Sharing and the Metamorphic Technique

You’ve attended a workshop, you’ve started practising. You may have become an associate member or a practitioner member. This means that you will have given at least 50 sessions to 10 different people and received about 20 sessions. You will also attended a second Metamorphic workshop given by a teacher member of the Association. What does that mean at a level other than the practical one?

You’ve established various types of relationships with your clients, whether children, adults, the elderly, professionals, members of your family, or people whose only information you have is their name and their telephone number. The relationship was direct, based on sense perception and at times on conversation. This has enriched you through the sharing of emotions, thoughts, feelings and insights, many of these unexpressed. This echoes the traditional interaction within a tribal system where emotions and feelings express the feminine part of a human, and thoughts, ideas and insights the masculine. Within the context of detachment and of a deep respect for what your clients experience and what is right for them, you have let all of that BE.

With the advent of writing, in times immemorial, a distance was established where one came to read about the emotion instead of perceiving it directly on the face of the other in a dialogue. The written word helped with the development of the neo-cortex, which means that there was a pulling away from emotion and feeling as the intellect started assuming an important role. Socrates himself said: “Above all, no emotion!” Left to its own devices the intellect has run away from the living to create ever more complex structures of thought.

Writing has created a distance between people. And now, with the internet and the text message the distance has become a chasm. The written word has usurped the power of feeling by defining meaning for everyone. Ideas are debated; the mind plays its games; feelings cannot be debated without being strangled. How do we come back to feeling, to a living approach grounded in everyday reality?

You have already had the experience of a great model in your apprenticeship on the way to becoming a member of the Metamorphic Association. Have you carried on giving and receiving sessions? Has there been a waning of your enthusiasm since the first workshop? Have you asked yourself what you can do to re-activate the flame or spark it afresh? There is a simple way, which has done wonders for me in my times of doubt, in the times when the connection with the life and the intelligence we all are seemed to have vanished, so tenuous was the flame. I surrounded myself with practitioners and we practised on one another.

This is an appeal to all of you, teachers and practitioners to create sharing groups in your area. Use the masculine and its power of communication through the internet to gather around you people who have already manifested their interest in the Technique and form small meeting groups. The masculine gives power to action. Put that action at the service of the feminine, of receptivity and sensitivity and welcome other practitioners in your home in the evenings, once a month, once a fortnight, even once a week, so that your action is connected to your passion, the practice of the Metamorphic Technique.

Give yourself the opportunity to enjoy the stories of the experiences other members have lived since your last meeting. Use the occasion to talk about aspects of the Technique and of the principles and to develop further your understanding and your ability to communicate them creatively. Discuss the deep logic, based on nature and its ability to transform itself, which lies behind the Metamorphic Technique. Learn to discipline the tendencies of the mind to approach M.T. from the standpoint of the principle of causation. Apply detachment in practice when you sense the needs for help of those who experience a deep transformation and feel how you can respond through the intensity of your presence and attention. Share your doubts, ask questions, and appreciate the diversity of responses to them. Dive together into the deep silence that occurs spontaneously at times when many practitioners work together.

Have fun and feel the warmth when a new relationship or companionship develops. Notice that your meetings will help stimulate your ability to be attentive, vigilant, and increase the intensity of your presence. Welcome the reports of new ways of understanding that the discussion of some subject may open up and the change of some behavioural patterns that may occur in the following weeks. Be aware that there will be some testimonials that fit your situation exactly at the moment. And finally explore where you could be creative in promoting M.T. as a group activity through presentations, lectures and exhibitions. Above all, practise, practise, practise. Do remember what Einstein said:” Theory is when one knows everything and nothing works. Practice is when everything works and one doesn’t know why.”

In order to facilitate the deeper understanding of the principles of the Metamorphic Technique, I am now offering an advanced workshop, which is open to people who have attended at least the basic workshop and who have given and received a fair amount of sessions. This workshop may last from eight-12 hours and on enrollment, the prospective participants will receive a text on aspects of the technique for them to study prior to the workshop. It will also be an opportunity to answer a lot of questions that may have arisen in your practice. I look forward to seeing you there.

Gaston Saint-Pierre January 2009