The Shudder

I am highly aware of the bottom of my stomach when I encounter something/someone in which/whom I experience keen kinship. It's almost like a feeling of dread, so it usually catches me off guard. I used to think affinity should cause me to experience immediate satisfaction or deep joy. Instead, the feeling causes something like a terrible shudder in me. It is at once unsettling, then it slowly begins to rest, to settle in. It's like something moves deep within me, and I am aware it forever confirms my being. Like an earthquake, but maybe instead of a sliding/shifting movement, it is a settling movement where roots compact and only settle deeper into the same space. It usually leaves me stuttering for awhile. My eyes may close. I usually shake my head. Art has the potential to do this in me. Poetry can do this for me. Writing/Philosophy often does this for me. Psychotherapy does this for me. It is quite the experience...and one I never quite get used to. 

I am currently reading Carl Rogers' book On Becoming A Person, and the shudder keeps happening over and over as I relish his words. I have said these things, I have thought these thoughts! Tonight I read Rogers' words describing the impact of (my own favorite fictional author) Gene Stratton-Porter's books on his own life. We read the same fiction---though I am reading it 98 years later! Here are a few shudder-producing passages:


"It seemed to me it would be a horrible thing to have to profess a set of beliefs, in order to remain in one's profession. I wanted to find a field in which I could be sure my freedom of thought would not be limited." 

"I think I have always had a feeling that if I was given some opportunity to do the thing I was most interested in doing, everything else would somehow take care of itself."  


"It has seemed to me that my most fruitful periods of work are the times when I have been able to get completely away from what others think, from professional expectations and daily demands, and gain perspective on what I am doing. My wife and I have found isolated hideaways in Mexico and in the Caribbean where no one knows I am a psychologist; where painting, swimming, snorkeling, and capturing some of the scenery in color photography are my major activities. Yet in these spots, where no more than tow to four hours a day goes for professional work, I have made most of whatever advances I have made in the last few years. I prize the privilege of being alone."  


"I have come to have more respect for those vague thoughts which occur in me form time to time, which feel as though they were significant. I am inclined to think that these unclear thoughts or hunches will lead me to important areas. I think of it as trusting the totality of my experience, which I have learned to suspect is wiser than my intellect. It is fallible I am sure, but I believe it to be less fallible than my conscious mind alone. My attitude is very well expressed by Max Weber, the artist, when he says, 'In carrying on my own humble creative effort, I depend greatly upon that which I do not yet know, and upon that which I have not yet done.'"

Looks to me like a girl in a bubble, surrounded by scaffolding...

"Watching my clients, I have come to a much better understanding of creative people. El Greco, for example, must have realized as he looked at some of his early work, that 'good artists do not paint like that.' But somehow he trusted his own experiencing of life, the process of himself, sufficiently that he could go on expressing his own unique perceptions. It was as though he  could say, 'Good artists do not paint like this, but I paint like this.'.... This is not a phenomenon which occurs only in the artist or the genius. Time and again in my clients, I have seen simple people become significant and creative in their own spheres, as they have developed more trust of the processes going on within themselves, and have dared to feel their own feelings, live by values which they discover within, and express themselves in their own unique ways."

Oh, man. I'm only 1/2 of the way through the book.