SOMETHING REALLY NEW—PRESENCE – Winner June 2007 Non Fiction
by Bill Blake
Six months ago, my girlfriend bit into me like an eagle grabbing a mouse with its claws. “You’re too analytical. Every Sunday you read the Los Angeles Times all morning and never talk to me. You analyze everything. I lose myself around you. I don’t even know who I am any more!”
Interesting! I thought. Maybe I should analyze what she’s saying.
This time, however, I didn’t remain stuck in my habitual analysis. Two sources killed the Old Me. The first might not appeal to you, or work for you, but it was exactly what I required. Two consecutive one-week workshops in Brazil featured drinking three cups of ayahuasca per week. Ayahuasca is a healing plant brew also available in the U.S. with certain religious groups. In the first week, aya ruthlessly trained me to seemy judgmental and controlling thoughts. During the second week, the plant revealed the True Self that everyone is: love of nature and people, compassion, and sensitivity to aesthetic and energetic beauty. After my fifth drink, I walked around tearfully crying out, “Thank you Space holding the air that I must breath . . . thank you Earth for being solid so that I can walk on you . . . thank you . . . .”
After Brazil, I had the task of cultivating this new awareness. I didn’t want to derail into old thinking patterns. My second source keep me walking on the correct track. After a lifetime of reading self-help books, one finally paid off, Leonard Jacobson’s Journey to Now. The Brazil workshops + Journey to Now = Something New. That new thing proved empowering and simple, like being in a dark room for decades and then stumbling onto the light switch. Aaahhhhhaaaaa . . . now I see clearly! Let there be light! This light has many names, but the one that most easily settles into experiential practice is presence.
The word “presence” can denote connection, attention, alertness, interest, energy transfer, Here-and-Now, and personal power. We’re all present while gazing at a gorgeous sunset, but not when we’re washing dishes–even though the soap bubbles and glass’s watery surface are sparkling. The mind’s lurking belief of I don’t like washing dishes obscures our perception of the objects’ beauty. If our thinking is riveted to yesterday’s skirmish with the boss or tomorrow’s arrival of a taxing mother-in-law, we aren’t present with the tasty oatmeal in our mouth.
Authentic satisfaction with a relationship rests in the term presence. The word non-presence is the core descriptor for dis-satisfaction. Whether served up by a partner, friend, parent, or co-worker, non-presence burns into us as subtle emotional abuse.
My simple tool is Jacobson’s Step One, Be present with whatever’s present. On my nightly walk, if I notice a thought creeping in, I recognize it, salute it, and return to presence with flowers, trees, moon, cars, or lamppost. I follow the same procedure with cleaning, shaving, eating, or conversing with someone. This transfer of attention from thinking to Now is becoming habitual. Jacobson claims that if a motivated person does this Step One exercise of Be present with whatever’s present in a relaxed, non-judgmental manner, he or she can stabilize in presence within 3-12 months.
This stabilization in presence also requires Step Two, a close examination of entrapment by non-conscious thinking. A half hour each day I identify which one of the following four “traps” functions whenever non-deliberate thinking occurs: 1) ego resistance to presence, 2) denial of who I am (love, compassion, radiant energy), 3) repression of emotions from the past (for me, mostly anger and shame), 4) entanglement in another (for me, women).
My Step Two practice includes reminding myself that unnecessary conceptual thinking allows me to escape my feelings. Many women cite that evasion in their man.
We must release presence when we think analytically, such as designing a web site or drafting a proposal. I call this “deliberate” thinking. However, we can also be present with the storm of ordinary, non-deliberate thoughts invading our minds. A second exercise on my nightly walk is to devote twenty minutes to being present with the environment (which includes sensations and feelings) even when stray thoughts encroach. If What a hard day pops into mind, I continue to be present with the cracks and texture of the sidewalk. With this simultaneity of “ordinary” thought and presence, true mastery of life thus becomes 100% presence except for “deliberate” thinking and sleep.
Identifying presence and non-presence can be tricky. For example, I appeared to be present with my mate by closely listening to her kvetching about her family relationships, and then asking her useful questions. With my help, she improved her relations with her two grown children and colleagues at work. Yet I was not genuinely present for her because I possessed a hidden agenda to “help” her change. She finally cognized that fact and told me, “Stop trying to fix me. Just listen to what I say.”
Also, I wasn’t present with my own feelings when around her. I hadn’t asked myself What do I want? in our life together. Instead, I obtrusively focused on her–a replay of my childhood fixation developed at four years old: I’m unworthy and I’m causing Mommy to be unhappy, so I have to be gooder. To some degree, all of us possess such ego fixations. Our ego sits in life’s driver’s seat. Observing these fixations as they occur allows presence, with its healthy What do I want? orientation, to sit in the driver’s seat.
For me, presence–being Here and Now–has been an adventure superior to any other self-improvement path. Be present with whatever’s present is play time, with no fixation on results. It has delivered to me a new dimension of aliveness, joy, peace, affection for self and others, and freedom. I give presence an A+ top rating in the glut of self-growth practices. |
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