Emergence as a Therapy
A Quick Summary
Main Points on This Quick List
[1] In Emergence, "see" means "to internally picture."
[2] Emergence as a Therapy is based on one simple fact: that the "wound" is what you can not see. Thus, what you can see is what is not wounded.
[3] Healing is "reclaiming one's ability to picture (to 'see') in an area previously BLocked."
[4] There are three basic types of Emergence "healing techniques": [1] "P" Curves, [2] Visual Dialogues, and [3] Direct Emergence (playing the "bad" guy).
[5] The Basic Tool present in all Emergence "healing techniques" is the "scene request."
[6] There are three basic types of "scene requests": [1] the Direct Request, [2] the InDirect Request, and [3] the Intuitive Variation.
Words and Phrases to Pay Attention To
(they've been redefined to reflect Emergence Personality Theory)
emergence, see, P Curves, Visual Dialogues, Playing the Bad Guy, scene request
Quick List With Examples
[1] In Emergence, "see" means "to internally picture."
- Most people will have no trouble picturing a dandelion. Try it. Picture a dandelion. Thus, unless you have dandelions as an element in a wounding scene, you will effortlessly be able to picture one. My point for asking you to try this is to give you a reference point from which understand woundedness. How? By pointing out that the single most significant indicator of woundedness is this inability to "see" something. Said in other words, if you can't internally "see" something, you have a wound in and around this something.
- Herein lies the derivation of the word Emergence Practitioners use for "wound": "BLock." Thus, a "BLock" is something you ordinarily could picture but inexplicably can not. More over, unlike what most people believe; that these missing pieces of life experience are inaccessible simply because they are unimportant or forgotten; the real truth is, BLocks are always important, in that they "block" one's ability to see the good in these situations.
- Whatever is not BLocked, then, can be effortlessly pictured; things like a dandelion. No surprise many people see the beauty even in this colorful weed. What is more important, though, is that people can learn only from what is "unBLocked" in them. This even includes people's most painful scenes. Thus, by reclaiming one's lost ability to "picture" these painful scenes, they become the very tools from which people can create a loving and compassionate life. Of course, in order to learn from these scenes, people must have reclaimed their lost ability to "see" them.
- What follows then is, since "what you can not see internally" is "what is wounded" ("BLocked") in a person, the simplest way to find peoples' injuries is to ask them to try to picture the elements of whatever painful events they may wish to heal. Guides then focus on locating what people can not picture, knowing that what can not be pictured is the injury. Further, they know this applies even in cases wherein people can not make up or imagine these scenes. Thus, once BLocked, people will not be able to even imagine these scenes, and this inability only serves as further proof of the true nature of injury.
- What also follows then is, this inability explains what prevents even highly motivated people from changing their worst behaviors. What prevents these changes? The fact that people can not learn from what they can not picture.
- For the person wounded, this inability to learn holds true no matter how hard the person tries. Thus, what is visually blocked in people will be unavailable for them to learn from, even in times wherein these people make great efforts to use the pain of past mistakes to change. Again, this inability to learn from past mistakes comes from the fact that what is actually BLocked in people is their visual access to a particular class of past life experiences.
- Herein lies one of the main reasons people suffer from their wounds; the fact that this inability to visually access the past prevents them from learning from it. This means, because people do not define injury in this way, they will repeatedly suffer from the pain of failing to change but will not know why.
- Thus, whenever people relive an event wherein they experience one of these blank spots, they will relive it sans an ability to picture. In lieu of this ability to picture, they will use logic to guess at the nature of it or worse, simply fake an understanding. Even so, since no one learns from logic alone, until they reclaim their visual access to these scenes, these people will be doomed to repeatedly fail to change how they respond to these scenes. How? By behaving as if they are simply following a script. Where does the script come from? From the script of the original wounding scene.
[2] Emergence as a Therapy is based on one simple fact: that the "wound" is what you can not see. Thus, what you can see is what is not wounded.
- Conventional therapies focus their efforts in two general areas: symptoms and painful events, for example, on one's depression (a symptom) or on having been raped (a painful event.) These two categories of human experience are "what you can see." Unfortunately, no one notices that no matter how you sort and re-sort these visible components of peoples' suffering, healing occurs only when the previously "invisible" elements surface. In fact, this is one way to describe the events I call, "emergence"; an emergence is simply an experience in which the previously BLocked elements of a painful life experience become visible.
[3] Healing is "reclaiming one's ability to picture (to 'see') in an area previously BLocked."
- One of the most important things to know about what emerges in these "healing scenes" is that the literal truth of what people see in these scenes never matters with regard to healing. In other words, the healing itself occurs entirely from having reclaimed one's ability to picture these scenes. This restored ability then allows people to access and learn from these previously inaccessible areas of their life.
- What I've just said is, the literal truth of what people see in these scenes never matters. This means guides never really know if what emerges ever actually happened or not. Nor does this matter. The mere reclaiming of peoples previously BLocked abilities to see is enough to heal their ability to learn and grow in these life areas. More over, of these restored abilities, the most important learning of all is the ability to be loving in and around scenes such as these.
- As for the types of scenes which emerge, healing scenes can be roughly sorted into five categories; [1] the literal scene in which the person was injured, [2] a composite scene composed of scenes similar to the original wounding scene, [3] a fantasy scene, one which the person never actually experienced, [4] a combination of scene types 1 and 3, or [5] a combination of scene types 2 and 3.
[4] There are three basic types of Emergence "healing techniques": [1] "P" Curves, [2] Visual Dialogues, and [3] Direct Emergence ("playing the "bad" guy")
- Here, the phrase "healing techniques" means ways a guide can help a person to reclaim their lost ability to picture, and there are three basic types.
- "P" Curves are the least confrontive form of Emergence as a Therapy. Here, guides employ a single page, paper tool on which they record the results of scene requests; e.g. what a person answers when asked, "can you picture a time ...?" Guides make these requests so as to help people to sort their inner life experiences into two "piles"; what they can see and what they can not, and these scene requests are know as "indirect" scene requests.
- Completed "P" Curves then get collected in a book, and this book of completed "P" Curves becomes the person's " personal manual," a book which can be used to guide one's life choices and further explore BLocked life areas.
- "P" Curves are the least confrontive form of Emergence as a Therapy.
- Visual Dialogues are the most common form of Emergence as a Therapy. They range in form widely from very gentle discussions to direct questioning, and consist entirely of dialogues between a "guide" and an "explorer." These dialogues alternate between scene requests and integrating the scenes which emerge.
- Visual Dialogues vary widely in the level of confrontation, but most often are moderately confrontive. Here, scene requests vary also, from the "indirect" style of "P" Curves to the "direct" style of Direct Emergence.
- Direct Emergence (playing the "bad" guy) is the most confrontive form of Emergence as a Therapy. Here, a guide "provoke" the explorer's injury directly, by play acting the original "bad guy" in a particular wounding scene.
- Here again, the point is to help the person to be able to internally picture at least one example of this particular type of life experience, and the guide does this by literally asking the person's permission to act out the scene. This is known as the "direct" form of a "scene request".
[5] The Basic Tool present in all Emergence "healing techniques" is the "scene request."
- A "scene request" is a question designed to reveal BLocks. These BLocks are areas of life in which people have lost their ability to internally picture. An example of how a scene request is made would be, "Go to a time in which you [name the issue, e.g. see an older man yelling at you, hear a dog barking outside your bedroom window, are young and eating dinner with your family.] Now tell me what you [see, hear, feel, smell, taste, etc.]."
- A second variety would be, "picture a time in which you were [name the issue]... Now tell me what you [see."
- A third variation begins with, "Picture a scene in which [name the issue]... Now tell me what you see.
[6] There are three basic types of "scene requests": [1] the Direct Request, [2] the InDirect Request, and [3] the Intuitive Variation.
- [1] The Direct Request is a scene request in which the issue is clearly present. For example: with the issue, "I am afraid my wife will leave," a direct scene request could be, "Go to a time when your wife is threatening to leave," or, "Picture a scene where you are afraid your wife will leave."
- [2] The InDirect Request is a scene request in which the issue is clearly not present. For example: with this same issue, an indirect scene request could be, "Picture a time in which you are not afraid your wife will leave," or, "Show me a scene where you are with your wife and you feel safe and secure."
- [3] The Intuitive Variation is a scene request in which the issue is clearly emotionally exaggerated but in a non-obvious way. For example: again, with the "I am afraid my wife will leave" issue, an intuitive variation could be, "picture a time where you were afraid your mother would leave," or, "Go to a time where you were left."
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