good energy, all locked up. That's what I figured, all right, but I couldn't shift it. My whole life was under there, seems like. Letting myself have forbidden urges, yes, I see. To be free to stop, that's like being free to follow urges, and that's like being free to do what I want, which is to write. But free to write from out of my direct urge and en­ergy. Well, I knew that all the time, but now I've got it."

George was analyzing now -- in effect creating an in­tellectual rationalization to explain what his body had already solved. The analysis wasn't necessary. But in­tellectuals like to figure things out, and, done in retro­spect, that's all right. What was important was that his body took its own steps first. Before these steps, his analysis wasn't effective.

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