SECOND MOVEMENT: FELT SENSE OF THE PROBLEM

Ask which problem feels the worst right now. Ask which one hurts the most, feels the heaviest, the biggest, the sharpest, the most prickly or clammy or sticky—the one that feels bad in whatever way you and your body define "bad." Or just choose one problem.

Now, don't go inside the problem as you usually would. Stand back from it and sense how it makes you feel in your body when you think of it as a whole just for a moment. Ask, "What does this whole problem feel like?" But don't answer in words. Feel the problem whole, the sense of all that.

In this second movement you will probably begin to encounter a lot of static from your mind: self-lectures analytic theories, clichйs, much squawking and jabber­ing. Somehow you must get down past all that noise to the felt sense underneath.

It is partly a matter of getting yourself to shut up for a change, and listen, and feel. You can get good results by being patient. Let's suppose the problem you are try­ing to focus on has to do with the souring of a once good relationship. As you try to feel the whole inner aura of the problem, the self-lectures may begin: "Here I go again, screwing up another good relationship. What's the matter with me? No matter how good it is, I'll always find some dumb way to make it bad."

When that kind of noise begins, turn it off tolerantly and gently. Tell yourself, "Yes, yes, I know all that. I'll listen some other time, if you like. Let's set it aside for now."

Be just as firm and polite if you find yourself trying to analyze the problem or trying to decide where the main drive of it lies. "Well, it's obvious what's gone wrong," you'll hear yourself say. "I'm basically scared of other people, so to cover it up I put on this big show. Like the other night when I ___". Turn it off. Tell your­self, "Sure, you may be right about that. But right now we aren't trying to figure anything out. What we're try­ing to get at is what does this whole thing feel like?"

You are trying to get down to the single feeling that encompasses "all that about my relationships with ..." or "all that about quitting my job." The feeling contains many details, just as a piece of music contains many notes. A symphony, for instance, may last an hour or more and contain thousands of separate musical tones, sounded by many diverse instruments, in a multitude of combinations and progressions. But you don't need to know all these details of its structure in order to feel it. If it is a symphony you know well, you only need hear its name mentioned and feel the aura of it instantly. That symphony: the feel of it comes to you whole, with­out details.

You are trying to make contact with the felt sense of a problem in the same way. Let your sensing go inward­ly down past all the details that can distract and side­track you, past all the squawking and jabbering, until you feel the single great aura that encloses all of it.

No, it isn't easy—not at first. It is partly a matter of knowing what to pay attention to, what to ignore. It is a matter of knowing how to set your mind so that it will be receptive to certain things happening inside but not to others.

In seeking the felt sense of a problem, you are trying to make your mind do essentially what it does when calling up the feeling of your sense of a person. You may be aware of certain details but not snagged on them. Your attention is mainly on the single feeling, the sense of all that.

 Once you have the feel of the whole problem, stay with it for a while. Don't try to decide what is important about it. Don't try to decide anything. Just let it be, and be felt.

The felt sense is the holistic, unclear sense of the whole thing. It is something most people would pass by, because it is murky, fuzzy, vague. When you first stay with it, you might think, "Oh, that? You want me to stay with that? But that's just an uncomfortable noth­ing!" Yes, that is just how your body senses this prob­lem, and at first that's quite fuzzy.

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