What am I going to do? ...Well, I decided to finish my lunch - my wife will tell you that absolutely nothing interrupts my eating! And it is such a beautiful day, who wants to spend this day writing a stuffy old newsletter inside I thought to myself? So the next decision was to actually go outside - to sit in the sun - maybe there would be some kind of inspiration. So here I am, sitting in the sun and suddenly realizing what I am going to write about. I thought that after last month's newsletter when I talked about the "zones of awareness" that this really wasn't complete, that I had more to say, but somehow to make it longer would have meant that probably most people wouldn't read it. So, some of you may have found yourself wondering - "what on earth is this guy talking about?" - he's not explaining this very well.

So here is this month's rendering - you can call it a newsletter, you can call it an addendum you can label it in whatever way you wish. What labellers we are aren't we? We love to label things, we love to abstract from actual experience - and of course this is what I'm talking about when I talked about the "middle zone of awareness" last month. (My apologies to those who did not read or do not have last month's newsletter - a short version is printed again for you on the right). It's where Fritz Perls told us that we spent most of our time. in the middle zone, outside of experience. So - I am lying there on my lawn chair on my deck. It's beautiful and I begin to notice outer zone awarenesses - the most obvious is the beautiful sound of the water - specifically in my left ear - of the waterfall from my small but well loved and cared-for pond. I have always loved the sound of trickling water - what is it that makes it so relaxing? (That is immediately, I am aware, a middle zone awareness, a question I have in the mind of my middle zone). It immediately takes me away from the experience of that trickling water. Then I notice the warmth of the sun on my body, the sound of some traffic in my right ear, the Morning Dove cooing away. Sometimes I actually notice spaces between the sounds, (outer zone) and then of course there is my ever-present breath (inner zone?). I can hear my wife reading aloud to me, a book about a struggle that a woman is having - another middle zone. I am aware of the feeling in my stomach from the satisfying meal - an inner zone awareness, pleasant - the very word "pleasant" being an abstraction of the experience and I'm back in the middle zone! I've known about this exercise for 30 years, and I still find myself flipping in and out of this middle zone of a distraction - I think to myself! (A judgment about what I'm doing - definitely middle zone). But this is not the point - no indeed, the point is to notice. Because when you notice life flows, when you notice no thing is standing still - nothing, every thing is moving. Our minds pay attention, and it doesn't matter what they pay attention to unless we give it meaning with some abstraction, and slip out of our present awareness. So the point is gentle awareness of where we are NOW...and now ... and now.... external, internal, or middle zone. It's all feedback - in fact may be its even biofeedback? What a thought, maybe this is a good introduction for my workshop on that topic - maybe I have already begun my overdue project, and I didn't even realize it.