If I Keep Nothing Between... a Tribute to Gene Gendlin (25th Dec 1926 – 1 st May 2017)

Truly Gene's words, simple words, from the core of his being, lay bare the love, beauty and ultimate belief he had in people. All of this so intricately and yet so simply expressed, has carried forward into the world environment, his felt sense of the human being. He generously gave his precious gems so easily, freely and simply, and left for us all his word reminders of felt meanings and understandings that we have long forgotten or in our daily interactions may often forget.

There, in between the depth of his words, comes alive that sense of his living, of the carrying forward in a life serving direction that he dedicated his life to. This is his legacy, an eternal fountain of aliveness for all to drink from. With Focusing, he gave us the cup and wherewithal to be able to dip into the fountain and partake of that clear, refreshing and reviving sense of living forward. AND with his Philosophy of the Implicit, he presented us with his own magic recipe of how to mix and create in order to find, see, nourish, rebuild, reinvent and carry forward the many different strands and avenues we call Life. AND, as all truly free spirits do, he encouraged those who drank from the fountain and cooked with his recipe to go forward and create his/her own recipe(s), individual in flavour and form, to be tasted and shared with equal freedom of spirit.

What a rich, never-ending luscious and nourishing table, a constant revelation of different experiencing.

This is how I experienced the passing of Gene Gendlin on 1st May 2017 – sharing individual and personal memories with people around the world in a reverent circle at a Treasure Maps of the Soul Workshop on Aegina, Greece. I remembered the first FISS in August 2006, where I had the privilege to hear Gene present The Town and Human Attention, and the sense of his profound ability to present incredibly complex interwoven ideas and concepts with an all encompassing simplicity which echoed very profoundly our present future.

I am still holding that sense of awe and amazement at his insights and how relevant they are today. I feel a palpable sense of loss and at the same time gratitude that this person has been in our world and that I, like many others, has been touched by his interaction on so many levels, seen and unseen, known and unknown and all of that neither will, nor ever be, lost. His timeless yet always fresh wisdom and message is truly embodied within all of this space we call the world.

Thank you Gene Gendlin forever with us in a thick peacefulness…

References: Gendlin (2016). ‘If I Keep Nothing Between’ You and I – The Person in There www.awakin.org Gendlin (2007).

‘Experience is a Myriad Richness’ Focusing (Bantam Books) (1st Ed. 1978, Everest Books)

I came across Focusing in 2002 , a process which ultimately widened, deepened and expanded my life direction and continues to. From the world of business and finance I stepped into the therapeutic world , training as a Person Centred and Focusing Oriented Therapist and a Focusing Trainer. From 2010 TAE , NVC and Caring Economics became other natural steppingstones in my journey. However, my love and enthusiasm for Focusing is due to the fact that as a skill it has such a wide application and is effective in all fields without exception. For me, it is an essential life skill, for both personal and social development, within and without, respectively.