Intro on the date of actually posting this, Thursday 21-11-2013.
The text below is a complex one.
And the English translation of the Dutch version of this.
It is meant as feedback and information for some people that I will send the link.
(This rather complex piece of text I backdate on October 1 this year )
I’m nearing the end of my first 15-day period of Tomatis Listening Training .
Here is a brief explanation of it :
httpv :/ / www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN2PuKci6bo
About my first encounter with Tomatis I wrote earlier .
(google translate this to get the gist of it: https://hansvandergugten.nl/?p=1947).
After a few listening sessions that were quite exciting and even a bit emotional, it has now become a routine for which two consecutive hours per day have to be found. Sometimes this does not work (it takes place mainly in the very early hours) and I listen to the remainder after my breakfast .
Additional new was the suggestion to draw, to stimulate the acclaimed right brain during the sessions.
I dutifully bought a sketch pad and a box of crayons .
And it’s really fun to do. But after half an hour I have a blank sheet full. And then I listen diligently the other one and a half hour .
I’ll put my favourite drawing up as the initial photo on this page .
Incidentally I had with the treating physician / Certified Tomatis Consultant a classic communication misunderstanding .
I feel a pull to give my reconstructed version of it in detail.
When it was happening /unrolled I was amazed at the speed / intensity with which I responded . That reaction was mainly triggered by the comment I got when I announced that I had misunderstood something: ” But I have explained it for twenty years like this ! ”
A few notes about this subject by Isaac Shapiro are in the youtube Being triggered , we can get very crazy very quickly.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRXXhytsKxs
What happened?
In the preparation was always there to listen to two hours a day .
When I went to get my listening device (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byWTuJRTPiY) during the explanation it was said that I was going to do four consecutive half hour listening sessions per day .
I shifted instantaniously into an internal confusion , wondering how I could have misunderstood, how I had to organize this 4 times a day and more of this kind of stuff , very fast .
In, no by my confusion I asked: Four times a day ?
And I heard the answer : Yes , four times a day .
Both times the word contiguous was not heard .
The mentioning of 4 listening periods broke in my head rapidly the unity of the two-hour listening session. The following words after ” a half-hour , continuous ” were already no longer included .
I would venture a bet there on that half hour listening sessions existed in the past of that Tomatis club and that from there arose the composite two hour listening session (singular ) consisting of four listening sessions of half an hour , serial. Well that bet I have already won.
I find on the internet even someone’s price of a listening session of half an hour . And phrases like : ” All listening sessions consist of a half hour , up to four in a row ( 2 hours ) . ” QED .
In short , I was so convinced that I started outwith listening four times a day for half an hour the first three days . When I asked for information by email about something else , I added a PS
” Wha a pity that the music does not stop after that half hour .”
Then came a cautious : “You listen for two hours nonstop. I do not see what the point would be to stop every half hour but maybe you can explain to me ? ”
Then I grabbed the phone and when I told sputtering that I had understood that I had to listen 4 times for half an hour, the response was “But I put it like this for 20 years .”
Then came on my side a fierce indignation , because my system only heard : ” Keep me out of it , it’s not my fault , others always understand it well .” I have heard this just a few thousand times too often in my life .
Anyway , we managed to come out of it. Tomorrow I return my device and drawings.
And then , after a ” therapeutic interval of 3-6 weeks .” cheer on.
Lately I also had a communication failure with someone else .
And with my family I have had for decades communication failures .
These faults I want to fix , which leads to new communication failures.
In that context, I recently answered a question from a brother .
That letter , complete with the ‘Letter to Father’, I post below.
I change a few names in family relationships . (For example, ‘ Charles ‘ becomes ‘uncle’ ) .
Amsterdam , September 28, 2013 .
Dear brother ,
What do I mean when I write that I am full circle with Dad?
Coincidentally, that is twofold true and almost at the same time .
On the one hand you can be full circle when that you realize that the other person is just not able to give you what you are asking for.
If you really recognize that, the asking will stop.
Alternatively, you can be full circle with someone because (finally ) you get what you have asked for for so long.
I wrote that I had devoted a session Somatic Experience on this subject.
It started with something else in fact.
I will tell that story as explanation :
I had during my last silent retreat a 15 minute meeting with Meike , the girlfriend of Isaac Shapiro .
(She offers that during retreats to anyone who wants it) .
Just before I walked in with her it suddenly came to me that I would not play my usual role at that meeting.
For quite a while , I have been watching what happens to me when I meet people , a neighbor , for example : I go into a kind of acceleration , a kind of euphoria , a sort of steal the show, and very quickly provide a kind of update of my life, kind of with the energy of what was called in the time that I used to work in the horticulture of Piet de Scharrelaar ‘making up for the lost time ‘ when the tea or coffee break had lasted a bit longer than usual.
With someone like Meike I usually go into a kind of enlightened euphoria and together we have a lot of EP (Enlightened Pleasure) .
As mentioned, there was suddenly the intention to not step into that habitual pitfall.
And then it was suddenly very different.
I had a fifteen minutes chat about the nice interior of their loft.
I had mentioned that I would not step into my usual role and had said that I was very curious how that would be .
Suddenly , after a few minutes I saw Meike do something that Isaac did last year : experiment with looking away instead of looking at me directly .
I said it was not relevant for me , I feel completely at ease already .
Then she suddenly lifted herself , chair and all , and turned a quarter away from me .
This is something that I know from a Somatic Experience worker , the same one with whom I will speak about this later.
I was amazed and said that it is not necessary for me , but she did not respond to what I said and added to her action the text :
“Let’s give each other all the space we need.
Then I went into something sharp in my behavior and said : I have all the space I need, you talk in the plural , so I suppose you need space .
I lifted myself , chair and all , and turned myself a quarter away from her.
A few seconds later I sighed.
For me , if it meant something at all, it meant ‘ okay , I give up . ”
But she said : ‘ I knew that your system would relax’ .
Afterwards this event stayed in my head, nagging. I did not feel seen and heard . But there was also something intangible that didn’t show itself.
I decided to bring it in my next Somatic Experience session with Caitlin Catley .
While I was telling my report about the event to Caitlin, once in a while interrupted by her with directions to ground , to sink in the body , to take time to feel deeply,
I noticed that I had a memory of a for me well-known incident in my youth with my father .
( Not something with my mother I noticed, what I rationnally would have expected after that meeting with Meike) .
What was once the case ?
I’m in elementary school and I have to do a lot of writing lines as school punishment.
But this time for something that I had not done and that is what I told my dad and also told him for that reasonI was not going to write those lines.
And although he undoubtedly believed me , I was sure that he could see that I was telling the truth , he ‘choose’ to support the authority , the schoolmaster .
But no matter what arguments he brought up, I kept refusing . Then he tried to outsmart me and suggested that I could write those lines for him.
“Yeah , that’s good ,” I said, “but then I hand it over to you”. I had outsmarted him in return and he did not know how to deal with that and threatened to beat me with a clothes hanger.
This wrenching event I thereto ( during that session) deeply felt again, in a healing way so to speak .
My notes from that session :
Two nervous systems , the adult system and the old system that still retains all of those states.
Look / feel with the adult system to / in the old one and give it time .
What unfolds is that the first ‘step over ‘ was my father’s ignoring of the justness: he sided with the authorities ( the teacher in this case) .
He tried to outsmart me) with his trick “do it for me. ”
I learned from him and I outdid him in my turn .
Caitlin : then he crumbled as a father by shame .
After that I had no father. ( “And you keep trying ,” I said, ” he is now 96 and my last letter to him was two weeks ago “) .
Although the example is with my father , it was most often my mother who flatly denied my perception often.
‘ Maddening for your system’ , says Caitlin . ( ….. )
I can now see that I outdid Meike in the same way after she denied / ignored my first observation.
In conclusion I told Caitlin that my sister has now resumed contact with the cousin .
Caitlin honored my work : A great untangling .
The first days I didn’t dare to speak to Meike to recur about our meeting.
I realized that I could not handle (not yet) if she would deny what happened to me .
The following days I did resolve those fears in and with myself à la Somatic Experience.
As a result, I no longer need Meike /dad / mom / anyone to confirm that two plus two equals four.
And because of that it could dawn on me that I had stepped over the fact that in fact
I had finally received from my father what I had asked him for so long.
(See Appendix ) .
So brother ,on the one hand, on the other hand , both almost simultaneously , at the last minute but yet so right on time .
For me, with dad full circle.
And with many others .
A while ago, during a Santo Daime ritual , I saw “in vision format ” , in a flash , the answer to my question if it is important to quasi look through the eyes of the other.
This contrasted with your perception of others along with what you know of someone , for example because you asked things.
The flash was very clear : Even if you know for yourself that there is no choice , that everything happens ( Thy will is done , “Father, what you do is good ‘ ) as it goes ,
there remains the human tendency to think you can blame someone for what he/she did. And when you see the world actually through his or her eyes , you experience ‘in’ that other body the total inevitability of life as it presents itself to the other.
In this sense, forgiving is nothing but this insight .
This does not seperate us.
On the contrary .
regards,
hans
******************
Appendix:
On Saturday 03-08-13 18:41 , Hans van der Gugten wrote:
This afternoon , while the Canal Parade was passing by, I visited Dad , made him greetings from the Geschwister and gave him my letter, the one you see below, to read.
Dad he read my letter concentrated.
Then he looked up and said : ” Neat” .
I also made a sound and then he said : ” Yes , I totally agree .”
Then I said, ” Thank you .”
After a short break dad said: ” Yes, it was unthinkable , eh , your niece and your sister , they were almost sisters ” .
” Yes,” I said, ” my mother and aunt also . That made it so complicated . ”
He came back to it at least twice.
regards,
hans
Amsterdam , August 3, 2013 .
” Another circle ”
Father ,
As you know and have noticed , I’ve been resisting the secret that
suddenly came AFTER sister had told you about uncle and incest .
After you first had responded very well to sister
you fell back in the old family tradition of covering up the painful truth .
And you just went with my mom again with those two (uncle and aunt) on holiday to
Tunisia.
Against this new secret I have stood up again and again..
In some way, this long stretch and I am in that
period denounced as an Old Testament prophet .
You know, a someone who tells people that it does something
not good in the eyes of the Lord .
That denouncing was sometimes very fierce :
People have yelled at me .
People have called me names.
People wondered aloud if I was crazy.
People denied what they had first said .
And even my sister denied that what I was pursuing was important .
I also let me force not to do something which I had announced .
After that I did what I prefer to describe as” In old age I eventually ran away from home ” .
Since then I have only visited you when someone else is there too.
Sister mostly.
And also on this self imposed rule I have made exceptions.
Like today , I ‘m here alone, and that is because sister is on vacation.
And because ‘they’ think you like it when I come . Or something.
As others have already told you ( that was not the intention , we had
agreed to waiting in order to give niece some time for reflection)
sister has a while ago again contacted after 45 years
niece, her niece and former best friend .
Niece immediately knew it was true and her memory now also starts
to dig memorable things from the past
Sister and niece met and they were immediately the old
girlfriends .
Father , I have bothered you heavily in my role of the obstinate family prophet.
But it was a battle that had to be fought .
Here too goes, I think, what were your own first words when
my sister told her story to you : Finally the circle is broken.
I hope it will do the family well and wish that side of the
family where there are revelations to come much strength and wisdom .
Say provisionally but nothing against the uncle and aunt , it seems better if niece does.
And when it happens , it is also good .
I also hope that you welcome the renewed encounter between sister and niece .
May all be well .
hans
