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Figure and Ground

Something I picked up from a Kenneth Wapnick book was the terms figure and ground. You may remember them from Psych 101. As I understand it, figure is what you are focused on and ground is the stuff in the background that you are aware of, but not focused on. What I have been doing is shifting my awareness so that I am seeing a different figure. If there is a psychologist out there somewhere reading this he is probably wondering where I studied. I am taking great liberties with the idea, but what it means to me in actual usefulness is that I can use the idea to remind myself where to focus my attention.

Let’s say that I begin my day with my lesson which tells me that it is in my defenselessness that my safety lies. Later that morning I am talking to a customer and realize that he is considering buying from someone else. For me the figure, that is what I am focused on, is trying to convince him to stay with me, and the ground, the program running in the background, is the idea that it is in my defenselessness that my safety lies. The more I focus on the figure, the further the ground fades from my awareness.

In the middle of all this, I notice that I have lost my peace and I start thinking about my lesson, so the ground comes a little into focus. I keep talking to my customer but at the same time, my mind is bringing the thought of defenselessness more into focus. It becomes my figure, and the customer is now my ground. In other words, the lesson becomes the most important thing in my life, and the circumstances surrounding this encounter at work become the background or the playing field or the school room, however I want to think of it.

While the customer interaction was the figure, the lesson was the ground. I chose to see this differently, and the lesson became the figure. What happens then? Well, I regain my peace and maybe through my peaceful approach I am able to say something to keep my customer, or maybe not. But I kept my peace, I practiced my lesson. My peace is a gift I give my customer as well. Anyway, thinking of it as figure and ground is just a clever way to visualize it and to remind me to make that all important shift in vision.

I was thinking about how this has worked in my life.  I started out with the figure being my poor pathetic life and the ground being how everyone seemed to be attacking me. Slowly over time this shifted to where my figure is still my poor pathetic life, the ground was everyone attacking me, but the ground is catching my attention more because I began to study the Course and am learning to think of attack differently.

Then I began to notice that my life and the attack syndrome are related and the ground becomes what I am learning from the Course. I become vaguely aware of the underlying cause of my unhappiness. I get to the point that my life and its dramas are still my focus,
but the ground is more defined as the Holy Spirit’s vision. It is still in the background but my attention is drawn to it more and more.

Now my figure is my life a lot of the time, but it actually shifts quite often to where my figure becomes the expression of the Holy Spirit, and my ground is the drama of the dream. They are more and more changing places. My goal is to always have the Holy Spirit as the figure, and “life” as the ground. I am very grateful for this change.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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