You hear the word ‘presence’ flying around the spiritual, self-help and psychology communities all the time. But what does it mean exactly? To answer that question, I want you to imagine that what we call Source or God is actually nothing more than sentient energy or aware essence. It is pure collective consciousness. And this sentient essence has the capacity to both create with the energy that comprises itself as well as to perceive itself. You are essentially its creation. But you have been created from its energy because there is nothing that is NOT it. To understand more about this, watch my video titled: Oneness is Not The Ultimate Truth of This Universe.
This sentient essence not only created the physical dimension that you live in. It also created you within the world. You are part of it. You are simply part of it projected into the physical dimension. But your consciousness is an aspect of God or Source’s consciousness. Any time we focus on something, we are focusing that sentient essence on that and into that thing. That sentient essence is in and of itself healing. When we are present with something it means that we focus that sentient essence with all of our attention and focus onto that thing without any intention to change it… just to be with it completely. The healing power of presence cannot be underestimated. It creates an alchemical process in the thing that you are being present with. This is why masters of this time space reality often do not need to say a word in order to teach or change lives. Just by being near them, you become transformed and more of who you really are.
In previous videos and seminars, I introduced you to the idea of being present with emotions. To learn more about this, watch my video titled: How To Heal The Emotional Body. I have also introduced you to the idea of somatic experiencing. As a sentient being, all kinds of things are happening with you emotionally and physically and mentally at any given time. You experience the world through sensations. For example, if you hit your leg on a table, you feel different sensations in your leg. If someone breaks up with you, you experience that grief as different sensations in your whole body. These different sensations are somatic experiences. They happen relative the body and or being. Emotions are felt as sensations. Thoughts can come as sensations. Auditory aspects can come as sensations. Visual components can come as sensations. And one of the most powerful things you can possibly do in your life is to stop whatever you are doing and to be completely, unconditionally present with those sensations and with that somatic experience without trying to change anything about it.
Usually when we focus all of our awareness on a somatic experience or a sensation in our bodies or in our energy field, it feels as if we are taking the energy in our head area (which we call our mind) and we are directing it down and out to whatever we are focused on. What we usually miss is that we can focus our sentient essence (and with it our awareness) on our mind itself and on the brain that acts as a kind of computer translating between our physical embodiment and our non-physical essence. What we usually also miss is that our mind itself can also be perceived by us in terms of a sensory experience. By perceiving it in this way, we have the capacity to heal our own mind.
To do this process,
#1. Close your eyes and take your attention to your head area. Imagine that your capacity to think as well as the thoughts you think resided in that area. Just be very still observing and being totally with and immersed in this part of yourself.
#2. Care about what is taking place in this part of yourself by seeing it and knowing it is valid and important. No matter how this part of you presents itself, there is a very valid reason why.
#3. Allow yourself to drop into an internal journey. Perceive what is occurring in this place of your mind empathetically and with open curiosity. Do not seek to change anything about it. Study it. Seek to allow it completely. Become aware of any experience that comes with doing this. What do you notice? What image comes to you? Do you notice any textures or colors or movements? What sensations occur? Do you notice any thoughts arising? Do you notice any sounds or smells or tastes? Can you see which ones want to stay around a while and which ones come and float away? Does any awareness or insight come to you as a result of being completely present with this part of yourself?
#4. This step is the hardest. Allow yourself to just be there with it as if you are shining your focused essence upon it with no motive whatsoever and no attempt to change it. You can do this process for anywhere between 11 minutes and days, like people do in vipassana meditation. Witness what changes naturally take place in the experience of your mind just by being totally, unconditionally present with it. Does anything shift? Does it intensify? Does it diminish or go away? Or does it completely change? Remember to keep breathing. Experience your mind as fully as you can. Then, if you like, you can stop the practice here.
I like to have people practice the art of being totally present for somatic experiencing without changing anything for a good deal of time until they can master the art of non resistance to whatever arises and whatever is. Our capacity to be present, especially with intense sensory experiences, is like a muscle that must be trained. We have a weak capacity for presence to begin with so we try to change something instead of being with it when it overwhelms us.
Once you are sure you can be unconditionally present and focus your sentient essence completely without resisting or needing it to change, you can go one step further. You can deliberately offer healing to your mind.
To heal something is quite simple. It is to experience the opposite. To understand more about this, watch my video titled: What is Healing. Once you have fully experienced your own mind, you are guaranteed to know more about it and to know what it needs. Just watching the shifts that take place within it when exposed to your focused presence will tell you a lot about what improvement or healing actually is for it. With that information, you can offer new thoughts, new feeling signatures or feeling flavors, new sounds, new smells, new tastes, new visuals and new sensations to it. To understand more about feeling signatures watch my video titled: How To Feel Better (Feeling Signatures). This is not about ‘fixing’ anything. This is about offering it something from a space of love because taking it as part of ourselves, we want it to have what it needs and wants.
Here is an example of one such experience someone I put through this process had with his mind:
He closed his eyes and as if going on an internal shamanic journey. He took his attention to his mind. The first thing he perceived is a tingling and tightening sensation there. He sat with that feeling for two minutes just letting the tingling and tightening be there. Then he realized that the sensation that was occurring in his mind was numbness and that there was no movement. He saw an image of a deer hit by a car on the side of the road. Intuitively he knew that this image was his being communicating to him about the state his mind was in: Shock. He suddenly watched a thought come into his mind that he must be in shock because someone in his business had turned against him earlier that week who he never thought could be capable of such a thing and he must be frozen in that shock because he still can’t understand why. That thought was very sticky. It stayed around, dominating the experience for a while and then it began to fade.
The numbness seemed to be controlling the inside of his mind near his brain and also radiating about a foot out around his head. It also went down the right side of his neck and face. He saw an image of his brain and could sense that there was not much activity in the channels in his brain. His brain seemed to be in freeze as well. He was totally present with the sensation of the control of that numbness. The numbness felt empty and cold. It looked light blue and felt like stale air with no movement to it. He sat with this numbness of his mind for ten minutes before holes began to form in the numbness. He said it felt like filmstrip being burnt. He felt like his focused essence dropped through the holes in the numbness as it was dissolving entirely and he felt like he was in blackness. The blackness was also not moving. To him, it felt like futility. To him futility felt like the knowing that there is no movement and there never will be. It’s endedness. It was very hard for him to be present with that sensation and experience because it felt futile to be with futility. He heard a voice inside his mind saying, “there is no point”. The voice kept repeating. He did not argue with the voice. He just listened to it with compassion. He heard another thought arise unintentionally “It’s ok if it’s futile, I’ll be here with you forever then”. He saw an image of a cat curling up inside this dark futility, which now seemed more like a cave. The minute that the cat did that, the sensation and experience changed… The darkness became warm.
He sat in that warm, accompanied darkness feeling the warmth permeate all areas of his brain and all the space in his mind and he felt it permeate his thoughts. Each time it permeated a thought, the thought felt like it burst. This took about 20 minutes time before he said he felt a sensation of completeness and wholeness in that warm darkness and felt like it was a good time to come back.
He could have stopped right there. That was a profoundly healing experience for his mind. But we went a step further before coming back. I asked him what he feels his mind needed. He said, “To know that it was not alone. What my mind has been feeling, that I didn’t realize it felt, is totally alone to deal with the betrayal of his friend.” So I asked him when was the time that he was the most loved and the most unconditional companionship. His answer was with his grandmother. So I had him mentally go back to the sensory experience of being held by his grandmother. He sat in this feeling for four minutes. At the end of the four minutes, I had him take that feeling signature of being with his grandmother and bringing it up into his mind, like an offering to that warm darkness. I also told him to offer the thought “I’m right here for you always” to his mind as well. A big smile spread across his face. The experience of his mind changed completely. The darkness started transforming to an orange sunset colored light with a creamy texture. He could perceive movement slowly occurring in his brain. He watched the thought cross his mind “this is amazing”. Emotionally, he felt a thousand times better. There was no tension in his mind. He sat unconditionally with that sensory experience for five minutes and then when he felt fulfilled and when it felt right, he took a few breaths and opened his eyes.
Being completely unconditionally present with any aspect of our being, as well as in this case our own mind, has the capacity to bring radical improvement to our quality of life. It has massive implication for people suffering from mental illness or any other ailment related to the mind. Being unconditionally present with our mind can change the way we think and the way our brains function.
