Yesterday, I sat next to Ana on the bare mattress of her new bed in her final year uni house, heaving with sad tears at the prospect of the end of our shared six month lockdown period. Through the weeping, a perspicacious insight surfaced: This Moment Matters. And in that second of realisation, I was able to embrace my sadness, and simultaneously bask in the perfection of Ana’s presence, and the blessing of being a mother. I wasn’t swallowed up by my emotions, and I didn’t chew up those final moments of togetherness resisting the bittersweet perfection of what was. Thank you, Perspicacity.
***The Presence Process by Michael Brown p122ff***
“For the duration of this process, we make the entire experience gentler for ourselves when we choose to start and complete each day with our breathing practice. While remaining practical and sensible, we intend to let it be the opening and the closing song of our waking moments. By elevating our relationship with our breathing session to this status in our daily routine, we lay the foundation for a rebirth of personal willpower. This personal willpower, when authentic, isn’t based on anything or anyone else. It arises from within us, and within it is the capacity to transform and elevate the quality of our current life experience – and so much more.”
[BREAK – Next Day…]
“By entering into present moment awareness, we also discover that Presence also appears to know everything that is to occur. As we develop a conscious relationship with Presence, we realize the following:
- Presence knows no order of difficulty. This means Presence has the capacity to bring into our experience the precise circumstances required to trigger in us an awareness of suppressed charged emotions that require conscious integration. Through responding to and integrating whatever Presence reveals, we accumulate present moment awareness.
- Presence has our best interest at heart. Because Presence knows itself, it knows us better than we presently know ourselves. It knows exactly what experience we require to restore present moment awareness. By surrendering to it, we are surrendering to our experience as it unfolds throughout this process. Because our experience is overseen by Presence, it’s not only valid but also required.
- The Presence within each of us is the same as the Presence within all living creatures. Because Presence is a unified field of awareness that embraces all, our authentic identity is shared with all life. Presence is our shared connection with all life.
- The Presence within us doesn’t interfere. Presence willingly attends to those aspects of our experience we consciously surrender to it. Learning to surrender is our ultimate challenge and one of the significant lessons offered through this process. Asking Presence for its assistance in any particular avenue of our experience, then simultaneously trying to figure out how to “get it done ourselves,” is counterproductive. “
This confirms for me that DoDs are encounters with Presence. Thank you!
***15minMed with HoldenQigong*** also using the phrase ‘I am here now in this’ across 3 inhales and 3 exhales
Lee (Holden) reminded me in this meditation that Taoism is about ‘effortlessness’. We felt ‘gratitude’ on the in breath and ‘non-attachment’ on the out breath. We let ‘past conditioning’ and ‘future projection’ drift away. This is good. Yesterday I was adjusting to Ana not being here. Tears would bubble up, and I felt the sense of loss sob through me. G took me out for lunch at the local farm shop to find cheer, bless his beautiful heart. It’s not so much that I am ‘attached’ to Ana or her presence – and the same for darling Lucia – it’s just that my heart reaches out for them so, especially when I have been in their presence…
How can I best work on and with myself today?
Precious one, your beautiful ‘systems’ help you to be present to the moment. Do you see that?
I think I do. Tell me more.
You asked how best to work on yourself. We know you want to be ‘useful’ to the world, and to bring value from your learning and your mind and your spirit. We also see how, dear soul, you have been wobbled by seeing your girl go. So cherish yourself today, by working on your ‘systems’. This is about using the very best of your beautiful Aspie love of routine, ritual and procedure, to a) harness your will to serve and b) bring you inner peace and reassurance. As you work through the familiarity of your routines, your mind can remain in 5th gear (or even neutral, cruising). You don’t have to ‘think about it’ or ‘make decisions’. This is a powerful way of being present to the moment.
So thinking about things and making decisions takes me out of the moment?
Remember how Michael Brown said that animals have connected breath because they are in the moment? When you are, as Lee said earlier, functioning through ‘past conditioning’ or ‘future projection’, your breathing becomes halted and you are effectively somewhere between first and third gear.
Your beautiful routines, which you have refined so wonderfully in the last six months, are a leaping point into the present moment. You don’t have to sweat the small stuff because it’s already programmed into your day. So today, love yourself gently, by playing with new, enhanced systems for your working day. This will ground and reassure you, and make you more effective in your work, and moreover, allow you to spend more of the day in the present moment. Your systems make the necessary actions ‘automatic’. The tasks are done in time without taking any battery energy for ‘Sudden Decisions’. Sudden decisions burn energy. Preserve that energy by enhancing your wonderful systems.
Thank you. This is the loveliest response to my heart’s state. So practical, so compassionate, so very apt for me.
Your children long for your happiness. Embrace your happy place by enhancing your systems of service.
I am enhancing my systems of service.