Opening Up The Here-and-Now

by Jane Cohen , copyright © October 2003

In July, I began facilitating a group called "The Men and Women Cutting-edge Exploratory Group: Sex, Power, Love & Vulnerability in Relationship." The intention for this group was to shift the male/female paradigm. As the group progressed, it became clear that it was not possible to move directly into shifting a specific paradigm, or to even directly understand what the paradigm currently is, without first overcoming barriers to coming into the present moment with each other. Cutting-edge work, in which paradigms can shift, implies entering a zone beyond ordinary experience. It can be found only by becoming conscious of the present moment, revealing the living ground we are standing on and living our lives on the basis of.

The reason this is so significant and such a profound challenge, is because with each step toward bringing the present moment into focus, we are coming closer to primal and powerful energies. Moving into this level of experience has to be treated with the utmost care and respect, because it's walking across a threshold to a whole other world we have spent our lives avoiding, because of the unconscious negative imaginings of what we fear will be revealed and the powerful energies released. The deep unconscious dynamics happening between people have to do with the direction and manner in which these powerful life force energies are released; how we get a sense of our own value; how we deal with survival; and how we limit our experience and awareness, rather than open up vast expansions of consciousness. It is where and how we form our whole sense of what reality is, and what we manifest into our lives.

Each person holds in place a paradigm of reality that effects every person they come in contact with at very subtle levels, effecting the global/universal experience. When that changes it has a huge effect.

My preparation for each group session has been an on-going dialogue with what happened the previous one, in order to uncover how to move further along into this very sensitive and powerful material. Each step of the way requires shifts in my consciousness in order to understand and make clear to the group what the next step is, and bring in the information we need to have the willingness to take it.

As preliminary groundwork, we are having to reveal what each of us are doing that keeps each other from experiencing us. This is uncovering very deep defense systems, which is then moving into the deeper dynamics between us. It is opening up an experiential understanding of primal life force energies.

To allow ourselves to be revealed, each person has to understand how it is that it is safe to show all aspects of ourselves including what is dysfunctional in us, our desires and needs, and especially our candid responses to each other.

People generally fear exposing both their unedited negative and positive experiences of each other. We are afraid to admit either attraction or repulsion. Most of what we experience and how we react to each other, we would do almost anything rather than express or expose.

We hold it back because of deep negative beliefs about who we are. This is based on the deeply entrenched, unconscious belief that life is not meant to work, and our needs and desires are shameful, wrong, and in opposition to those of each other. The only thing that causes the expression of this living material to be less than exquisite divine expression, is repressing and diverting its very powerful energy so it comes out in distorted form.

Everything dysfunctional in ourselves, and in each other, are defense systems, not who we really are. These are often what we see first in other people, and we mistake them as the person. People's defense systems can have a powerful and undermining effect because of the subtle combination of aspects of truth with untruths that play on fears we have. But when we have the courage to expose what we're protecting and allow the underlying truth to emerge, it is always far more powerful than any on an outside structure to define reality for me.

Coming into the present moment is a sacred act. By going into deeply unconscious material, we are opening up consciousness, and bringing new knowing into existence. From that place we can come into present-moment dialogue with each other. This is where transformation and evolution occurs. As soon as there is like, dislike -- attraction or repulsion, there is dialogue happening. As the dialogue penetrates deeper into vulnerable, genuine experience, the information revealed is brought into conscious awareness. As each experience of the self in relation to the other is exposed, the whole experience shifts, and what's beneath that is revealed. And in the process of this unfolding, whatever is dysfunctional is untangled and the real soul beings are revealed, allowing the depth of our experience, consciousness and power to be released. We can then come into genuine, loving, empowered contact with each other, within the context of whatever is true between us.

What gets in the way of our full freedom and genuineness of expression at every moment in whatever circumstances, are unhealed, mainly unconscious issues. When what is true is untangled and brought to the surface, life does work and we find that there is only love, and that everyone's highest good is served. This work is a demonstration of that truth.

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(760) 753-0733 - JC@janecohen.net - Encinitas, CA

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