Some Forms of We-Space Magic

Dear List,

I have been spending more and more “relational presencing time” engaged in various shared field processes — Constellations, Stephen Busby’s work, Transparent Communication, Focusing……

From this has emerged some distinctions between “different kinds of spaces” that show up in shared spaces with others. It has helped to open — and relax — something in me that has been wanting to understand something.

This descriptive map is very incomplete. These categories overlap — they are not intended to box up or limit the range of We-Spaces…. Life is more varied and complex than my categories are….

Still, if any of this speaks to you, please take these, refine them, and carry them farther forward in the service of your own callings:

Someone offers an issue, or presences their pain, and we offer loving presence and care, listening, sensing, entraining, resonating, being with it….

This is very familiar to us. It is a kind of support and accompaniment that many have experienced in therapeutic, coaching, and support/training group settings.

This is classical “being with” in an accepting way, related to the traditional client-centered container that Carl Rogers spoke about:

• Empathy
• Congruence
• Unconditional Positive Regard

Different therapeutic, coaching, and spiritual practices talk about “compassionate witnessing” or “accompanying”.

In Focusing, this may be described as “being with a felt sense, a hurt place, in a compassionate and caring way, feeling a shift and an opening and release…... Or, being with something as yet unknown, and having it open and unfold and flow….

In Internal Family Systems work, this would be “bringing in Self energy to allow parts to unburden…”

NonViolent Communication, NVC, might talk about connecting with empathy, honoring feelings and needs……

In Coherence Therapy, this can be “offering a positive disconfirming experience” of acceptance and resonance to another…..

In the attentional embrace and connection, often something shifts or opens, and the flow of love is restored, or increased. It can feel alchemical, or transformative as some easing, some shifting, some release occurs, which is often experienced as a very precious gift.

The qualities of loving attuned attention that help trauma and distress release, also expand and deepen the flow of life-nourishing energies into our system.

The entire field of Positive Psychology is based on offering intention and warm welcoming attention to areas of meaning, nourishment, and joy in our lives.

For those who are familiar with Focusing, NVC, or IFS, the same being-with can be offered to something transpersonal or luminous.

Even if “God” or “The Divine” shows up in our awareness, we can welcome these presences, and relate to them, perhaps by asking:

“How would you like me to be with You?”

And, by checking with ourselves:

“How would I like to be with You?”…

What comes is often profound, enjoyable, and easy once one is aware that this is possible.

Much is talked about shadow work; one aspect of shadow is our Golden Shadow — our magnificence that we do not own, and then project onto other people or authorities. Being with the luminosity in our field is one way to help reclaim these barely-owned qualities of being that can dwell and be active within us.

For many, the Type I forms are their most common and familiar process in support groups, practice dyads and triads, and coaching. Being with what is there, which often is something blocking our free functioning — some challenging or some shadow material….

However, there are other possible configurations and directions that our attentions can also go:

Someone has a powerful experience (either lovely or painful). As they presence it in the space, spend more time with it, and allow it to open more and more, some of us can have the experience of “entering into” the space or experience with them.

This is more than “me here, being with you there”.

This is different than “I am holding space for you”, or “I am holding you as you go inside”.

It is more the sense that “we”, are there, as energy bodies, engaging in some new experience directly.

It may feel as if “we are entering into a new space”, as if a portal has been opened into another realm, by the sharing and connection.

There may be a sense of altered time and space, of entry into something archetypal, more than this person’s experience.

The visual image that comes to me about this kind, is “journeying” in shamanism, group journeying…..

We become transported into something, through the engagement with something alive. This “something alive” that acts as a portal can be a deep distress (we may feel as if we have entered that world of what it is like for another in some profound way), or, something very luminous and lovely experienced in a felt way (we may be brought into a different realm).

Once we have entered through a portal of someone deeply presencing their experience, and others are welcome and willing to enter it, there are several variations on the theme:

• One person may continue to lead and stay primarily connected to the energy that brought them there, while others follow their cues as the group orients within this space that they are in.
• The group (or listener, in a dyad) can also actively participate from their own direct connection with the energies of this new shared realm.

When this occurs, there is an active engagement and co-creation, in this space, among the person who opened the portal, those who entered into it with them, AND with the theme or aliveness that was engaged and drew them into the space.

Often a very alive or compelling image or energy shows up, that draws some or all of the group to engage with it in this way….

One example of this was during a constellation where I was the client, working with my feminine lineage. At some point, the facilitator said to the group “Something is opening here between the masculine and feminine”, and he invited other men to enter into the space, shifting it to a healing and encountering ritual between masculine and feminine.

What was running as a family constellation, opened into a doorway into an archetypal group engagement.

Another example came in a dyad with a practice partner in The Pocket Project, who was presencing some recent arson at local synagogues near her.

After a period of sitting with it, I felt “we can go there”. And, together, we “entered into something” and were able to energetically engage some of the trauma field in that area. We kept our own identities, but were in a different realm of engagement with an energetic environment, and discovered some profound resources that needed our cooperation to be able to come in and calm the field. It had a joint shamanic flavor to it….

Here, rather than a person or group entering into a new realm (each person still feeling “I am myself” within this new and wondrous realm), the group and the individuals have the experience of “we become something new”.

Our energy bodies are no longer going somewhere as “me transported”, but reconfigure into novel ways of being and connecting.

There is a sense of “Me/Us reconfigured” into a shift in felt identity that is different from, or more than “me”.

It is often very delightful to feel the expanded energy body and nervous system that has taken shape. Sometimes this “reconfiguration” conducts energies within the group members, and also beyond the group — through and into us, and then into the world, in a way that was not possible as individual beings.

The phrase that describes this for me would be “individual or group shapeshifting”… Entering into a way of being together — energetically and attentionally — where reconfiguration happens.

I have had a few times when it felt as if I and my practice partners were actually being “formed into” some structure or some type of multi-cellular form with less distinct identities…. This required our ongoing consent to continue — if we pulled ourselves back into our usual configuration, then it would not continue.

It does feel as if more energies can flow through the combined form, than through or around an individual system. There can be an evolutionary sense to this — just as multi-cellularity was a step from single celled organisms, this can feel as if we are being grown into part of something larger.

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I have appreciated the Type I ways of relating, but often have felt incomplete in that, without having any good language to describe why, and judging myself for not being satisfied with that.

Looking back, I realize how I have often felt drawn to the second and third kinds of shared engagements for many years, wanting something more than the “usual and customary” processes of support and space holding, but I did not know how to ask for it in any meaningful way.

Now I do…

I hope this is helpful to anyone else who carries similar longings.

Take good care, and best wishes,
Bruce

Resonant activation is a form of transmission, where one person is carrying and emanating an energy, and others allow themselves to tune into that person and have a parallel frequency show up and grow in their own system, through “induction” (that is the electrical term for current passing through one wire, to also flow to a parallel wire. The closer in proximity and in alignment the two are, the more powerful the flow. A non-contact wiretap of a phone line works in this same way!)

This is one of the oldest forms of spiritual practice — the connection between teacher/guru/Rebbe and student/disciple/Hasid.

Sometimes this is done by attuning to qualities; it is easier to absorb and deepen the connection when the quality is being emanated by another human, rather than being invoked alone.

With deep experience of continued practice, some of these energies and luminous presences can dwell within a person as resources and living presences.

This happens “naturally” during some long apprenticeships and long discipleships; it may be accelerated by tuning into the resonance and particular frequencies.

At times, someone in a constellation or practice group will begin to emanate these kinds of energies in a group space, as if they are “temporarily representing a spiritual resource”. When this happens, I encourage people to slow down and allow the transmission to occur to others.

These are two personal examples of what I would call Resonant Activation:

1. One was during a medical constellation in March 2018. The client did not have good resources in her immediate family field, so the facilitator asked three of us to be representatives for earlier ancestors in her field that had resources.

   I began to feel quite energetically luminous — very bright, and vertically aligned. A very high energy and frequency was pouring through me vertically….

   It felt as if I was carrying an energy rhythm or frequency, which could orient the client of the constellation more powerfully and vertically towards/in touch with the divine.

   At the same time, I felt clearly that the client could not get too close to me yet. She was not to hug me, and I was not to touch her.

   There was a sense that she could approach “me” a bit, tune into me, and then allow her system to slowly orient to and be shaped by this frequency as it activated more and more in her.

   It felt to me that, if she touched me or came too close too soon, she would shatter like glass because of the high frequency difference between us. And, this might require months or years for the process to fully occur.

   In this situation, there was a combination of a luminous energy, and also tuning into “how would You like me to be with you?”, in order to allow the energy to grow her, without dysregulating or destroying the integrity of her system.

2. Another variation of resonant energy transfer occurred during four practice sessions in a 2-day period of time in which energy movements occurred in other people, in response to me “showing up with a presenced energy center in my body.”

   The two most remarkable aspects of it for me were:

   • The magnitude of activation that occurred in others
   • How transformative shifts and openings spontaneously occurred, without “working on issues.”

   This was a powerful group experience of opening, with basically no work on anyone’s part. The space and presence and energy moved and shifted on their own, with delight and aliveness.

   Here is the longer story, from about 2019:

   At some point in time last week, I began to feel the energetic presence of my pelvis, as an energy center in my body — the way that my head and chest and abdomen are usually energetically present during this work….

   I allowed myself this experience of my pelvis feeling its own potency of energy, not directed towards anyone — not sneaking out, leaking out, or seeking out anyone in a sexual way.

   It felt very safe and very alive at the same time.

   I may have said:

   “I am aware of feeling my pelvis, as an active energy, that is contained, and quite present and alive in my body.”

   Giving myself permission to have that…..I shared what was happening, and got quiet. Then, I waited for others to check in, and share what was up for them.

   I was not prepared for the speed or intensity of what showed up in response.

   There was a profound and rapid activation of joyful life energies in 8 of the 9 people that I had triads or quad sessions with.

   [6 reported immediately; 2 of the men wrote me later that they felt their bodies differently after this, and were appreciative.]

   For some of them, it was as if a huge master switch was thrown, and a whole new circuitry lit up in them, and in the groups, within a few seconds.

   Openness, delight, vertical surges of energy, major openings in the energy body and inhabiting their base more…..

   Accompanying these energetic experiences, were descriptions such as:

   “…..the invitation, already feeling it happening. Like taking a dance step in a different way or direction. It never had felt like the right invitation before, and now it does. Body opening… Allowing myself to be aligned with you.”

   “You are enjoying your body. That feels huge to us women. As you are more present in the fullness, it brings this out…… “

   “….Most of the day, we are supposed to keep our body out of things. As a woman, I habitually always am pulling my energy back when I am with a man, because ‘you never know’. Now, feeling safety…. pelvic energy moving, a new combination.”

   “Feeling my primal self. ….. Vibrant, playful, mystical….. a very grounded place in me... really at my core.”

   For those of you familiar with USA movie ratings, this was delightful and G-rated (for General Audiences.)

   We could feel the implicit sexuality, but here, our pelvises were not doing — they were being. There was a mutual delighting in the felt experience of having a pelvis, that it can show up in the shared space, that doesn’t have to pretend it doesn’t exist here.

   As someone said:

   “we are including our sexuality within the conversation, as part of us, even though that is not what this conversation is about.”

   Looking at this as an instance of a more general process, here was the transformative power of tuning into someone who has an open active energy center (in this case, the pelvis…..)

   Maybe we can describe this kind of We-Space magic as “Resonant Activation.”

   It is not bringing love to distress (Type 1), not group journeying (Type 2), and not group shapeshifting (Type 3). It is having a personal experience of personal activation in a shared space, in resonance with someone else’s personal activation….

   This has often been reported between spiritual teacher and student. We can also offer it to each other, as peers, when it shows up in our spaces….

(I do not yet have much language for this, or any easy descriptions; perhaps more descriptions will come over time. I wanted to hold a space for this here.)

Qualitatively different from changing form or journeying, there can be a mutual experience of a timeless place behind the usual layers of the personality. It can be very grounding — not in the sense of grounded on Earth, but in a sense of being grounded outside of usual time and space…. A sense of recognition of something before we came into human form, perhaps??