on the relational quality of everything
I’m thinking back to when I found Internal Family Systems as the most personally resonant way of understanding our inner selves. Did I love this so much because by that time I had already been a psychotherapist for awhile and was so into conversation? Or maybe it started when I was young and the RELATIONSHIP aspect of my religion was ultra emphasized in all places at all times to counter the bad rap religion had for being a restrictive moralistic list of rules? (Sorry to tell ya’ religion, your relationship paradigm needed to go a lot deeper.) I was also introduced to animism around the time of IFS and this too was super relational. Everything is alive, everything, and always speaking.
I’m rambling here, thinking about how my orientation to everything is relational and conversational. And in that, collaborative. I believe in collaboration so much. That if we can stay with it, stay with the process, stay with the strange and maybe sometimes difficult combinations of what we’re bringing to the table, we can find a way through it together. Of course this breaks down sometimes, and that’s ok, but it pretty much breaks my heart every time.
Speaking of my heart, I’ve been obsessed with mine lately. If I were a Libra, this wouldn’t even be a thing to mention, I would have been walking around with my hand over my heart for most of my life now. :) Maybe this is a gift from Libra season to me. I’ve been loving how my heart is detectable, one of the few of our organs doing a thing I can physically feel and hear at any moment, anytime. The other day, as I sat feeling it beat, it told me how much it loves vulnerability. This is what I mean, everything is speaking, everywhere, all the time.
(I, Jen, don’t personally like vulnerability. But the fact that my heart loves it so much was encouraging, like there’s an influence in my body pushing me in that good direction.)
I’ve heard all this talked about in terms of taking the time to learn how to speak the languages of the non-human beings we’re surrounded by. There’s something to that I think, but it’s not really how it’s worked for me. I’ve found - am finding - that it’s more about setting the stage (quiet and receptive) and being willing to trust that whatever I hear/see/sense/perceive is real. A real message was given to me. Even in this moment, I can sit here in a quiet house and think it’s quiet. Or I can tune in and hear a million words being spoken, a current of communication flowing just under the surface, everywhere, always.