You’ve likely encountered the preamble of the fieldwork moving process either as a very concise version in Volume 1, FO-1: Fieldwork Quick Start or as the longer script version offered in FO-2: Try It! (also in the Try It #3: Fieldwork Moving post). In preparing to deliver this again for Volume 2, I took the opportunity to step back and look at it with fresh eyes. The preamble has been so embedded in the process for so long that it has become almost automatic for me when I facilitate, just part of the water I swim in. But in looking at it more carefully, I can see that this brief little onramp to the moving process is quite significant, and it deserves a more thorough introduction.

Over the course of many years as I was developing this work in the early days, the preamble took on a three-part structure, and it has kept that structure for at least 15 years, probably more. It took shape as a way to soften the entry into the moving phase of the work, and to set things up so that the parts we’re working with have an easier time with it. Those three sections of the preamble were centered on three places that can often generate a kind of resistance or doubt around inviting any kind of change to a feeling state.

• Inherent goodness: The first section took on the typical belief that a dark or negative state needed to be controlled because it was inherently bad in some way. We conceptually merge the reactivity of the state into our beliefs about the underlying motives. This first section separated that conflaction by acknowledging that the part took on this state to serve in the original context, and thanking the part for doing so.

• Opportunity for positive exploration: The second section reassured the part that even though we are going to move the state, it can always be returned to its original reactive state if that’s what’s needed. Therefore, it’s safe to move it, and because it’s safe to move, it’s a good idea to really go for it, and to discover what the part could become in an ideal situation.

• Recognition of related parts: The third section acknowledges the presence and invested relationships of other parts/states coexisting with the one being moved, and invites them to “participate passively, as witnesses only,” to support the moving part and absorb the learning from the shift.

But as I’ve listened to myself delivering the preamble more recently, and also in the course of simply facilitating the process of both mapping and moving, I’ve noticed those three sections of the preamble seem to be branching out and getting a little more complex. There is more that I am trying to communicate to these parts we’re getting ready to move, and I’ve decided to unpack that “more” to make my understanding, baked into my intuitive ways of working, more explicit and easier for you to learn.

As I have unpacked that complexity in writing this chapter, I have begun to realize that this preamble grew out of an intuitive reckoning with the significant gap between the deeper currents of our inner world and the surface norms by which we typically communicate with ourselves and one another. We are constantly using surface constructions of language based on our shared agreements about what is “real” in this inner world as we go about our days and share our experiences with one another. In the everyday, it’s easy enough to ignore the gap, at least when we’re with our closer friends and family.

But when we are digging into what is actually there with this kind of deep inner work, we experience this gap much more tangibly. This is the case with all kinds of inner work, not just fieldwork. And some methods do better than others in supporting the navigation of that gap by prioritizing direct experience over interpretions and concepts.

In the course of this chapter, I’ve broken this gap down and spelled it out as best I could. This serves a double purpose. First, of course, it explains why we do the preamble, and why it takes on its very specific structure. But this understanding goes beyond the preamble.

These elements unpacked here need to follow you throughout the work. They need to show up in the interactions between the explicit moving questions, in the attitude you hold toward new parts as they show up, in the overall grace and respect you offer to every part as you encounter it.

As you gain experience with fieldwork, both in working solo and in facilitating others, I suspect you will find, as I have, that these deeper structural parameters will begin to inform all of your experience far beyond fieldwork itself. This is the DNA of conscious experience, and as such, it lives with us in every moment. I hope you have good opportunities to notice this resonance and to benefit from it in your everyday life.

And. No worries, we’ll be digging far more deeply into all of this later in this book and the next. Take in what you can for now, use the preamble in its complete form when you do the work, and trust that all of this will make more and more sense over time.

Digging in…

Optimally at this point, as you get ready to move the feeling state, you (or your explorer if you’re in the facilitator role) have chosen a specific, already-mapped feeling state to work with, and you are ready and able to center this feeling state in your awareness, to bring it alive in your inner experience so that you are able to work with it. But we’re not quite ready to start the actual moving process.

Every feeling state you will ever work with has complex relationships with other coexisting states, with your life history, with the people around you, with the web of beliefs and knowledge you hold, and with the cultures (and sub-cultures) you inhabit. These relationships often impose constraints on the freedom of this state. These constraints can be thought of as rules governing what the state is free to do or be.

We want to respect these constraints. At the same time, we want to provide a free and open space within which the part underlying this state you’ve selected can explore what is possible.

The fieldwork method, along with the topology it reveals (which you will read about in the Science section), combined with my lived experience of many thousands of hours of actually doing this work, have all coalesced into a new understanding of human experience. This new understanding sits upon a very different foundation than the one we’re used to occupying.

Now, it is completely possible to do the steps of fieldwork without noticing or examining how the experience of mapping and moving feeling states contrasts with professional and societal norms to which we’re all accustomed. The practice will still get results, and you’ll still experience benefit. But at some point along the way, if you continue doing the work, you are likely to experience a mind warp, where it becomes clear that your expectations do not line up with your experience. This is the zone we’ll be unpacking here as we enter into a more thorough treatment of the moving phase of the work.

In short, what we are about to do in engaging the fieldwork moving process represents a rupture in the reality we commonly believe we inhabit. The “laws” we assume to govern our “psychology” are about to be warped rather significantly. We will address a few of these governing expectations as we begin.

To do so, we will of course rely on language, doing our best to describe the differences between what we expect and what we are actually going to experience as we go through the process. At the same time, though, we are not confined to engaging this intellectually. Not at all. We are working here with a deeper reality of being.

As we step into this new paradigm, expanding our conceptual boxes to welcome more of our direct, inner experience, the typical experience is one of reunion, of recovery, of restoration. We get to reconnect with something we have always known and felt beneath the surface of everyday awareness, but never had words to express. In its inability to speak up for itself, it was exiled from our many shared realities. In this work, especially in the moving phase of the practice, this deeper reality gets to return home to the center of your lived experience.

To support this homecoming, we want to build a gentle bridge from the old reality to the new one. In service to this bridge-making, I have designed an elegant preamble to the moving process. This preamble sets several frames — perhaps I should call them reframes — that expand what we allow to be possible. These reframes enable each state to enter a different way of being that activates its full freedom to transform itself and restore its most natural functioning. Let’s take a look at these essential reframes.

To Be Continued…

This chapter got way too long to fit into a single Substack post, so I’ve split it up. But I’m still going to offer another example of a state shift from Ruby to keep that going for you. And next week, we’ll start into the nine reframes embedded in the updated preamble.

Another Example of What You Have to Look Forward To

To support your anticipation for what is to come in this adventure, I am offering before/after examples of feeling states my client Ruby gave me permission to share.

Self-Doubt

First encounter: This is about myself as a teacher - “Am I good enough?”

Six weeks later: In my heart, more like encapsulating the front of the heart, the size of the front two-thirds of a softball; feels more solid, the bottom part of it has a thick rope that goes down and connects to a smaller ball in the pit of my stomach, a thick, solid ball the size of a golf ball. Both made out of the same stuff and the rope too. The rope is a little softer, thickness is a half-inch thick. Pretty hot. The balls are pretty hard. Yellowish dark brown, opaque.

They kind of move up and down a little, away from each other and back together, pretty slowly, like the Fear (see last week’s post) is slow. Voice is like the Overwhelm (another state mapped the same day), saying all that stuff, “You’re not going to be able to do this, you’re not qualified, etc.” Also, a laughing sound, how someone would laugh if they think you’re full of crap and know you’re going to mess up, male, like one of those scary movie kind of guys.

At the core of it is very hurtful, saying, “I don’t believe in you.” It makes me want to cry when I hear that part of it.

It’s hard to believe there’s something inside of me that could be that mean or discouraging. I didn’t realize it was that bad. This is Sadness [see next week’s post]. It’s very painful.

A few days later: This is the core of the Fear. When the balls move closer together, the feeling gets more intense. This happens in coordination with the pulsing of the Fear. When the Fear intensifies by expanding, the Self-Doubt intensifies by contracting.

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The Vibrancy Comet

⟹ Slightly cool. Softer, an energy, it would be expansive. Red-orange, translucent, luminous. It moves, circulates, but it starts in the shape of a ball, but behind it is all this luminous, glowing energy that sort of follows it, pretty much like you would think of a comet; it’s quite long. Ball is a little smaller than what’s coming from it. Ball is a higher-density energy. Ball is the size of my fist, primarily moves within my body, in a somewhat circular motion, can go out a foot from my body (because the tail is so long, it has to). The tail can grow, varies between one and five feet long. Tail is more translucent and sparkly. Sound of a really beautiful instrument, maybe a harp sound but even prettier, (an angel’s harp). Sound is in accordance with the movement.

It wants me to know it believes in me. “I want to help you. I want you to shine and be energized.” And that’s why it has that shape, so it can fly through me and give me energy.

Name ideas: The Energizer, Vibrancy, ...Comet...

New name: The Vibrancy Comet

What’s different: I’m really happy. I feel this source from within me, a source of joy. I’m very present, and live my life as though this is the only moment that matters.

---

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At this point, I’m guessing you’ve mapped at least one state, and perhaps a few or more. If you still haven’t done so, make sure to dig into Volume 1: Fieldwork Mapping section, and if it helps, use the Try It! page(s) to complete mapping for at least one.

Now, before beginning to actually walk a specific feeling state through the moving process, we’ll need to set things up in a way that helps the move go smoothly. Here’s what’s most important for the setup.

Choosing a State to Move

Now, one thing to keep in mind as we go forward here is that every part of you is strongly interconnected with other parts. We’ll go deeper into the topology of that in the upcoming Science section, and that will give us the understanding we need to navigate the complexity better. For now, we’re going to keep things relatively simple.

If you’ve mapped only one state so far, just go for it and take that one through the moving process. Often, the first time through goes very smoothly, in part because you’ve never experienced it and don’t know what to expect. So any parts that are connected with this one will most likely go along for the ride.

Later, after you’ve gained some experience with moving, other parts related to the one you’re moving may have higher priorities and require being moved first. For now, if you’ve mapped more than one state, let me give you two rules of thumb for choosing which one to move.

Option One: Go for the Easy One

As you enter into practice with moving states, I recommend starting with a mapped state that is easy for you to access. Choose one that you feel very tangibly, the map for which feels clear and accurate to how you actually experience the state. Avoid states that seem ambiguous or vague.

Option Two: Go for the Most Uncomfortable One

If you have two or more states mapped, often one will feel more uncomfortable than the others. This one is likely to offer a more satisfying moving experience, so it’s a good place to start.

Option Three: Go for the Pivot

Two or more states that are related to one another often have dependency relationships. In other words, one state is a reaction to something you experience as outside of your control, while another state is a reaction to the first. If the first is not reacting, neither is the second.

Here’s an example. Let’s say I’ve mapped Anger and Shame. If I feel aShamed about having lost my temper, for example, the Shame is likely to be a secondary state reacting to the Anger, rather than a primary one. In contrast, if the Anger shows up in situations in which I have lost connection with someone important to me because of something I did about which I feel Shame, and the Shame gives rise to the Anger, then it is the Shame at the center.

I call these reactivity hubs pivots. Start with a pivot, and you’ll have much greater leverage in moving the group of states. The moving process will proceed with greater ease than if you try working from the outside in.

Entering the Felt Experience of the State

As you approach the moving process with the state you’ve chosen, it will be very important to start from a place where you are clearly and tangibly feeling the state, in the moment. If you’re having any trouble with that, take some time to read through your mapping description. Carefully place your field of awareness over the space occupied by the virtual material properties of the state, taking in the full size and shape of the feeling object.

Then, review each of the properties, revisiting your experience in the moment with an openness to noticing how your current experience may be a little bit different from what you mapped. If needed, use the slider test (see Volume 1: FM-11: Pro Tips) from time to time in order to confirm that yes, this state you are experiencing right now is the same part you originally mapped.

Choosing to Intensify Slightly Before Setting the Container

If you’re able to access it easily, and you feel it strongly and clearly, you’re good to go. If it feels a little “meh,” not so tangible, then I recommend going for a little intensification before you start. To do this, use the slider test again, but this time, deliberately shift one or two key properties that seem to have a strong effect on your experience of the feeling. Shift them in the direction that intensifies the feeling state in your experience. You always have the option of reversing the intensification, and you might just practice that if you have any concerns.

At this point in the process, you will want to intensify only to the point where you can feel the state very clearly. This will help make sure the next step in the process works well and the container can be strongly set. We’ll do that in the next chapter. Feeling the state clearly and distinctly makes it much easier to communicate with it about what is about to happen, and to set its expectations and intentions to best support the process.

Going for More Intensity to “Set the Hook” Before Actually Moving the State

Looking ahead to slightly later in the process, after setting the container, for some states it can be very helpful to use the property sliders to further intensify just a bit before starting to work through the properties. I call this “setting the hook,” as if we’re catching a fish and we want to make sure we really have it on the line.

By setting the hook and intensifying the felt experience of the state we’re moving, we activate it strongly enough to influence the physiological systems of the body. The heart pounds a bit, the stomach tightens, the breath gets more shallow — that sort of thing. This lays the groundwork for a full-body experience of the shift when we work through the properties and transform the reactivity into resourcefulness. It’s a powerful tactic, and it sets things up so your entire being experiences a profound shift that can’t be mentally explained away.

When the full body is more involved in this way, other states related to the one you’re moving will often experience a bit of a shift as well, so you’re getting a broader effect for your work.

Again, though, make sure as you begin that your intensification is fully within your capacity for agency, and that you have the ability to ratchet it both up and down, completely by your own choice. This strengthens your position as occupying a strong witness outside of the state itself, and solidifies your position as the facilitator of your own inner experience.

More…

After you have more experience with both mapping and moving, and after you’ve had a chance to begin to understand the underlying topology of how these parts connect to one another, you’ll be in a position to bring much more skill and agency to your fieldwork. Later in the book, you learn about the topology of a set in the first Science section. Then, I’ll go more deeply into some of the more advanced skills and strategies of this practice. There’s a lot to this work, and it’s quite an adventure to gain the agency and capacity to observe that enables us to more fully explore this inner terrain.

Another Example of What You Have to Look Forward To

To support your anticipation for what is to come in this adventure, I am offering before/after examples of feeling states my client Ruby gave me permission to share.

Fear

Goes hand in hand with Self-Doubt (to be shared in the next chapter).

Especially arises before starting a new class, becomes a barrier I have to get through to even start the planning process for that class. It also comes a little more subtly before any class I teach.

I’m planning two new classes coming up, in a new space, new set of people, starting in August. With that a lot of fear has been coming up, to the point I haven’t even started planning it and it’s coming up in just two weeks.

Whenever I feel any of these emotions, I get a sensation around my heart.

Fear is in heart center area, starts to go up into the throat. Gas, thick, heavy; seems mutable. Pretty hot. It’s almost a metallic color, but dark like when silver gets really old, silver-grayish, translucent. Both circulation and a very slow outward growing, then back in a little. It’ll go out a little, then come back in a little, increasing fear with outward movement. Kind of like a creaking sound that you’d hear in a scary movie when they go to a scene in a forest. Shape is in the throat and chest, but when it expands out, it goes out the back of the chest and I feel it throughout my rib cage and stomach area, goes a little outside my skin, just a little.

Very negative. It tells me that I’m not going to be able to succeed in these things. Something’s going to go wrong. Therefore, why even try if it’s not going to work? And... “You don’t know what you’re doing,” etc.

---

Support

⟹ Cooler, a comfortable warm temp; lighter... it would be light; an emerald green, shimmering, translucent; still in throat and heart, but more free to expand, and when it expands it can go out of my skin a little bit. It can expand all the way down to my hips. Radiating out, particularly from the heart, and it goes all the way to a foot outside of my body; I’m picturing these rays of light radiating, but within the rays is a shimmering, wavelike movement. Sound of singing, an “aahhh” sound, a male choir.

It still wants to warn me, because that’s its job, but in a nice way.

[If nothing to be warned about?] ⟹ It would want to support me.

I keep hearing, “We are here for you.” It’s like they are my spirit guides.

New name ideas: support, guidance

New name: Support.

[What’s different?] It’s amazing; it’s like, I can truly go out in the world as myself, free of that fear of loss or failure. And I can just... there’s no restrictions as I go about my life.

I have had a hard time planning new classes because of that Fear, but if Support is there instead, not only is it easier to do it, but it’s so much more enjoyable.

I’m feeling the Support really wants to see me touch other people’s lives.

---

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When we worked our way through the sequence of mapping questions in Volume 1, for each parameter trying on this value or that one until we found the right fit, it felt as though we were merely applying an instrument of perception. Mapping seems like using a fancy telescope to view something far away, or passing x-rays through a body part and capturing the image on film in order to reveal the contours of the broken bone.

In mere perception, you can’t interact with your perceptual representation to directly alter what it is you are perceiving. For example, you can’t take a white pen to the x-ray film and color in the gap between the broken ends of the bone, and expect the bone to heal itself as a result.

The Bizarre Power of Direct Interaction

However, here’s where things get weird. With the type of perception we have created in our mapping, we can do exactly that. Namely, we are able to directly manipulate the virtual material properties of the mapping image we have created, simply imagining them to be different, “trying on” different values for specific properties, running the “slider” one way or the other, and the feeling state itself will transform as a result. If you take an anger that mapped as a hot, erupting liquid, for example, and simply imagine it cooling down, you will experience the anger itself “cooling down” as a result, most likely transforming from anger into something less volatile.

I can understand if this causes you to take a step back in skepticism. Nothing in our conventional understanding of feeling, mood, and emotion suggests that such a thing is possible. In my very first experiment with this method, my map was very crude, consisting only of the observation that a feeling of depression in my chest seemed to have a strong, gravitational pull downward. I reversed the direction of the gravity, imagining a strong push upward instead, and the feeling transformed instantly into a pervasive cheerfulness that shifted my mood for the rest of the day.

I was so stunned that I backed off, and did not attempt another such experiment for a couple of weeks. In the background, my mind was freaking out about what it might mean if my experience was actually what it seemed to be. At that time I was strongly invested in the methods I had been using to attempt to get control of my moods, namely self-hypnosis, journaling, reframing my thoughts and beliefs, and other approaches oriented around rewiring traumatic memories and the beliefs formed around them. I had invested hundreds if not thousands of hours in training and practice along these lines.

In contrast, in this experience I had made no effort to connect to the past, to memories, to ideas or beliefs, to any kind of thought structures or memories whatsoever. I had brought my attention, focused on the pure present moment of my experience, exclusively to this absurdly trivial and nebulous quality of the downward pull. A “downward pull” seemed irrelevant to the meaning and feeling of my depression, yet the impact of shifting it was impossible to deny.

The bizarreness had to do with a disruption of the fundamental, unconscious and unexamined assumptions I held, and we all hold, regarding our own experience of feeling. The baseline for these assumptions could be summarized like this:

Feeling is a product of a) our somatic physiology and b) our cognition including thoughts, beliefs, and interpretations of our perceptions. If we want to change how we feel, we must manipulate the underlying causes of the feeling by changing our physiology or our cognition.

This is something so close to home, so much a part of the air we breathe, the water we swim in, the ground we walk on, that we don’t ever consider questioning it. All of the science of emotion is built on these assumptions, as are most if not all of current psychotherapeutic, spiritual, and other practices.

When we encounter something that behaves in a way that goes completely against our most fundamental assumptions, the experience can be disorienting. It was for me, and it is for many people. Here is what my client Louise wrote about her experience of shifting her first feeling state:

“The experience of shifting the feeling left me stunned. It moved quickly and the feeling of relief and lightness was sweeping and overwhelming.”

Be prepared for your own experiences of “Huh?” as you begin to move your own states, and give yourself enough open time and space to integrate, especially with your first few times through.

A Brief Overview of the Process

In this Fieldwork Moving section of the book, I want to lead you step by step through your own experience of shifting a feeling state. The process I describe is the result of over three decades of incremental refinement. My intention here is simply to lead you through the experience as best I can.

Direct experience will be key to your understanding. Afterwards, we can begin to dig more deeply into how to skillfully apply the method. And we’ll be in a better position to apply our skills to more rigorously investigating what it is we are working with here, and continuing to assemble what our work reveals into our new science of subjective experience.

The fieldwork moving phase has six steps. Make sure to continue taking thorough notes as you go through the process. What comes up along the way may play a role in completing your move with this part, and it may also turn out to be helpful in working with other adjacent parts.

1. Choose a State

Every feeling state you will ever map exists in relationship with multiple other states. Each state is a unique expression of a module of your whole self, a part of you with its own function, purpose and intention. These interrelationships mean it can matter quite a lot which state goes first in the moving process.

2. Prepare the Container

Because of the tightly interwoven relationships between the state you choose to move and the others in its family, it is very important to set the space in such a way as to give the part you’re moving a maximum sense of freedom and support to follow its own inner compass.

3. Invite a Shift

In moving the state, we prioritize and support the part’s own autonomy in choosing what it prefers. One by one, we work our way through the virtual material properties, inviting the part itself to choose what feels best to it. Eventually, we reach a point of optimization, where it seems that no further property tweaks will make it feel any better.

4. Notice New Thoughts

From the new state that arises in the course of adjusting the virtual material properties, we gain access to a new perspective. In the course of moving the actual felt experience, we discover that our perceptions, thoughts and beliefs have spontaneously shifted in ways congruent with what we feel.

5. Name & Draw

After arriving and settling into the new state, it’s time to sit with its presence and find a new name for the feeling of it. At the same time, drawing the state with its new configuration of virtual material properties can further feed into the adjustment and refinement process as the visual representation brings the state even more tangibly into your felt experience.

6. Integrate What’s New

After a part has regained access to its ideal state, a phase of integration opens up. This part has recovered a more complete range of expression, and through that, a deeper sense of its identity and purpose. The emerging sense of new possibility invites you to establish new relationships with the other parts with which it is connected, and with your life as a whole.

Looking Forward

Over the coming chapters/posts, I’ll walk you through each step to help you get the best results. If you’re eager to begin, in Volume 1, the chapter FO-1, Fieldwork Quick Start takes you through a very concise presentation of both mapping and moving. Here on Substack, you can visit the Try It! page for links to that and several other posts that will lead you through the process using audio, body outline templates for drawing, and other support.

Also in Volume 1, make sure to review the question of whether it will work best for you to work solo or with a partner. Chapters FM-2: Working as a Solo Explorer and FM-3: Working with a Partner cover these complementary approaches.

An Example of What You Have to Look Forward To

To support your anticipation for what is to come in this adventure, I will be offering before/after examples of feeling states my client Ruby gave me permission to share.

Should

A looming feeling; a shield the shape of my body in front of me, especially my face & forehead; heavy; dark. I can feel it in front of my face, and weighing down on my chest. It’s not completely solid, more like a gas, but it’s heavy and dense, and more dense in certain areas; black, kind of translucent; moving like a shadow with me as I go around, moving as one whole unit; kind of warm (uncomfortable).

“You have to practice yoga every morning and you can’t eat until you practice, because you’re not going to be a good teacher unless you practice yourself.”

Encourager

This becomes lighter in density; a little cooler, so it’s a comfortable warm; an energetic light; whitish/yellowish, translucent, iridescent, sparkling; all around me, touching me, and I can feel it in my heart too; radiating/glowing, moving out from me in all directions out from my skin, and there’s a little ball of it in my heart, radiating out a little bit too; a high, singing sound, like an angel’s voice, kind of hard to hear.

Wants to be something that is supporting or guiding me in a positive way, “I’m OK how I am, and everything’s going to be OK.”

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The New Experience of Being Hugged

Susan: So in the moments right as I saw my new drawing, and as I experienced my feeling state shift, there was a very palpable, distinct opening in my heart. I could really feel that steel plate moving, and I could feel an openness that I would really... It’s like that barrier that I had always been aware of inside of me, that really was gone. It was just gone.

That in itself, of course, was a lovely thing. But the thing I really want to emphasize is I began to experiment. Like, “Oh, what does it really feel like?” So one thing I have done very differently -- I don’t always remember to do it, but I mostly do -- is when I am hugging people, I deliberately relax my body even more. I really think, “OK, open and receive.” And while I’m hugging the other person, and they’re hugging me, I really think, consciously, “Receive this hug. Receive this love.”

And I didn’t realize until we had this session how, when I was hugging people and they were hugging me back, of course I was aware I was being hugged back; I couldn’t miss that. But the distinction, the contrast that I saw was how I never really let the hug in. You know? I was so focused on hugging the person and sending love to them, and accepting them, and all that, that I just was oblivious, is the truth, to “Oh, my goodness; I’m also being hugged here. I could receive this.”

So it’s been really interesting, and I would say the result of me doing that is I notice I have experienced a very consistent feeling of being loved, in a way that I hadn’t in the past.

A World Full of Love

Susan: It was also that recognition – and this came like a couple of days later, and it was in the context of a circle, but I know that our work together opened the space for me to have that – is how much love there is in the world. And that really, I mean like my head of course has known forever that the world is full of love, but the contrast was a visceral experience of, “Wow, there is lots of love everywhere all the time if I open myself to it.” I mean, there is always the love of the divine. And again, my head of course has known that my entire life. But it feels like I have more of an awareness of it, rather than just, “Oh, of course God loves me, of course he does.” It’s like, “Oh! God loves me!” I feel it. I can tune into that. It’s like, without that steel plate, and with that radiance, that opening, it’s like, “Oh. I can feel this any time. I can tune into this any time.”

I Create My Circle

Susan: In circling, my experience has been that I am now aware that I create my circle. In the past, my idea – which is one of those 20:20 hindsight in retrospect how could I have been thinking that – up until we had our session, I had put the feeling of the circle kind of outside on the circle. Like this is something outside of me that’s happening. And now when I go in a circle, it’s like, it’s here. The circle is here. The love is here. It looks however it looks. It may, depending on where people are in the circle, there may be somebody there who’s upset, (not with me), but just who comes in with a fit, or who comes in kind of guarded, or with some protection or holding back, it’s like, “OK. I know you are love. Whatever is happening on the surface right now is happening, but you, yourself, are love. And I can open and receive that.

Love Is

Susan: And so another part of it is, I see, it’s like love is. Contrasted to doing-ness. It’s just, “Oh! It’s always here. It’s always available.” It’s a matter of tuning into it, not creating it, not doing something, not making it happen. It just is. And knowing me, you can know how significant that feels for me.

Infinite Love

Joe: A lot of what you’re describing, it sounds like a big part of your experience is the state you called Infinite Love.

Susan: Yes. Yes.

J: And that it’s always available, always present.

S: And kind of like breathing, it’s not something I have to have conscious thought about. We’re not saying, “In...[breath] out...[breath]” You know? We just breathe.

J: Right.

S: And I don’t say, “OK heart, beat... beat.... It just does.” So it’s in that category.

J: Yeah, yeah.

S: Which, as you can imagine, is a significant upgrade in my life experience.

J: That’s exciting.

S: Yes. I agree! [chuckle]

“You’re Different.”

Joe: Has anyone spoken of noticing anything different in you?

Susan: So pretty much everybody that’s seen me has said, “Wow, you’re really different.” And nobody said, “Wow, you’re really different; you’re so much more loving.” I mean, nobody has said what’s really different, but pretty much to a person, it’s been like, “There’s... you’re... clearly something’s happening with you.” [chuckles]

And it’s not surprising because I think people experience me as loving, so I wouldn’t think people would say, “Oh, and you’re so loving.” I mean, that’s what they think I am anyway. That’s their experience anyhow. So I think what they’re feeling is how I feel different inside. Like it’s so different for me inside that my energetic outside, it’s like, “Something’s different,” without there being a precise thing.

J: And I imagine, my sense is, that there’s... when I feel that my love is being received, that feels different.

S: Yes. And again, no one has said, “Oh, you’re really receiving me now, aren’t you, and you never did before.” Or, “You’re receiving me much more than you did before.” I think it would take a finely tuned perception for somebody to get that, or to notice that. Because I am quite tuned in about my hugging, I can feel when people are letting me in or not. But I don’t think most people have an attentiveness to that or a discernment, a distinction about that.

And actually, the comments come before they’re hugging me. It’s like they walk in the room and say, “Wow. You’re different.” [laughing] “You’re different.”

J: Wow.

S: And I mean, I have been in many ways on a very accelerated path of transformation. So I don’t think people need to think they can tell exactly what it is about me. You know? It’s just like, “Oh, more!” [chuckle] “More of that.”

Original Fear to Love

Joe: I’m curious, it sounded like there was a specific memory you had about what happened that made the Fear show up. It was like, this was appropriate to show up, but then it stayed around for too long.

Susan: Yeah.

J: It should have been something that I let go of, but I hung on to it, and the Shame was about having hung on to it.

S: Yeah, it was like, why did I think that was a good idea. Give me a minute and it will come...

I’m pretty sure that this would have been put in place when my mother died, with that decision, which I clearly remember making. I didn’t make the steel plate thing, that wasn’t conscious. That was more like a consequence or result, because when my mother died, and I have a vivid memory of this, I consciously said -- I was 13, sudden, completely unexpected death -- I said to myself, in my intense grief, “I am never going to love anybody that much again, because it is just too devastating to lose them.” And I can remember consciously deciding that.

So that was when I was 13. When I was in my mid-30s, I was vividly reminded of that decision when I met an older gentleman at church who was grandfather age that I just happened to sit by in church one Sunday and we really clicked. When the service was over he said, “Well, you probably need to eat. Would you like to come to lunch with me?” And I said, “OK.”

During that lunch, he shared with me that he had a diagnosis of prostate cancer, and back then the very best prognosis you could have was to live about eight years after your diagnosis, even if you did all the treatments you could do and they worked as good as they could work, eight years. He was about at year four. So of course, as evidenced by my mother, anybody could die at any time, but this was a person who was absolutely going to die, and sooner than later. I remember thinking that decision I had made, and I thought, “Susan, you can do this however you want to, but there’s such a loving, precious connection that’s available to you here. Your own grandparents died when you were eight, so here’s a lovely opportunity to have grandparent love and attention, and you can have this, and you can totally open your heart, and you can love this person with all your heart, or you can stick with your decision. And it’s up to you.” And I thought, “You know what? That was not the best decision I ever made. Let me unmake that one.”

Original Fear of Being Loved

Susan: What I didn’t realize until around the time we were having this session... Oh, it was right before this session because that’s how it impacted me so much. In a circle, I saw that was a corollary decision I had made at the same time, that I didn’t realize I made, that I wasn’t conscious of, which was, “And I am never allowing anybody to love me that much either, because it is too devastating to lose being loved.” When I saw that, it was like, “Wow. OK, didn’t know that. Now that I do, let me be aware and rethink that one.” And that’s the thing that, when we did our session, like I had always, any time I would feel it, I would feel that steel plate. You know? I could feel that it was there. I just hadn’t paid much attention to it. It was just part of who I was. And I certainly hadn’t examined the origins of it. But when I saw that, and then we did the feeling state work, and I felt the steel plate, it’s like, that’s what that is. That is the thing, that I, without any consciousness at age 13, 52 years ago, put into place to protect myself from the pain of losing.

And so when all that kind of came together, it was like, “Oh, and you know what? I don’t have to do that any more.” You know, I can receive. I choose to receive. Even though, yes, when that person or that relationship ends, am I going to notice it? Will I feel grief? Will I feel the loss? Of course I will. And why not have all the love in the world I can have, I can experience, why not receive all of that every minute I do, and when it’s not there, it’s not there.

And there’s also that Infinite Love that’s always there. So while I might lose a specific relationship, and would certainly have the natural, normal grief about it, it wouldn’t be the devastation that I had erected that to protect myself from, because now I know there’s an infinite supply. Whereas when I put that up, it was like, that specifically came from my mother, and now I don’t have my mother, and so, you know, 13-year-old mind, grief, shock, whatever that had me decide that, now I’m many, many years older, and I can make a different decision.

Origin of Shame

Joe: What’s your sense of how the Shame found its way in there?

Susan: So the Shame is that I know how I feel it when I love someone and they don’t accept it. And so the Shame is, “Oh my goodness, completely obliviously, unintentionally, but nonetheless truly, have I been not receiving people’s love.” And not trusting it. Like there was the whole mistrust thing. And the impact I had been having all these years, these 50-plus years, on all the people who loved me. You know? And feeling the embarrassment, and the Shame, that I had pushed them away.

J: So it seems like the Shame, what you’re describing is, that is pretty recent, it really showed up as you became aware that you had been doing that?

S: Yeah.

Shame + Marriage

Joe: Seems like the Fearful Fear would leave if it knew how, but it doesn’t know how.

Susan: Right.

J: So it’s not a shame that Fearful Fear appeared, but that it was meant to be temporary and somehow it got trapped. That it never meant to stay.

S: Yeah. It’s that, yeah, that’s the Shame. That I didn’t know, and the impact that has had. And it was like, I would like to think that I’m loving and that I allow myself to be loved. And I can look back, like for example in my marriage, where in the beginning at least, (and there’s a story around that), where I was loved as much as my husband was capable of loving me. And I can remember pushing it away. Part of the pushing it away was, I had a sense which turned out to be correct, that he was loving an idealized version of me, contrasted to me. So I wasn’t off on that one. But still, I was pushing it away.

Something that was true in my marriage was, both my husband and I were pretty exquisitely attuned to the energetics in our relationship, whether we were consciously aware of them or not, or whether we spoke of them or not, we were both really tuned in to that. And so I’m sure he felt my guardedness. And that cannot have felt good. It just cannot have felt good.

I’m not going to say that ruined our marriage, there’s a million factors about what worked and didn’t work in that. But my shame is that he loved me and I didn’t let it in. And the impact that had on a tender heart that was very open and giving.

J: Do you think that shame was present then?

S: No, I don’t think I knew it at all. I mean, the Shame came up out of the realization. I mean, was it present somewhere at some deep, completely unknown level? I think yeah, it would have had to have been. But there wasn’t the consciousness of it.

That’s why when we were doing it, and it showed up, it was almost kind of a surprise to me. That’s my recollection, in the session it was like, “Oh! And then there’s this, this unexpected thing, and what is it when I feel into it? It’s Shame. And it’s Shame that I would have been doing that, that I would have been pushing, or keeping, making a barrier to receiving love.

And until I processed and forgave myself for that, nothing could move.

Opening to Something New (Another Month Later)

A month after our followup call, (two months after the session), Susan and I were talking, and she shared the following story about the further unfolding of the work we did.

Susan: My ex-husband called after a mutual friend died. While we were talking about her I said, “You know, I really miss talking to you.” Because it’s been his choice for us essentially not to communicate.

A little later he shared that a book he’s always wanted to write about his family’s history is finally about to be published. I was saying what great news that was, and really celebrating with him that this is coming to pass. And I said again, “I just want to be sure that you heard me. I really miss us being in communication like this. I really treasure us just being able to be friends and talk.” And he said, “I know. And I acknowledge it was my anger and my hurt and the way I was being that stopped this, but I think I’ve moved past that now, and I miss you too. And I’m willing to be in communication with you.”

As far as I’m concerned, that’s just a miracle. I have so longed for that, but it’s not anything I could make happen. You know? It had to be his choosing to do that. And so he has sent me the final draft of the book for me to read over. A year or more ago I had said I’d be happy to read over a draft of the book, and it was like, “Nope.” So he’s now sent it to me to read, and he said, “You always have great comments. Here are the things I want you to look for and comment on.”

So it just, it feels wonderful, to have that. It does really feel like a shift, and for me, what I’ve noticed is that, (and this sounds paradoxical), what it feels like is that I now feel like I’m free to pursue another relationship. It seems funny. I don’t want to be anything except friends with my ex-husband. The marriage part of our relationship is done, and I’m not looking to rekindle that. But what I’ve noticed is that for me, the not-friendship was like an incompletion, and I was holding out for that. It’s kind of like all the relationship space in my head was taken up with, can I just get him to be friends with me please. And now that I have that, it’s like “OK, cool. That’s complete. Now I can move on to the next thing.”

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Audio:

J: All right, so, any final thoughts?

S: No, I mean, it does feel like there isn’t any boundary or barrier any more to letting love in. I mean like, I’ll find out the next time somebody hugs me or whatever.

J: Right.

S: But just checking in with my body right now, I don’t feel any barrier.

J: Right. Well, this seems like it was a great little tour here, little excursion.

S: And what I noticed is, and I think you pointed to this before, but actually getting to what the heart of it is, getting down to it, as soon as I got there it started shifting without me even making any effort to shift it.

J: Right, right.

S: When I got to the Shame, which I didn’t know was there, and I think the key point was when you asked me, “if you feel into the body of the Shame,” as soon as I located the heart, and it started pulsing, it was already done.

J: On the way.

S: There was the exploration, the doing of it, but it was like, “Oh!” The love that I thought was out there, that I needed to be cautious about receiving was already inside.

J: Yeah, yeah. And its natural state is, there’s love everywhere.

S: Yes.

J: No shortage.

S: Right. Yeah. And I think the sensation that I will carry with me is the expanding infinitely out and then flowing back, and then even further out, which means there’s more to come back, which is there’s more to give out... so, which is consistent or congruent with how I think love is anyway. The more you give, the more you can receive, and the more you receive, the more there is to give. That’s just how it works. But actually experiencing the sensation of that.

J: Great.

S: So I would say it’s moving it from an intellectual idea to a felt sensation.

J: Right.

Anticipating the Future

J: Projecting forward, imagining the next time somebody hugs you, or expresses...

S: Well I was thinking just going to the grocery story. I mean, that’s the next task outside my home I have to do. And it’s like, Oh, I could just be standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, or going up and down the aisles, or whatever.

J: Yeah.

S: It’s just like, Oh! I could just be sending love out into whole grocery store, and receiving love back, and it doesn’t even have to be love that’s specifically meant to be for me. But just the love that’s inside the hearts of the people in the grocery store. The Heart Math people have figured out that the electromagnetic field of the heart is somewhere on the average 20 to 40 feet.

J: Wow.

S: So it’s like, wow, the grocery store is full of these electromagnetic fields of 20 to 40 feet of all the people in the grocery store intersecting one another.

J: That’s a nice image.

S: Yeah.

J: And now, without that barrier, that’s available to you.

S: Yeah. So like moving through a field of love, an electromagnetic field, an energetic field of love.

J: Right, right.

S: Which feels really safe. So that’s the Exquisite Safety. A very different emotional state or feeling state.

J: Mm hm. Would you anticipate it will affect your experience of circling?

S: Yeah, I would, actually, because, I mean like recalling that idea about the electromagnetic fields, it’s like yes, we’re all on the computer screen. Yesterday on a call we happened to have somebody in Norway and someone in Australia, a huge geographic distance, and then us in Texas, in the middle. But I mean it was a huge geographic distance. And yet, you know, we could feel that field amongst us. So I think it does give me an even deeper way to connect in this global community that has quite a great, a lot of geographic distance.

J: Yes, that’s great.

S: And just remembering that our hearts are sending, I mean, this is not something we control. I don’t say to my heart, “OK, only a 10-foot electromagnetic field now. OK, now you can have a 30-foot one.” It’s just doing what it’s doing. So it doesn’t even have to be that I’m having loving thoughts. My heart is out there doing that, just like I’m breathing, and I don’t have to think, “OK, In. Out.”

J: Right, right.

S: It’s doing that. That’s a very different world view.

J: What’s cool is it sounds like, like you said, this has been an idea. You’ve known this.

S: The facts, yes.

J: But it hasn’t been a felt experience.

S: Right.

J: And now you’re actually already feeling the difference of actually having it be embodied.

S: Yeah.

J: That’s great.

S: Yeah, I mean, there’s seven point three billion people on the planet with hearts that all are having electromagnetic fields. And even the ones, I’m assuming even psychopaths or whatever, their heart does this too, not in their conscious control. You know? There’s nothing that I’ve read about the electromagnetic fields of the heart that says, “OK, if you’re a psychopath or if you’re a really mean person, then you don’t have an electromagnetic field on your heart.” I think you do anyway. Which expands my understanding of The Course of Miracles, which is my spiritual path, which is, there is only love. (And... it can seem like there’s a lot of other stuff.)

J: Yeah.

S: You know, which is real enough in the physical plane. But in the meta view...

J: Right.

S: Yeah. So a lot to think about and be with.

J: So you’re going to have these thoughts running...

S: ...percolating...

J: ...through your whole body as you go to the grocery store, and go there...

S: Drive on the highway or whatever.

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Audio:

Moving Love

J: We could draw Receiving right now. Or we can go ahead and move one of the other ones.

S: It almost feels like this did move everything else.

J: Yeah? Well let’s just check in and see what happened, see where the other things went. Let’s check in with the Love. Now that Shame has become Receiving, what does the Love get to be?

S: The Love just gets to be more and more and more. It stays Love, but it’s free to be as big as the universe. It can be as big as it wants to be. There are no restraints on it.

J: So in a perfect world, with access to Receiving, if this part of you were free to be as big as it wants to be, how big would it want to be?

S: Truly as big as the universe, like out into the galaxy, beyond the Milky Way. Huge, it wouldn’t have any boundaries at all.

J: OK. And in becoming beyond-galaxy, infinite universe size, if it were free to take on qualities of any substance at all, would it want to be more like a solid, liquid, gas, pure light, energy, or something else, what would it most want to be?

S: Pure light, I think.

J: And this pure light, what temperature would it want to be?

S: I don’t think it has a temperature, really. I mean, definitely warm contrasted to cold, but it doesn’t feel like light really has a temperature.

J: OK. And what color does it want to be, if it could be any color or colors at all?

S: Iridescent, like all colors.

J: Is there a certain pattern, or a way that these colors are distributed?

S: No.

J: OK. And is it moving at all? Is this light flowing, radiating, pulsing, vibrating, circulating?

S: It feels like it’s going out to infinity, however far that is, and then coming all the way back to me, like to my physical body. And then like all the way out, and then all the way back. Like bringing everything back and then putting it out, and each time it goes out it goes further, brings more back, sends more out, constantly expanding.

J: Great. OK. And what about sound: if you listen to this, what sound wants to be there as a way of more fully expressing its nature?

S: It’s kind of back to the music of the spheres. I think the stars are supposed to sing or make some kind of a sound, so whatever that sound is.

J: All right. Anything else to notice about what this wants to be?

S: I don’t think so.

J: All right. And so from this new place, what feels true, or real, or important?

S: Well in this space, Shame and Fear and No! are not even concepts. They don’t even exist. It’s like they don’t even make sense. They’re not even present. It’s like if it’s August and it’s summertime, the concept of snow is completely irrelevant, you know? It’s 100 degrees, there’s not going to be snow.

J: Right. So what’s important to you about that?

S: Just the expansiveness and the freedom and the possibility.

J: Anything else to notice about what this wants to be?

S: I think that’s it.

J: What name would you like to give it?

S: Infinite Love.

Note: This drawing was made later in our process, after moving all four parts.

Moving Fearful Fear

J: Let’s check in with what happened with the Fear. So now that you have access to Infinite Love and Receiving...?

S: It’s like, if it were fog, it’s like when the sun shines really brightly the fog just disappears, or dissipates.

J: OK. So let’s follow it. So this part of you has a gift for you. And let’s say that the fog does dissipate, but it has the opportunity, from that dissipated place, wherever that is, to contemplate how does it want to come back into the space in and around your body in such a way as to offer you its greatest gift?

...And in doing so, if it were free to take on qualities of any substance at all, would it prefer to be more like a solid, or a liquid, or a gas, or some kind of pure light or energy, or something else?

S: It feels like a soft blanket. Very, like cashmere, very light weight. Not even a blanket; like a cashmere shawl that’s literally, you notice it’s on your skin but there’s no weight to it. And it’s very soft.

J: Ahh. So the temperature is like a neutral temperature, or warm? What temperature would you say it seems to be?

S: Neutral.

J: And if it were free to be any color at all, what color would it most want to be?

S: Kind of a cream color, an ivory.

J: Opaque, translucent, transparent?

S: Opaque.

J: And so the location is like a shawl, or if it could be free to locate itself anywhere, where would it most want to be?

S: It’s maybe six inches away from my body. So it would be as if I could feel the presence of it, but I’m not at all wrapped up or bound in it.

J: Ah hah. Great. And around your whole body? Is it like a...?

S: No, just from my waist to my chin. Kind of like overall where everything else was before.

J: OK. And does it want to be moving in any way?

S: No. It seems to be still.

J: OK. And does it want to have any kind of inner sound to express its nature?

S: Like some kind of soft humming, almost like a lullaby sound or a soothing sound. It doesn’t necessarily have a melody, but just some kind of comforting hum.

J: Anything else to notice about what this wants to be?

S: No. I don’t think so.

J: And so from this new place, if this part of you were free to express in words what feels true, or real, or important, what would it say?

S: You’re safe, and protected.

J: Mm hm. OK.

S: Before, in the very beginning when I was saying it felt like if I let the love in it would just be too much, or overwhelming, this is like, “No. It will never be too much. However much it is, you’re safe, you’re protected. You can let it all in and it won’t be too much.”

J: OK. And what new name would you like to give this?

S: Spaciousness..

Note: This drawing was made later in our process, after moving all four parts.

Moving No!

J: All right. Should we check in with the steel plate, the No!?

S: Yes.

J: All right then. So, you’re getting the hang of this, I’m just going to open up the...

S: Well it feels like the steel plate has gone down under my feet, like it’s this very solid foundation.

J: Mm hm.

S: So if we’re doing the floating out in the universe thing, it’s like the steel plate, now its job is to be the foundation. There’s something to come back to. There’s something solid.

J: Right.

S: So I don’t just expand expand expand expand and never stop expanding. This is when the energy comes back, it comes back and it’s got the home base, so to speak.

J: Got it. So let’s explore, what does the substance want to be? Does it still want to be steel, or...?

S: Yup. It’s the same as it always was.

J: OK.

S: It’s just completely re-purposed.

J: So the same substance and color?

S: Yep, same everything.

J: How about temperature? Still cold?

S: Cool. Yeah, it’s still a little cool. Everything else is warm, so it’s like the cool is a contrast to be the homing beacon or something. It needs to be just slightly different than everything else so it can be easily located.

J: Mm hm. And what about the size and shape of it? Is it the same exact...?

S: Still the same. It literally is that same steel plate. It’s just completely re-purposed.

J: But it’s horizontal now.

S: Right. Now it’s horizontal as if it’s under my feet.

J: OK. And now, any inner sound that comes with this?

S: It’s that same kind of low tone that it was before, and again, the purpose is like a homing beacon or like the signal.

J: And so from this new place, what does part of you bring? What does this part of you most want you to know?

S: That I’m safe, that there’s a place to come home to.

J: Right.

S: No matter how much everything goes out, there’s a big, solid place that it can come back. So it’s really just an exquisite safety. I’m not going to be lost.

J: Great. And what new name would you like to give this?

S: I would say Exquisite Safety, just what it feels like.

J: Great.

Note: This drawing was made later in our process, after moving all four parts.

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What’s Next:

In the next post, Susan will reflect on the journey she has made and how she anticipates these shifts will influence her experience moving forward.

Volume 1, Table of Contents:

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The audio:

J: So does it feel to you like it would be more of a relief to shift the Shame first or one of the others?

S: No. It’s definitely from the inside out in this case.

J: Mm hm. And the Shame, that could shift and the Love would be OK with that.

S: Well, it’s like the Love wants to expand...

J: Wants to expand, right...

S: ...yeah, it wants to... I mean, it’s kind of like, sort of vaporize or... I think vaporize would be the right word. It’s not like blow it up, but it’s just like dissipate it, disappear it.

J: Yeah, yeah. All right, well let’s see what happens with shifting the Shame.

Preparing to Move Shame

J: So before we shift this I want to just establish a couple of frames. One, I want to acknowledge this part of you, this Shame. It took this form at some point in your life when it seemed like this was the best way to serve you. So I want to thank it for doing that. And I want to reassure it that if it ever needs to serve you in this way again, it can do so. Yes, we are going to move this today, but it’s safe to move because you can always put it back. We’re adding to this part’s repertoire of feeling, not taking anything away.

And so because of that, because it’s safe to move, you might as well go for it. What could this part of you be in an absolutely perfect world, where all your needs are met, exactly the way you want them, fully and completely, and you know how to keep them that way?

Also, I want to acknowledge that, as you see, this Shame is connected to the No! and the Fearful Fear and the Love, and there are other parts it’s connected to that we haven’t identified. I want to invite all the other parts of you to participate in this process passively, as witnesses only, to experience for themselves what’s possible for every part of you. But if there is some other part of you that is needing to contribute something crucial to the process, you’ll notice another feeling coming to the foreground, and just let me know. All right?

S: Yes.

Moving Shame

J: So in this moment, in the spirit of exploration of what’s possible in a perfect world, if this part of you were free to become, oh let’s say harder or softer, bigger or smaller, warmer or cooler...?

S: Definitely softer, no more porcupine quills. And it would change color. It would be yellow, kind of like a glowing light, like a sun.

J: OK.

S: But really, very soft.

J: Yes. OK. And so in becoming softer, and changing color, if this part of you were free to take on qualities of any substance at all, would it prefer to be more like some other kind of solid, or a liquid, or a gas, or some kind of pure light, or energy, or something else?

S: Pure light or energy I think.

J: And in becoming this pure light or energy, if it were free to take on any temperature?

S: Comfortably warm. Like maybe a hundred and two degrees, like a little warmer than body temperature, but you know, you could still have your hand on it for a while without being burned.

J: Mm hm.

S: Maybe only a hundred degrees. You know, just a little bit warmer.

J: OK. And in taking on this new quality of being pure light or energy at 100 degrees or so, to confirm the color, if it could be any color of the rainbow...?

S: Sunshine yellow, or maybe lemon yellow, or egg yolk yellow. Like the heart was the reddest red? This is like the yellowest yellow.

J: OK. Great. And would it want to have qualities of being transparent, or translucent, or opaque?

S: Translucent, maybe. Like transparent, it really likes being yellow, and it wants to be noticed.

J: Ah hah. And obviously it’s luminous, this light? Any qualities of being sparkling or shimmering, iridescent, anything like that?

S: Shimmery or sparkly.

J: OK. And if this part were free now to located itself anywhere in or around, or in and around your body, and occupy any size and shape at all, where would it most want to be?

S: Well, the center of it would be right where the porcupine was, but then it would definitely go, like covering all the parts that were gray before. Almost like a circle except there’s not sharp, defined edges. So it would even go up to my chin, probably an equidistance down which might be the top of my thighs, and maybe out to my arms...

J: How about forward/back, also? Would it be a sphere or more of a circle?

S: It’s kind of a shape like this , so however far back the gray fog went before, it’s like that far back, and then however far the steel plate was, it’s like just past the edges of that. So sort of encapsulating.

J: Right. All right. And does this light want to be moving in any way? Is there any kind of a flow, a pulse, a radiation, vibration?

S: No. It’s just glowing. But it’s not... The fact that it’s light means that there’s activity.

J: OK.

S: Without any overt activity.

J: OK. And if you listen internally, does there want to be any kind of inner sound that arises with this feeling?

S: It’s kind of tinkly bells or wind chimes. I don’t know, celestial sounds, angelic sounds, music of the spheres sounds... I mean I can hear them in my mind because I have CDs that have music like that.

J: All right. So you know what that means.

S: Yes.

J: And is there anything else you want to notice about what this wants to be?

S: No. I think that’s it.

J: And so from this new place, this new feeling, what seems true, or real, or important now?

S: It seems very expansive.

J: And what’s important to you about that?

S: That I’m very open, so it’s like I am open to let the love in. It feels like it made that expansiveness.

J: Great. And what new name would you like to give this?

S: Receiving.

J: Mm. Great.

Note: This drawing of Receiving was made later in our process, after moving all four parts.

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What’s Next

In the next post, we’ll have an opportunity to see what Susan’s Love wants to become. We might assume that, well, it’s already “love,” so what more could it want? Well, hang tight. You might be surprised.

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