Does anyone remember Fritz Perls?.....

I was reading a Kornfield book today and he mentioned the Lomi School. Instantly, all these vague but surprisingly intense memories arrived …… I could not remember any factual information about the Lomi School, but I felt a slight uplifting in my heart and a kind of soft sadness in my eyes.
I immediately googled it and, of course, the name of the renowned psychiatrist, Fritz Perls, appeared on screen. Gestalt Therapy.

In 1967, when I began my formal education in psychology, there was this “thing” called Gestalt Therapy. Not that we studied it in a class…..no, this was not offered as a useful source of information by the academic institutions of the time. We studied it sitting in groups on the floor in hallways, over cold and very unpleasant cups of vending machine coffee. We held tutorials on the weekends in the homes of friends with the left over people from very late nights of non ordinary states of mind …..these discussions would sometimes last until morning and found us sitting on dewy grass watching the sun come up…….filled to the brim with lofty ideas and warm interconnected hearts…..I will always long for the deep, loving sense of community that was so strong in those years.
As I was reading the Wikipedia definitions of the work of Fritz Perls, I was struck by how little “therapy” as I know it today ,after many, many years of formal study, and practice, has changed since all of those young, astonished minds and willing bodies sat on the dewy grass and watched the sun come up.

“The core of Gestalt Therapy process in an enhanced awareness of sensation, perception, bodily feelings, emotion, and behaviour, in the present moment”.
Wait a minute!…isn’t that meditation?

“Relationship is emphasized, along with contact between self, its environment, and the other”. Ok….have I just come full circle! It was such a long walk to the same familiar place. I feel like I want to cry. Instinctively, we all knew what to do, we just didn’t know what not to do.

I would like to leave you with what is call the “Gestalt Prayer”. I am sure that there will be some old timers, that when they hear these words will feel alittle uplifting in the heart and a soft sadness in the eyes.
In 1969, it was such a relief.

“I am I and you are you, ………I am not in this world to live up to your expectations….and you are not in the world to live up to mine….You are you and I am I…and if by chance we find each other…..it is beautiful……If not, it can’t be helped”…..Fritz Perls

 Nx