Changing the World with Felt Meaning
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Changing the World with Felt Meaning – Presentation by Mary Jennings, Weeklong,
2020
Changing the World with Felt Meaning
From the Personal to the Public – Bringing Your Fresh Ideas to the World
Handouts re presentation by Mary Jennings at Weeklong 2020
(email: jennings640@gmail.com)
1Changing the World with Felt Meaning – Presentation by Mary Jennings, Weeklong,
2020
The Tricycle Effect
How to think further with focusing
A kind of patience
It started with a round of personal focusing. I was uneasy– hassled -about something
or other, wondering how to be with all of that. With the focusing attitude of
allowing, a memory came, one from way back when I was a teenager in my home
town. I recalled how, every evening in the summer time, young John Duggan used to
cycle up and down the street on his tricycle. Mr Duggan, his father, was always with
him on these occasions. John had a severe learning disability, never said very much
or interacted with people, but he loved going up and down, up and down on that
tricycle, never straying far from home ground. His father stayed discreetly behind
him, helping him turn occasionally, otherwise just patiently being with him as he
slowly, endlessly, pedalled his way along the street.
I stayed with this memory and then came the shift: ah!, this is how I am to be with
what is troubling me – in the same way Mr Duggan is with young John, patiently,
discreetly, allowing it time just to be there, helping it along only when needed. By
having that kind of patience, the whole thing was carried forward, moved, shifted, to
the point where I don’t even recall now the details of what the trouble was; it has
long since been well satisfied and carried forward. But the implicit intricacy of all
that is still there somehow….
Many patterns
Stories carry general patterns and when some of these cross with particular
situations, something new and fresh can come. I began to wonder what happens
when I look for the general qualities, the overall (relevant) patterns i that I see in this
memory?
I began by recalling again the whole story of me and the Duggan family back then, in
that town, thirty years ago. Stray thoughts, small details began to jell into a bigger
picture…
I see that there is an air of quiet defiance in Mr Duggan as he walks, steadily, hands
behind his back. By his very presence he is shielding his son from the well-meant
mutterings of passers-by:“Poor boy!”; “It’s the parents I feel sorry for!” - “No need to
feel sorry, this is John’s street too”, he is saying.
He is keeping a respectful distance from John, allowing him his own space, tenderly
offering him light assistance to negotiate the tricky turn where the street curves.
As a well liked pharmacist, trusted for his advice to all comers in his practice, Mr
Duggan is using his own quiet authority to show us how we should be John: “I can’t
heal my son, but I can show him patience, kindness, understanding, acceptance”:
yes, he is saying all that too as they meander down the street again.
2Changing the World with Felt Meaning – Presentation by Mary Jennings, Weeklong,
2020
Refreshing the concept
Staying with the felt sense of all that, let me say more now about what I understand
by ‘patience’:
Patience is not only tender, respectful and loving, it is quietly defiant; it knows how
to hold its own ground. It has a calm, silent authority that insists by example what
must change. It empathises with pain and suffering but provides a way of going
beyond mere endurance. You can trust its strength and wisdom. It moves slowly but
at the right pace; it’s always there, right behind you, offering you just the help you
need. Its power is felt by others; it changes them too.
My Concise Oxford Dictionary defines patience as,” calm endurance of pain or of any
provocation; quiet and self-possessed waiting for something; perseverance;
forbearance”. There is all that and more in how I now describe the concept. I can
draw out fresh facets of this concept as it has crossed with all the public meanings of
that word and my own experiencing.
My concept of patience still has much of the ‘old’ meaning as the helpful dictionary
has it, but it has more: My concept of patience includes:
• Passive endurance AND active wisdom
• Waiting for change AND a way of making change
• Quiet perseverance AND silent authority
The Tricycle Effect
In honour of what that father and son taught me, I call this – dare I say new concept-
the Tricycle Effect for short. I think of it this way: I see the word PATIENCE in big,
block letters, fixed and immovable, well defined, commonly understood. Then I see
young John Duggan on his tricycle, weaving his way in and out between those big
letters, pushing them slightly sideways, moving some of the letters behind one
another. He does not knock them down, or distort them so that we can’t read them;
rather in making space for his own path, he actually makes more space for
P A T I E N C E.
The power of Focusing
Concepts and ideas are powerful. They influence how we think and live. They can
work beautifully allowing us a common frame of reference. They can get stuck too –
insisting that ‘it’s always like this’; ‘this is the only truth’ and passing by the lived
experience of many.
Focusing can allow us develop, expand, renew, add those concepts so that they take
account of that intricate experiencing, AND bring it to the wider word. Be aware of
3Changing the World with Felt Meaning – Presentation by Mary Jennings, Weeklong,
2020
the kind of qualities, patterns that come, staying in touch with the felt sense of all
that, speaking from it, but now, it’s more general, it’s not just for you, but it’s
bringing that carried-forward freshness to the world.
It good to start with something that comes in one session that you feel has a richness
to it. Allow The Tricycle Effect to weave in and out to what comes; allow it to show
you the qualities that are there, and to show you how can apply these to change,
develop, soften existing notions, idea and concepts. Then just wait, with a new kind
of patience, for the more that you know to show itself through you to the waiting
world.
Mary Jennings
4Changing the World with Felt Meaning – Presentation by Mary Jennings, Weeklong,
2020
Mint
It looked like a clump of small dusty nettles
Growing wild at the gable of the house
Beyond where we dumped our refuse and old bottles:
Unverdant* ever, almost beneath notice.
But, to be fair, it also spelled promise
And newness in the back yard of our life
As if something callow yet tenacious
Sauntered in green alleys and grew rife.
The snip of scissor blades, the light of Sunday
Mornings when the mint was cut and loved:
My last things will be first things slipping from me.
Yet let all things go free that have survived.
Let the smells of mint go heady and defenceless
Like inmates liberated in that yard.
Like the disregarded ones we turned against
Because we’d failed them by our disregard.
Seamus Heaney
Spanish translation by James Doga
Menta
Parecía un puñito de pequeñas ortigas enpolvadas
Que crecía libremente en el gablete de la casa
Lejos de donde botábamos nuestra basura y botellas viejas
que no enverdecía nunca, casi escapando nuestra atención
Pero para ser justos, deletraba una promesa
y novedad en patio interior de nuestras vidas
Cual si hubiera algo que de forma inexperta, mas tenás
se paseara por avenidas verdes y creciera exuberante
El recortar de tijeras, la luz de domingo
Mañanas donde la menta fuera cortada y amada:
Mis últimas cosas serán las primeras en escapar de mí.
Mas todo aquello que se libera, sobrevive.
Dejemos libre el olor a menta, embriagador e indefenso
Cual reos liberados en aquel patio
Como aquellos seres desechados contra quienes nos volcamos
Al haberles fracasado en nuestro desechar
5Changing the World with Felt Meaning – Presentation by Mary Jennings, Weeklong,
2020
Exercise 1.
Let’s take a moment as to what ‘patience’ means to you:
• Let some instance of when you experienced, or showed patience come, recall all the
details
• Allow a felt sense of that whole situation or instance to form
• Do more words, gestures, images, stories, come from the whole felt sense of that
situation?
• How does this affect or inform what ‘patience’ means? Can you say what words
come?
• Is there something new or fresh in what has come?
Exercise 2.
• Pick a concept or idea (something that came in your Focusing or something you
want to say more about)
• Notice what comes by way of memories, snatches of song, images, words, gestures
• Now pick ONE PARTICULAR instance of when you really had a felt meaning –
perhaps something that came in Focusing already
• Feel the qualities, key words that come
• Ask about some words, what does “…..” mean in this situation; ask what kind of
thing it is; Tell the story of that to your partner
• Notice what has changed, what’s new, fresh, what has crossed in the public
meaning with your felt meaning of the whole situation
Based on exercises developed by Dr Donata Schoeller.
6Changing the World with Felt Meaning – Presentation by Mary Jennings, Weeklong,
2020
Kye Nelson, who worked with Gene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks Gendlin on developing
Thinking at the Edge as a practice writes that Focusing Work Partnerships operate in a
more collaborative way than the usual Focusing Partnership, which are more about
accompanying an individual as they Focus. She writes:
“Focusing Work Partnerships are for:
thinkers, innovators, discoverers, trailblazers, visionaries,
entrepreneurs, freelancers, creators, people with dreams... people who
are working on something...
anyone who wishes there were somebody else right there
as you tackle exactly what has felt impossible in your work life.
Anyone who would like their work to feel human.
A Work Partner listens and keeps you company with your work, as you attend to your body
sense of any current project or situation, articulate that felt sense, make steps from it, carry
them out, and continue to check back with the felt sense of the situation and your intention
as you work.
Your partner can be with you while you write a letter that you would not otherwise attempt,
or can give you the strength to organize what is on your desk. They can be on the other end
as you prepare for a presentation. Your partner writes down and carries all your projects,
half-formed ideas, difficulties, and blocked actions. When you next turn to any of them with
one new thought, your partner brings up the four thoughts that the two of you produced
last time, so that from the five you can generate action steps that could not be imagined
before. If you don't return to something, your partner will bring it up. In this way, all the
frozen places begin to move.
And over time, your partner can also share your successes in a way that no one else can,
because they know all the tiny steps that it took to get there. They have been with you every
step of the way.
A Focusing Work-Partner helps you find and stay with your felt sense of your ongoing project
longer than you can usually do alone, which means you can tap into the whole intricacy of
your situation as you are working or planning your project.
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