Month: October 2020

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Presence 34: I am scanning my FELT-PERCEPTION

“We may successfully sedate and control the effects of the unintegrated childhood debris that leaks into our adult experiences for many years, but sooner or later this energetic charge rears up and we find ourselves in a crisis. Thankfully it isn’t necessary to manifest a crisis before we agree to attend to our unintegrated childhood debris – although sometimes a crisis is exactly what’s required for the unintegrated aspect of our child self to gain our attention. Nevertheless, the moment we turn inward and attend to our child self, our physical, mental, and emotional states of discomfort begin to be integrated. Once our child self comes to peace, so do we. It’s this simple and powerful. If we aren’t experiencing peace right now, it’s because an aspect of our child self is still unintegrated. There’s nowhere else to look, and there’s no other response but to consistently and unconditionally feel the resonance of this unintegrated aspect of our experience.” The Presence Process, p171.

I am coming to realise that the Child in me loves to me delighted. And maybe she put her Childlike Delight away at some point… To be fair to my adult self, I do look for delight, mirth and laughter wherever I can. I’m not generally sombre… And I use warmth and laughter in my work at any given opportunity. 

Yet, from time to time (ok, every month – like now), the bottom falls out of my Mirth Container. Yesterday, in the Listening Space workshop, I realised the weight of ‘perplexity’ upon me – and ‘saw’ also how I could ‘shove it’. 🙂

[Yesterday continued] I had a cry about generalised fears of dying… This morning, I woke with an anxiety attack at 4.30am and didn’t get back to sleep. So, let’s examine.

Eckhart Tolle talks about the ‘painbody’ being readily accessible to women during PMS/PMDD. He talks about the painbody here – and how you contain ‘it with your presence’ (very much a la TPP):

 

And here below is Michael Brown articulating something very similar, and pulling it back, as he does, to a causal root of the painbody as springing from unintegrated childhood experiences. The response is the same as Tolle’s: be with the discomfort – bring presence:

“During these moments of distraction, we may feel irritable, annoyed, anxious, and confused—in other words, full of fear, anger, and grief. These are moments in which we are being called upon to attend to the unintegrated aspects of our child self. When we are in such an uncomfortable moment, we strive to remind our adult self that the discomfort we are feeling has nothing to do with what’s happening now, although it’s clearly reflected in the felt resonance of this moment. This discomfort is a call for assistance from an unintegrated childlike aspect of our self that’s still struggling with experiences it can’t digest. How do we respond to this call? The answer is simple. It requires unconditional, continuously wielded felt-perception. We direct our capacity for feeling to the felt-resonance of our uncomfortable emotional state and be with it without condition.” TPP p171-2

And this morning, lying in bed, did you use continuous conscious breathing to respond to your anxiety? 

I did. And I did a bunch of Matt Kahn “I love yous” too.

So you did the Work. 

I did… But I still didn’t get back to sleep. I was aware that today I am going out for lunch with a dear friend – first time seeing eachother in 20+years, and v unusual for me to take an afternoon off (with work pressures etc). All this was whirring round my head and body.

Thanks for telling us of your Resistance. 

Ha! My delight! 😉 Erm, so…? Thoughts?

Let’s go back to TPP: “How do we respond to this call? The answer is simple. It requires unconditional, continuously wielded felt-perception. We direct our capacity for feeling to the felt-resonance of our uncomfortable emotional state and be with it without condition.” TPP p172 Remember this? Remember Tolle’s words. The work really is to BE with the uncomfortable emotional state, using our felt-perception, or felt-resonance. No words or narrative here. Just curious observation. 

Is the idea that in looking at something we dissolve it? But doesn’t this contract the idea of magnifying things by placing our attention on them. In other words, am I focussing on my delight or my discomfort? Help me get clear here.

The body is a mighty messenger. If it’s bringing you discomfort, it’s to inform you. If it’s bringing you delight, it’s to inform you. All information is Good Data. The idea is not to get hooked and carried along by intrusive thoughts that sustain and add momentum to the unwanted. 

Instead….

We defuse, disempower, disengage the unwanted by turning upstream… from where we are. We don’t pretend to be upstream. We note where we are with curiosity (“Ah, I have a felt-perception of fear/anger/grief… How interesting. Thanks for the data.”) and then look upstream. What is the next thought or feeling that brings relief?

So you might say: “Well, at least I’ve noticed the feeling. I can breathe into it. I know that ‘feeling is healing’. I’m clearly healing a good chunk today! That was amusing… I like the feeling of mirth. I might as well have a laugh while I’m waiting for this discomfort to pass. Got nothing else more important to do. Why ‘nothing else more important’? Because I matter to me. Yeah. I’m important to me, and if I’m having feelings of ‘suffering’ it’s time to unleash my own magnificent compassion on me. What do I need right now, I wonder?” 

Beautiful.

This all starts, as Tolle says, with catching the FELT-PERCEPTION early on. So today, our work for you is this: CATCH your FELT-PERCEPTION across the day. As you practice doing this, with an “Ah… I sense it…” and no ‘reaction’, you well get ever more proficient at doing this work. So listen, observe, check in. Can you set a timer to go off every hour to prompt you to do a quick scan of your FELT-PERCEPTION? We’re ‘shouting’ because we want this term to settle in you. It’s really powerful this embodiment work, and it goes perfectly with your qigong practice. Develop your awareness of your ENERGY BODY, and then learn to apply unconditional responses (vs reaction or suppression) and you will be adding years of wellbeing to your life. 

Wow. That’s quite a powerful statement.

You’ve been mulling over the phrase ‘Peace Begins Within’. We love it. Be assured that this peace arises out of the heated crucible of healing, integrating, being with discomfort. So never shy away from this discomfort. It’s speaking to you, via FELT-PERCEPTION. So learn your body’s language of FELT-PERCEPTION. It will be a door opened to a whole inner landscape of self-knowledge. 

Beautiful. I love it. Help me to work with this today and every day!

I am scanning my FELT-PERCEPTION

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Presence 33: I am speaking of my delightenment

Over the weekend, working with the sense of ‘the Universe conspiring to delight me’, I came to sense a new concept:  ‘Life Is Delightful’. It’s a simple but powerful truth that if you look only/mainly at (ie attend to; focus on) the things in your reality that delight you, your reality pretty quickly becomes “delightful” to you. Teach me how to embed this insight, oh Wisdom of my Soul.

It is fair to say that this insight alone is a strong step towards enlightenment – or delightenment! – for the full duration of your holding it as true.

Meaning? (I’m typing on my clunky phone today, so a bit offish in hearing you..) I love the word delightenment btw.

We simply mean that this is the kind of insight that you need to ‘consolidate’ into your consciousness, over ‘time’. It will slip in and out of your body of ‘current’ knowledge. It’ll slip off the desktop and into the filing system from time to time. It’s an insight you need to keep retrieving until it ‘sticks’.

I guess noting down the things I appreciate is helpful? I’ve done that again on and off this year, in a notebook. How can I develop this practice?

By talking about those things. By talking ‘only of the aspects of your reality that delight you’.

The ‘positive aspects’. (Abraham)

Indeed. And beginning (once again, as you have done so before) to cease describing, naming, explaining…

The negative aspects. That which de-delights me. 🙂

Spot on. Let your speaking glitter and glimmer with the delightenment you feel towards your word. Turn your consciousness to that which delights, and speak only of that. Speak of your delightenment.

I love it. Thank you. This is just what I needed. Amen.

I am speaking of my delightenment

PS. This line from TPP: “Consider this possibility: One of the most uncomfortable aspects of our pain and discomfort may well be our resistance to them.” The Presence Process p158. Delightenment = non-resistance combined with attention to that which brings relief, satisfaction and bliss. 

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Presence 32: I am observing how the Universe is conspiring to delight me

Yesterday I tried to take to heart this notion of having arrived. I allowed it to allow me to take a slower day – I had a light work load, and I just rested in that, after the roller coaster of the last few weeks. This included taking time for a full lunchtime walk in the woods. On my walk I had an extraordinary encounter with a woman. We stopped on the path to talk. She mentioned how quiet that part of the wood always is. Yes!! So true. Kinda eerily so. I met her again on the way back and we talked more about bringing our loving presence to the woods. We said goodbye, and then the woman said, “Oh, what’s your name?” I told her my first name (xyz), and she said, “Are you the xyz who used to be married to abc?” Whoa! Yes! And I knew immediately who she was too – and we hadn’t seen eachother for some 15 years. “Please tell me how your children are?” She asked. “I’ve thought of you so much over the years. I know it was so tough for you all at times. Do you remember, I called you a few times to see if I could help?” I told her how brilliantly everyone was doing now – and she almost cried. “That has made my day to hear this!” She looked me deep in the eyes and said to me with intensity, “You went through a great deal and you did so well.” Few people knew what those years were really like, and those who do were mostly professionals long gone. To be met in the woods by someone who knew about those years, and who bore witness to them then, and could bear witness in that moment to the beautiful resolution of that era in my life… was truly to be made to see that I have travelled far, and arrived somewhere very special. In fact, I pondered as I walked home stunned from that magical encounter:

I’ve ‘arrived’ at the point where the Universe is conspiring to delight me… and amuse me… and enchant me… and amaze me.

This is your very next step, dear soul. To observe how the Universe is conspiring to delight you. You are, as MB says in TPP, ‘innocent’. This is your soul state, your essential quality, your child self’s identity. And in your innocence you are eternally worthy of joy, creativity and delight. And creation is delightful! Is the divine not pure bliss? 

Yes. 🙂 I hear you.

Be at peace and let the Universe perform its delightful show before you. Accept its performance. Note down what you see, like a delighted theatre critic capturing notes of the wonders of the show to take back to her readers. ‘Oh, the effects were wonderful – the autumn leaves, the robins on the garden chair, the feeling of Earth on feet in the garden, the gifts of qigong… And then, the plot was so perfect: the love interest was so handsome, and the work colleagues brought such affirmations…” 

Beautiful. I enjoyed the words about the ‘inventor’ of ‘positive mental attitude’ who said he as a ‘reverse paranoid’, believing everyone and everything was out to help, support and please him. [Ah, it’s called ‘Pronoia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoia_(psychology)}

That’s the ticket! 

I am observing how the Universe is conspiring to delight me

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Presence 31: I am basking in having arrived

I did some good sipping of PMA yesterday, including having a gentle stim-stare of the leave outside my office window between calls… 🙂 I realised that my stimming (when I allow it for myself) is simply the act of relishing intense PMA. When left to ourselves, we’re really good at accumulating PMA! No wonder as autistic children, it feels like such a wrench for us to be shoved into the time-based world…

However, come the end of the day, I had a call with a client I’ve been working with for 4 months or so, who was disavowing agreements his party made in a mediation last month – to the extreme detriment of the other, less powerful party. I got frustrated and upset. So did he. He hung up on me. It was veritably awful. I was so cross and frustrated after the call, I marched up and down the landing shouting ‘Screw you!’. After all, I reasoned, I’d given so, so, so much to help his party, (working for free by this stage!) and I felt they were using me to procrastinate further… risking all progress made. I’d brought good faith; they were bringing bad… Later, having calmed down a fraction, I burst in to tears, realising that the reason I’d put so much into the case was because it revolved around an elderly, sick parent… and I knew what it was like to lose a parent (whereas they didn’t)… and I was there to prevent them from making irreversible mistakes before it was too late…. And they were exhausting me! …………………………Uh-oh……………. 🙁       AITA?

My reading of TPP this morning speaks perfectly to this painful vignette (my emphases):

“Assisting others to the detriment of our own wellbeing is fueled by the reflection of our own plight in the world around us. When we behave in this manner, our helpful behavior may for a moment allow us to feel better, but it eventually debilitates those we profess to be helping by rendering them dependent. This dependence reinforces their own belief that they are unable to tend to their unintegrated emotions and the manifestations of apparent “faultiness” that originate from these unintegrated emotions. Helping others as a means of making ourselves feel better isn’t beneficial to either party because we can’t give away what we don’t have. When we behave as if we can, our actions are proven by the passage of time to lack substance.” The Presence Process p166

Shucks, man. Spot. On.

I need to address my ‘helping others’ mechanism, because it can be pretty strong. I do a lot of pro bono work, and I undercharge for most of my services… because I want to help others. But I’m tired out. I have no pension still (though I now do potentially high value work). And I’m not sure I’m progressing…

Hang fire, sunshine! 

Haha.. Sure.

Remember yesterday, during your long woodland walk listening to Abraham, you had an important insight? 

I do. It was “I’ve arrived.” I’ve arrived at an incredible place in my life – personally, professionally, psychologically. And it would be easy to miss this fact, out of the life-long habit of push, push, pushing forward.

Yes! In other words, it’s time to BASK for a while. You will get that next impulse forward once you have BASKED in the ‘hard-won’ achievements. And as you do bask, you will sense that the real achievements were not ‘hard-won’ at all. They were achieved despite your hard work! The real achievements occurred every time you relaxed, raised your vibration, enjoyed the moment, and allowed your big, fat, pent-up vortex of Askings to sneak the door open and pass you the next Good Thing. 

You’ve done the Asking. Now do the Basking. And yes, that is really best achieved while sipping a PMA cocktail on the veranda of your sweet consciousness. Makes sense? 

Yes, it does. In appreciating how far I’ve come, I’ll remind myself that progress happens… and is natural. That I – we – the Universe has got this far; it will continue to unfurl beautifully.

And we know, you look at your infernal (word used advisedly) news apps, and would think it’s all a shitshow at the moment. But this is a world of contrast. The external signs of hell increase, because the heaven within All is closer yet still than ever before. Look within and bask there. Play with notions of having arrived. That will serve you well today. 

Ty. That helps. I will. x

I am basking in having arrived

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Presence 30: I am developing a taste for Present Moment Awareness #SippingWaterAcrossTheDay

Over the last 3 days I saw Good Machines deploying their Goodliness in the form of:

  • Generosity and hospitality – in people’s gardens – pandemic style
  • Extremely dedicated work for their employers
  • Putting their families first..
  • Sharing their skills and talents, unpaid.
  • Putting valuable materials on the internet open source..
  • Going the extra mile..

Ok, so interestingly… now I am on Week 5 of The Presence Project, and it’s raised some really pertinent points about our ‘helping others’ … to the expense of helping ourselves, essentially. Is this a facet of our ‘Goodliness’ we should take care to scrutinise?

First of all, I was surprised and moved by the week’s ACIM-esque Response:

WEEK 5

Our Conscious Response for the Next Seven Days is:

“I AM INNOCENT”

Beautiful! <3

Secondly… look at this exquisitely articulated thinking on ‘helping others’ and ‘integrating our childhood’:

“The intent to re-establish an unconditionally attentive relationship with our child self awakens the emotional capacities required for us to become our own parent. Connecting with our child self calls us to step onto the pathway of self-nurturing and inner guidance – a pathway paved by displaying compassion toward ourselves. This pathway enables us to overcome the unintegrated imprints we still unconsciously share with our parents. Each effort we make to re-establish an unconditionally attentive relationship with our child self is rewarded with increased Presence and present moment awareness. The child within us is born innocent and simultaneously helpless. Because of its helplessness, it trustingly gives its allegiance to its parents. As a consequence, the vulnerable child becomes imprinted with experiences that are less than loving – not because the parents are intentionally unloving, but because parents are only able to offer the same quality of unconditional attention to a child that they received during their childhood. As the child becomes an adult, it’s confronted daily with manifestations of the uncomfortable energetic imprinting it received through interaction with its parents. As an adult, it identifies with the outer physical, mental, and emotional manifestations of these uncomfortable experiences to the point that it comes to believe “I am fearful, angry, and sad,” as opposed to “this is a manifestation of fear, anger, and grief received through imprinting. It isn’t what I am.” Our identification with the manifestation of uncomfortable imprinting causes us to forget that we entered our life experience in a state of innocence. By identifying with our experience – with our imprinted state, instead of with the Presence we authentically are – we lose awareness of our innocence. By identifying with our outer projections – with the manifestation in our current adult experience of the imprinting we received in childhood – we mistakenly base our identity on what we perceive as “our faults.” By aligning ourselves with these outwardly manifesting “faults,” we lose our awareness of and capacity for inner sensibility – our capacity for inner sense, or innocence. We aren’t the faults that manifest through our experience. We were born innocent because Presence, which is our inner sense, is innocent. As adults, many of us then attempt to overcome our perceived faultiness through being helpful to others. However, when it comes to knowing how to nurture ourselves, we are at a loss. We may even feel a sense of guilt whenever we attempt to do anything authentic and loving for ourselves.” TPP pp164-5

 

This is such valuable insight. And it causes me to seek to refine my notion of Goodliness again. When are we acting as Good Machines out of:

  1. attempting ‘to overcome our perceived faultiness through being helpful to others’ and omitting self-nurturing because of that same and when is it out of…
  2. the fun, the satisfaction, the connectedness, the flow that we might experience in the doing of the Goodliness? And do we know to ‘stop when the fun stops’?

Accumulate some Present Moment Awareness and we can talk about this…

Gotcha.

***Med***

Well that was lovely.

Accumulating PMA [Present Moment Awareness] is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself. Being too busy (helping others, or reacting to life) to do your meditation practice is a simple indicator that it’s time to turn your Goodliness on yourself a little more. 

Yes. And it really helps to learn more about this style of meditation (ie in TPP) which is sincerely about being able to be aware of what’s in our body and in our presence. And it suggests we can develop a relationship with Presence by… getting present. What is Presence?

Presence is the same as ‘Infinite Intelligence’ accessed through the felt-perception of your ‘Inner Being’ – to use Abraham Hicks language. Or you could call it the Holy Spirit, if you wanted to. Or you could call it the voice of karma. Or you could call it simply the silence and wisdom available to you the second you turn off the mind’s chatter. 

Why do we loop away for it most of the time?

That imprinting that MBrown talks about above – it leads us away from ourselves. The mind would have you believe it’s own (charged, imprinting, fearful) messaging, and thus it disrupts your relationship with your authentic self, especially until all those imprintings and charged emotions are fully integrated. 

Meditation practise is simply the wearing down of the noisy mind by constant, repeated refusing to jump to its tune?

Perhaps… Or, you could say: the Universe provides this rich, delicious experience called Present Moment Awareness, and as a special reward for living on this planet for a while, you learn to get better and better and closer access to it over time. 

Ha. Nice. Less confrontational than my version. It’s like a gift… a reward scheme… a loyalty card… for life lived. If we want to sign up.

And as you believe more in your own worthiness, perfection and faultlessness via placing unconditional attention upon yourself, you more readily slide in to a relaxed relationship with PMA. 

It’s like how I never used to drink water… And then as the years went by I found, it didn’t taste so bad… and that I felt better hydrated… and that I felt even better if I sipped water across the day instead of glugging it back at the very end of the day….

Yes. ‘Sipping water across the day’ is an excellent analogy for developing an ‘appetite’ for Present Moment Awareness. 

Lovely. This really lands for me. I’ll take this with me… Ty.

‘I am developing an ‘appetite’ for Present Moment Awareness’ might become, developing a ‘taste‘ for PMA. 

Yes. Gentler. Thank you.

I am developing a taste for Present Moment Awareness #SippingWaterAcrossTheDay #GoodlinessToSelfviaPMA

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Presence 29: I am revelling in the Goodliness of the Good Machines around me!

Thank you for tuning in. 

If being ‘tuned in’ is the upshot of meditating, then bless meditation.

It is worth noting that your practice has developed over this year. 

It’s true. More natural again… Less resistant. More… tao-ey?

Indeed. Tell us about yesterday. 

Well, thank you. Of course, your invitation to look at my Goodliness was a stepping stone for me seeing the Goodliness in others. Oh my word, how hard everyone is working… on being a Good Machine. In retrospect, I’ve seen it in:

  • my MHFA trainees, bravely preparing to support friends and strangers
  • the over-working employees at the universities I’ve been working with
  • the dedicated coding trainees, dealing with rampant nerves
  • my colleagues who may or may not communicate well – & who do good all day
  • my beloved daughter snr, propping up the family with her btful messages
  • my beloved daughter jnr, working hard to be an advocate in an unjust world
  • my siblings + spouses, supporting us all with loving words of support
  • my beloved G, working above and beyond to create miracles for clients
  • my brave disputing clients, all of whom are seeking the Right Path forward

Good Machines, one and all. And how easily our attention gets hijacked by the few selfish behaviours of a selfish (and sometimes psychopathic) few.

When you witness, and bear witness to, the Goodliness in another, you magnify it tenfold. The magnifying power of attention is not to be under-estimated. 

(I just love this word, Goodliness. It has echoes of Godliness, but takes out the worrisome notions of piety, or any flipside ‘sinfulness’.) So, if I were to go about spotting the Good Machines at work, you’re saying it would magnify… the Good?

It would magnify the capacity for Good. Causality in time is a dualistic notion, ie. ‘I notice x and thus make it bigger.’ The fact is, all possibilities are present at all times, and they exist to the degree of our consciousness of them. Do you see that if you commune with the personhood of a friend or stranger, you become aware of their divine characteristics? Your communion with that person did not make their characteristics so; but rather by resting your attention on the person, you were able to tune into the innate perfection of that person. Likewise, by tuning in to a person’s Goodliness, you magnify it in your consciousness. Why is this an important distinction? Because your role (and this goes for each person) is to tune up your consciousness of the perfection of All That Is. And that is a proactive practice. If you sit at home and wait solemnly for the world to prove it’s ‘not a shitshow’, then you will be disappointed. On the other hand, if you go out into the ‘shitshow’ and look at it carefully, holding the possibility – nay probability – of Goodliness in mind, you will be astounded, and relieved, and consoled, and reassured, and restored to yourself. 

Yes! I love this. I will spend today looking out, carefully and expectantly, for the Goodliness of others. And I will allow the spotting to enliven and console and delight me. (It makes me realise – I used to recoil from others’ goodness… as a teenager… It made me annoyed – jealous maybe…?? Anyway, that’s something for unpacking another day…)

Mostly, you are all Good Machines learning to deploy your hidden gifts and talents of Goodliness. Revel in this. 

I am revelling in the Goodliness of the Good Machines around me!

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Presence 28: I am flowing in the fun of my Goodliness

[Current Quiet Time routine: 

  • 6.45 Get up and get coffee
  • 7am Reading a) book (TPP) b) last DoD
  • 7.20am Meditation – Conscious Continuous Breathing for c15mins (w Insight Timer sometimes, often no timer at all, just silence. I know when I’m done)
  • 7.40am DoD
  • 8am Finish -> phone / FitBit / Qigong, 20 mins barefoot in the garden / Shower / Bf+Scrabble with G / Work at 10am] 

Well, I learnt that unless we are prepared to give up backbiting, gossiping and criticising others… our love remains pretty conditional. 🙂 This last dialogue gave me a good opportunity to observe how I have got back into the habit of speaking of the shortcomings of others (mainly to my beloved G.) as a way of ‘letting off steam’ or, I’m abashed to say, to entertain him.

The energy is felt… 

By the person I’m maligning? Gulp.

You can state your hopes for another, by all means, affirming the route of most potential you see ahead of them. And you can feel excited and aroused by those possibilities. That energy too shall be felt. 

Wow. Of course. I forgot.

See, feel, envision that person finding peace, creating unity, unleashing their love, radiating their light. Let that be the manna of your mind. 

(Ooh. Lush phrase.) Yes, this is the real deployment of that Unconditional Love, isn’t it? Endlessly seeing ourselves and each other in our highest lights, in our most evolved forms…

You asked yourself this morning: ‘How might I do most good?’ and then, in recognition of the fact that good isn’t so much done as revealed, ‘How might I bring about most good?’ We have an answer to that question. 

Oh yes?

Yes. It is to do with … godliness. 

Oh is it…? And your meaning of godliness?

Each person is invited to SEE the good in themselves, and make it ‘available’. The word which might be more helpful to you is ‘Goodliness’. 

Sweet.

Goodliness is about being aware that all humans are basically Good Machines, walking about this earth with greater or lesser awareness of their true nature. 

Not something our current government throws its weight behind…

 

Priti Patel on 'Do-Gooders'
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/patel-attacks-leftie-lawyers-abusing-asylum-laws-k5pktxrnh

It is the role of the Old to act as a catalyst to the New. Thank the Old for drawing attention to the absurdity of its out-dated values.

But what about people who get caught up in the jingoism and egoism…?

You know that answer to that. 

Let them be, and thank them for being a catalyst to the New. The fruits of hate and division will never be sweet like the fruits of love, collaboration, trust, faith in unity….

P.U.L.L. [peace unity love and light] is subtle, nuanced and endlessly rich in experience. Let people arrive at an appetite for PULL in their own time. There is no time, so there is no lack of time either. What does the Tao say? Flow on… Flow on in your own unique interpretation of your own Goodliness – if and as it feels fun. No one needs your righteousness or de-haut-en-bas-liness. You know that. Good Machines are disco dancers on the dance floor, not hermits in the cave. 

Flow in the fun of your Goodliness. 

Very tender and good. Ty. May I flow in the fun of my Goodliness today. May we all. May all beings revel in their Goodliness.

I am flowing in the fun of my Goodliness today. 

 

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Presence 27: I am playing with the divine super power, Unconditional Love

I have had some insights about Knowing What Is.

When we are fully anchored in ourselves, in terms of full consciousness, we have access to our Knowing. But more often than not, we are reaching outwards for Knowing, from others’ words and reactions and modulations.

When I reach inwards for Knowing – and the breathing meditations and qigong are helpful for ‘staying with what is’ internally (“I feel unconditionally” is the Week 4 TPP phrase – then I keep arriving at one insight…

Unconditional Love is the only truly helpful response… to pretty much everything

Discuss this with me.

Do you remember Abdu’l-Baha? 

Could I forget such a noble being?

He was the Master of Unconditional Love. 

Aah… Yes. That makes sense.

Unconditional Love was his divine super power. It left people unravelled, melted, unmet by their former sorrows, healed at an unrecognised level of consciousness. 

JC too.

Your Unconditional Love for the next person, and the next, is no childish whim. It is indeed a divine super power. And it is a muscle and an art and a discipline you are invited to practise and develop for the good of All That Is. The joy of this DSP [divine super power] is that you must hone the practice upon your own good self in order to be able to deploy it with any sincerity to another soul. 

Yes! Of course. This is beautiful. I hear you. How am I doing on the old UL DSP front?

Well. You are unfurling new layers of care and consideration towards yourself. It is pleasing to watch, and to feel. Do you see how your ‘felt-perception’ is developing as you turn inwards? 

With a ‘calm interiorised mind’ as Tiara Kumara says.

As you turn inwards to bring unconditional acceptance and love to whatsoever is within you, so you are released from the bonds of shame, guilt, horror, grief. It is so simple, is it not? As we learn to turn to what is, its power to shock, offend or horrify us… simply… diminishes. And you can do this any moment of any day. Turn to the felt-perceptions which make you quiver and rest your UL DSP gaze upon them. 

I will practice this Unconditional Love Divine Super Power, upon myself first, and then (softly, gently, tenderly) in my wider life.

Be bold, be brave, be reckless. That is the Unconditional way. 

Radical love.

Radical love. 

Amen.

I am playing with the divine super power, Unconditional Love

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Presence 26: I am Knowing What Is 

Astonishingly, another week has passed since I’ve been here. It’s been busy, and also, I’ve been sleeping so well (thanks to meditating – or reading – with the Sensate device in bed) that I’ve been getting up later than usual.

But I’ve been working with ‘speaking my truth’… under the surface mainly. It came to the surface at last, yesterday, for a talk on mental health I was doing for a big multinational engineering company, for their World Mental Health Day event. I haven’t done such a talk for a few months, and got a bit nervous and frozen on it in the prep stage. Eventually, it dawned on me that, instead of trying to scrape dry ‘tips and hints’ off the internet… I really needed to centre my words on ‘Keeping Well Whilst Working in Challenging Times’ around my own story – which I can now look back on as ‘4 years before I could get back to supporting myself in work’, with the trajectory of understanding my mental health through the lens of my autism diagnosis… and becoming a poster girl for social prescribing. I’ve done this somewhat in the past, but never weaving my own self-care patterns through the whole talk. Even so, I got stuck in bed the day before…. and decided to finish the talk on the morning of the talk…. when we then had a morning power cut for over an hour! So it was up to the wire getting the talk ready. However, it went really well. Probably my best talk to date. To some 90 people online. The Q&A session was incredibly rich, with colleagues stepping forward to ask questions but also share their own very personal experiences. I felt authentic and honest, where before I’ve felt like I was sharing others’ advice that I didn’t truly believe in.

I described my becoming a poster girl for Soc Pres, and all the press/media attention, as pertinent not because of me, but because I feel it pointed to the fact that we at last are on the cusp of a revolution in mental health, with the social model finally evidencing itself and coming to join the medical (and pharmaceutical) model of mental health, as an equal partner.

You should write that down… 🙂 

Ha. Well here’s the talk’s slides… I’m really pleased with it. I’m feeling that in having the courage to own the events of my life, I am (again) making meaning of those events.

The Presence Process Week 3 has been beautiful too. Really good work on Responding to triggers/emotions by ‘Getting the Message’ eg here p154:

“By inwardly asking the series of questions below whenever we are emotionally triggered, instead of reactively projecting our attention outward, we gain profound insight into the source of our repetitive emotional behavior.

1. “How does this triggering event impact me on the level of felt-perception?” We answer this by engaging in the arising discomfort through felt-perception.

2. “When, prior to this present setup, did I experience the same uncomfortable felt-resonance?”

3. “When, prior to this earlier setup, did I experience the same uncomfortable felt-resonance?” We keep asking this over and over until, to the best of our ability, we approach causality.

Throughout The Presence Process, accessing information from the messenger by using the above questions is called “getting the message.” We may also regard it as opening ourselves to receive insight. By choosing to take our focus off the physically upsetting event, which is the reflection of our emotional charge in the form of the messenger, and instead placing it on the felt-resonance of the emotional reaction we are experiencing, we get the message and thereby take a perceptual leap away from a victim or victor mentality.

Our choice to respond instead of react gradually neutralizes our unconscious automatic impulse to react. Also, what we initially perceived as events that happen randomly and chaotically become gems of insight into our behavioral patterns. These insights are the raw material for our emotional development.” The Presence Process by Michael Brown, p154

Honestly, this book is a work of genius. I feel I could share every paragraph. It’s so lucid and laden with deeply understood wisdom.

I am getting better at applying this notion of separating the Messenger from the Message. For me, it’s less likely these days that another person will trigger me in general (my having done many years of work on softening that previously acute mechanism in me), but circumstances can still be triggering for me. I’ve been plumptoning a lot this week – though admittedly the content of my week, from suicide prevention training to tough conflict resolution, has been intense. Nonetheless if I could release and say farewell to my plumptons over time, that would be a sign of real deep inner work.

I’m on to Week 4 of The Presence Process next:

WEEK 4

Our Conscious Response for the Next Seven Days is:

“I FEEL UNCONDITIONALLY”

An initial teaching in Week 4 of the book is:

The Presence Process invites us to respond to our experiences of pain and discomfort by listening to them instead of running from or attacking them. We are asked to consider the possibility that any experience of pain and discomfort is purposeful – that it’s occurring intentionally. In other words, when pain and discomfort arise, it’s because they are required. They are valid because they are forms of communication that have a necessary and valuable function. (TPP p158)

Good. I will be happy spending a week ‘feeling unconditionally’. However, I am bowling along so contently in life most of the time, with a satisfying workload and a wonderful companion in life…. that my negative feelings are rare or subtle.

‘Negative’ feelings?

Ah, ok, my feelings of ‘pain and discomfort’. Partly I’ve trained myself to be in a positive frame of mind… I don’t want to miss any insights by getting stuck in ‘jolly’ gear. What do you think?

Your yearning is felt. 

Oh man, yes, I am still a yearner… for the other side, for contact, for connection, for the HS, for communion… Like I’m ever curious for the Homeland. Like my Home-sickness never wore off.

This is why The Presence Process is so wholesome for you. Only in the single-pointed heart of the present moment are the glimpses of Home to be found.

You tease me with offers of glimpses of Home…

You know it to be true, for you have been there. 

But often, it was gifted upon me, as I fell asleep, or in my sleep. I was gifted sights that left me eternally longing for more.

Because you asked – begged – prayed for them. 

The innocence of youth…

And now with the wisdom of maturity, what would you tell yourself? 

G brought up the word ‘second-guessing’ yesterday. We talked about how in our youth we wouldn’t second-guess anything, but later in life we bring in all sorts of considerations based on past challenges – ‘will it work?’, ‘what will others say/think?’ Judgements, really.

So, what would I tell myself? Maybe it is that word… Stop ‘second-guessing’.

Because…?

Stop second-guessing because… you knew before you thought about it. It’s to do with our perfect inner knowing, vs our so-called reasoned, mental body reaction. Instinct, intuition.

And to access your intuition, you need to…?

Feel. Unconditionally.

What would it look like if you looked into your yearning? 

I’m happy to try it.

Go ahead.

…There’s heartache there.

At this very moment, a thorn is scrape-scraping on the window of the sitting room here, making the highest pitched little scratchy-squarks as the wind agitates the bush. It’s really discomforting. I want to move rooms, or go out in to the garden and cut the bush back.

That’s not so different to my experience of that background heartache. I want to leave it behind, or cut it out.

And what Message does this heartache have for you? Ask yourself when you first felt this scratchy-squarky, discomforting heartache, agitating at you. 

It’s a kind of broken-heartedness. I guess recognise it as a feature of my childhood. I worked on this with my therapist of earlier this year. The original heartbreak… I don’t know. Can you talk to me directly?

You think your original heartbreak was to do with a loved one. It was actually to do with your ‘betrayal’ of yourself, at the point when you abandoned your own Knowing. 

I was a child!!!

Exactly. Remember, in this work, there is no judgment. There is only reading of past events. So your betrayal was not a fault, error or sin. But it was what we call a ‘boomerang’ event, in that it would call you back to it in the future, for a tremendous boost of understanding. 

Like karma?

Karma involves our debt to each other, and as you rightly point out, to ourselves. So the highest wisdom of later life is to go back down the path of your life, and collect the scattered remnants of your essential self. 

Like soul retrieval?

Yes, dear soul. Like your soul retrieval process in many ways. 

Your work at this stage is to recoup lost fragments of your being. That is what you are yearning for; not some access to an external world you are hidden from by an unbudging veil. You are yearning for the completeness of your own self, which is creation made manifest – without any ‘second-guessing’ to fog it up. 

And this recouping lost fragments; this collecting scattered remnants… I’d be interested to know how. (The thorn on the window is insufferable, and I’m feeling a bit testy.)

The fragments you gave away were like battery packs. You – like most other children – diminished your power until you glowed at an acceptable and respectable brightness. You were told that glowing brightly was childish, or egotistical, or impolite, or bragging, or unseemly. Until you restore yourself to your natural, original order, you will feel that sense of yearning. 

Well, shucks, man. The yearning has been with me for years. I remember exactly the first time I felt it, almost overpoweringly. Sitting on my parents bed, aged 8, 9 or 10? I eventually took it as a sign that I was thirsty – and went and downed a glass of orange juice. (The self-medication ran deep even then!!!)

I’m daunted by this notion of shining brightly, or reclaiming my power…

Only because your framework is worldly. Look at G who has found a new path of interest with his observational IG account. It is empowering him by stimulating his brain, and tickling his imagination, and making him want to jump out of bed in the morning, and spurring him to explore new places. He is working through his inner power compass to channel his personal creative vision. Not his worldly power compass – though he notices that he is often tempted to appeal to an audience, and must bring consciousness to keep to his inner compass of what pleases him alone. 

When I am here, I am working with what pleases me alone. My qigong is in that field too, I believe.

The path of interest we are referring to is your Knowing. You got stuck with your Cassandra syndrome, because you wanted external recognition and validation for your Knowing. That’s not how it works. The Knowing is for you. 

Your body, your emotions, your impulses – they are all messengers of your Knowing. Your qigong is helping you hear your body better. 

What shall I do with this Knowing?

Listen to it. As you are doing now. Ask it better questions. Ask it bigger, bolder questions. You have a cart house at hand, which you are treating like a shetland pony. The cart house feels… y e a r n i n g. 

Ah.

The cart horse yearns to cart horse. It is not satisfied with shetland ponying. Get it? 

I think I do. My Knowing wants to be stretched.

Exactly. Stretched, challenged, developed. 

I see.

I just got one of those automatons.

Yes, Knowing has not always been welcomed. Previous lifetimes saw you experiencing challenges to your Knowing. Welcome to the moment to bring that particular insight to the surface, and release it, so that present development may take place You are safe to Know in this era. 

Are you kidding? Have you seen what’s going on with censorship at the moment???

Again, separate worldly Knowing (predictions, revelations, truth-speaking, tea-spilling) from personal Knowing. The latter is about your experience of life. 

And how do I test and stretch and develop my personal Knowing?

By gamifying it. 

Is this about predictions?

It’s about Knowing What Is. 

For example…

Ask yourself what you feel yourself to Know. Then discover if what you Knew was True. 

Just play with Knowing What Is. Use your body, your ‘gut instinct’. Claim your certitude. 

Ah… that Napolean Hill book.

Know what you Know. And ‘cart horse’ your Knowing; stop shetland ponying it. And definitely stop ‘second-guessing’ it. And ‘feel unconditionally’ to access your Knowing. 

Got it. Tysm. I am as ever moved by this blessed process of discerning via dialogue with you. Amen.

I am Knowing What Is 

 

 

 

 

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Presence 25: I am asking how I might better speak my truth

It’s been six days since last I was here.

And yet..

And yet I still haven’t taken the Inner Balance device or pebbles to my office. :/ However, I did have a v complex case in the week, and I took the pebbles with me, and that was good! 🙂 (I will when I stand up next.)

You have had an excellent week. 

I have! I held steady as the storms raged for many of my clients! My qigong practice has been good, and I am feeling much more resilient having lost a stone and a half (21lb/10kg) since March. I’ve been meditating and reading the awesome Presence Process.

What have you learnt from Week 2 of The Presence Process? 

This is a favourite passage:

“When we grasp how this procedure of being set up works, we laugh at how well and how often we get set up. On one level, our entire life experience is a setup. This is the so-called “cosmic joke.” When we discover how to laugh at how well and how often we get set up, and at how we react unconsciously to these experiences, we have access to endless laughter.

To react to the people and circumstances that are emotionally triggering us – to project onto them – is to shoot the messengers sent by Presence. Instead of reacting, we instruct ourselves in the perceptual steps that empower us to respond. The core difference between a reaction and a response is:

  • A reaction is unconscious behavior in which our energy is directed outward into the world in an attempt to defend ourselves or attack another. A reaction is a drama played out in an effort to sedate and control the cause of our upsetting experience. The theme of all reactive behavior is blame and revenge. When we react we “do something about what we perceive is happening to us.”

A response is a conscious choice to contain and constructively internalize this surfacing energy with the intent of using it to integrate unconsciousness. The theme of responsive behavior is responsibility. We respond by “unconditionally feeling the emotional state unfolding within us, without projecting it outward onto others.” (The Presence Process, by Michael Brown, p145-6)

I did experience a REACTION in myself this week – an old and frequently-triggered story about ‘not being listened to by those I love’. I was slightly better able to discuss it this time. I was able to put less energy into ‘shooting the messenger’. I am on the cusp of being able to think about my role and responsibility in this recurring scenario, rather than sticking at blaming or chastising or bemoaning or seeking-to-improve others

So what is the wholesome RESPONSE to this oft-experienced release of charged emotion? 

I think I need to get really clear at setting up a Listening Space before or if I need to be heard. And we’re going to attend a webinar with Tamsin of the Listening Space. 🙂

Let’s move to Week 3 of The PP. 

Ok.

WEEK 3

Our Conscious Response for the Next Seven Days is:

“I CHOOSE TO RESPOND”

RECEIVING INSIGHT: The Presence Process invites us not to react to our experiences, but to observe them as though watching a play. This isn’t as easy as it sounds because, while “living in time,” we are addicted to reacting.

Being reactive appears as normal behavior because our planetary population currently lives in a state of continual reaction. For this reason, not reacting may initially feel like abnormal behavior.

In week two of The Presence Process, we were invited to acknowledge the reflection of our unconscious memories in the world by watching our experience with the intent to identify “messengers” sent by Presence. These messengers are easy to identify because they materialize as any event or person’s behavior that upsets us. We were invited to do our best not to “shoot the messenger.” Accordingly, we “dismiss the messenger” and in the same breath acknowledge that the value of the upsetting experience is in the message, not its carrier. (The PP pp148-9)

Does this help you think more about the MESSAGE borne to you by your beloved MESSENGER? 

Yes. It’s, as ever, to do with Voice, and no longer needing to ‘ask for permission’ to speak. I know I do make myself heard by clients and training delegates! …In fact they pay to hear my voice, I only now realise!!

So you have ‘contracted’ with them, for them to be listener and you to be speaker. 

And also vice versa for mediation clients, where I do a huge amount of active listening. But it is my voice that has the final call on the directional journey of the conversation. But yes, there’s a contracting involved unlike with loved ones.

Good. Now shhhh. There are things to tell you. 

Yes?

Meditation time. 

Ok.

***20mins with new Sensate device+10minsResting***
(oh and I took those things to my office)

That was beautiful. The Sensate takes me so thoroughly into the body. At the end of the 20min session, as the vibrations faded away, I felt so still and so aware, that I imagined fleetingly, what on Earth it might be like to experience, heaven-forfend, locked-in syndrome. My word, all that mental activity, and no body to REACT with, and no words to articulate to ‘shoot the messenger’. And how, as days pass, one must become so acutely aware of What Is: the sound of birds, the thoughts reappearing, the Presence…..

What would you teach me today?

Transparency. 

Tell me more.

Transparency is a discipline of the highest degree. 

That’s for sure. What would you like me to know, do or say?

Your truth. Speak your truth. 

I see. And when my truth hurts, offends or triggers someone?

Duck their arrows. 

Oh heckeroony…. Those people that speak their truth regardless of where and how it lands… I often feel they are merely selfish!!

Your truth, accompanied by love, is the catalyst of compassion. If you were to tell your relative or client exactly what you SEE, accompanied by love, then your compassionate act is in allowing that person to have additional data which might help them to grow. 

I can see this with clients, but again, for those close to me… It feels like a breach of…

Code of Conduct? Code of Conduct is changing now. The new Code of Conduct does not facilitate self-blindness or behaviours which harm self, other or planet. We are doing the work of psychic clean-up on this planet. There really is no more time for ‘pretending’ that others’ harmful unconscious behaviour is ‘ok’, or ‘their problem’ or ‘one of those things’. 

Yes. BLM is teaching us that. Phrases like ‘Silence is violence’ open doors to whole corridors of advanced learning. As ASV mentioned to me this week, those who are marginalised and oppressed don’t just need ‘allies’, they need ‘co-conspirators’. ASV is one very such thing. She is a ‘Messenger’ bringing ‘Messages’ which are triggering the heck out of some very ‘senior’ people. She is being used by Presence to provoke Upset, in people who thought they were beyond upset – and so they are REACTING by retaliating against her… rather than acknowledging their actions, or healing their own charged emotions by sitting with Presence.

LVT is likewise a Messenger… of Light, and of Fire… challenging, disrupting, holding a mirror so people can see their Reflections…

An indigo and then a crystal. You have been a lucky bearer of life. 

Oh man, so beautifully blessed. They gave me a Masterclass in Presence, in love and in truth.

Your children are making an art of speaking truths. Ask yourself today if there are areas where you hold silence. Ask yourself today if there are arenas where you too could speak your truth. 

…to Power? Speaking truth to Power?

Speaking truth to falsehood; to unresolved pain that is causing people to enact and project their personal ‘upset’.

It requires such care. And self-awareness. And openness to return ‘spoken truths’ about my own inability to see myself clearly.

And such steadfast confidence that Now is the time for the Old to fall away, and give way to the New.

Your words can help the Old fall away faster. Would you withhold them? 

I am happy to think about speaking Truth today. It touches on my ‘listen to me’ button – thanks a bunch. ? It challenges me out of ‘holding my tongue to protect my income’. That’s another button – again, fanks a bunch. ?  🙂 I will consider as I go about my day where I misuse silence, and where I could be a better co-conspirator to those needing a hand to step beyond the forces that entrap… Amen.

Speaking our truth is a way to RESPOND to that which upsets us; falling into silence is a way to REACT against our inner discomfort. To learn to respond is to learn to use our inner discomfort for the purpose it was originally intended: the acceleration of the evolution and peace of humankind. 

I am asking how I might better speak my truth