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•PREFACE•
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| By Peter A. Campbell, Ph.D. & Edwin M. McMahon, Ph.D. Yoga Journal March/April 1987 |
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| “There is an amazing wisdom within the human organism. It knows more about ‘the way home to ourselves’ than we can ever think in our heads,” write Peter A. Campbell and Edwin M.McMahon, authors of BioSpirituality: Focusing as a Way to Grow (Loyola Press, $10.95) “There is a felt truth, a felt meaning, a felt direction within each of us,” they write, “an embodied sense that can free us and guide us into the future.” “BioSpirituality” refers to the spiritual use of the body-oriented approach called Focusing. Eugene Gendlin developed Focusing while a University of Chicago research psychologist wondering why less than half of all clients in therapy improved. Gendlin learned that successful therapy depended not on the therapy or the therapist, but on the client’s doing something inside. If the client could fully experience his or her problem in the body, the client would change. Not emotion, not thought, not superficial feeling. Focusing, (as Gendlin put it), “...is a simple way of attending to meaning that is felt in the body.” After 12 years of research with Focusing, Campbell and McMahon have written an important and highly readable testament to the wisdom of learning to listen to the body’s wisdom. More an art of allowing than an active technique, Focusing for spiritual growth (or for any use) requires that the person doing it first “clear a space” within and then wait for the body’s messages. There are several steps in the Focusing process (which the authors clearly explain), but the final movement in the procedure is really up to the body itself. The individual (as mind or ego) is not in control. “All it (Focusing) can do is ensure that a person will be more or less situated within the realm of inner experiencing where change can and may occur.” The body’s response comes by grace, as a gift. One cannot force it. One can only wait (or not wait) for it. Those who allow the body time to speak feel themselves “awaken.” Humor, surprise, and play —all trademarks of authentic transformation — are characteristic of the body’s “felt shift” toward growth. Containing deep wisdom on trust, death, unity, consciousness, personal and planetary transformation, BioSpirituality is a rich and rewarding book, an invitation and a guide to experiencing the personal unfolding of truth through bodily knowing. Though the authors often quote from the Bible, Campbell and McMahon have given us a nondenominational approach to the process of enlightenment, a “Western yoga” for the spiritual seeker. —Manjushri J. Vitale |
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| This is a book about “unity and multiplicity.” Joining “mystics, philosophers, and sages from every age and culture...,” these two priest-psychologists “hold that there is an underlying unity behind the apparent multiplicity which ordinary people experience.” Their task as authors “is to make some contribution toward developing a new paradigm for Western spirituality” by placing the therapeutic process called Focusing within the context of an incarnational and evolutionary Christianity. In so doing, echoing Teilard de Chardin, they hope to share with their readers “a look-out point in the universe” which may lead us in the name of religion beyond a religious history which “bears tragic and repeated witness to the savage destruction of human life and property that has occurred in the name of belief in all manner of gods.” In this era of turmoil and war, holy as well as unholy, their effort is timely, their vision inspiring, their instruction refreshingly down-to earth. Respect for our bodies is the key. “Focusing, the therapeutic method developed by Eugene Gendlin of the University of Chicago,” moves the focuser’s centered attention into that receptacle of personal multiplicity—one’s own material body. Through this “art of allowing” one may move gently yet forcefully into and through the full range of human pains and excitements in such a way as to “have an awakening realization of being within , being tied-into, or being at home within some Larger Process.” Reversing an ages-old tendency of religions and religious folks to spurn the body’s finite multiplicities while yearning for a promised unity in infinite Spirit, as Gendlin declares, the body embraced the road to health, McMahon and Campbell preach the experience of spirit incarnate to be our daily journey into the Godhead. In this age of specialists and synthesists, there is much here to engage the thinking professional. A quick look at the authors’ footnotes reveal their intellectual ancestry. As psychologists, they owe much to the personalist and transpersonalist thinking of Eugene Gendlin and Carl Jung, William James and Abraham Maslow, Gordon Allport and Michael Murphy; as theologians they associate themselves with the likes of Karl Rahner and Gregory Baum, Dom Sebastian Moore, and John A.T. Robinson; as artist-scientists they admire the groundbreaking work of modern biologists and physicists such as Sir Arthur Eddington, David Bohm, and Teilhard de Chardin. Let not this lineage frighten the prospective reader, professional or not. For all its philosophical weight, this book reads lightly. The authors speak clearly and conversationally, calling up common experiences to illustrate psychological/mystical truths—like being caught in a rainstorm to explain “Letting go into It.” (“Have you ever found yourself caught in an absolute downpour where there was no escape? At first you tried to stay dry, fighting against the wet. But it soon became hopeless... At this point, have you ever thought, ‘ Oh, what the heck!’ and deliberately let go of trying to stay dry?”) And their choice of personal anecdotes simply delights! My personal favorite: a thrilling childhood excursion of Campbell’s: horse-back riding, alone in the desert, lost, finally knowing enough to allow the horse the freedom if its head. Eventually a tired horse and patient rider make it home. The point? — “As the cowboys of old had to check their guns at the barroom door, we too must first lay down the overriding need to control all of our lives before we cross the threshold of BioSpiritual journeying.” Best of all, because of years spent using this focusing method, personally and in groups, clarity and ease join hands with a lovely sensitivity and an authenticity that rings true. BioSpirituality : for the thoughtful, provoking; for the spiritual, hopeful; for the earthbound, practical. Does it succeed in formulating a “new paradigm for Western spirituality”? For those with the openness to grow and the discipline to listen, the direction is there. — Robert J. Willis, Ph.D. |
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| Two Catholic priests who are workshop and retreat leaders examine the bias against emotion and the body that is deeply ingrained in the Western Christian tradition under the guise of “ spirituality.” This excessively rational tradition leads to dry intellectuality, alienated emotions, and spiritual sterility. Campbell and McMahon aim at building a new paradigm for Western spirituality based on, first, the body’s sense of grace, and second, awareness of certain neglected elements in the Judaeo- Christian tradition. Through the practice of Focusing, they say, one moves gently yet directly into new meanings and fresh perspectives for the whole person. (Note that wholeness encompasses holiness.) Their approach to body-mind unification is a new direction for Christianity, and a much needed step toward recovery of the full meaning of the concept “resurrection of the body.” |
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3441 North Ashland Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60657 Tel: 1-800-621-1008 ISBN: 0-8294-0937-8 $10.95 |
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