Thank you. Focussing on ‘enhancing my systems of service’ helped me navigate past some really difficult feelings of loss and sadness. I appreciated your pragmatic approach yesterday.
It is always a pleasure to speak to you of techniques for increasing ‘effortless ease’ in your life. You are a hard worker, and actually, a ‘soft worker’ can accomplish just as much… if not more… by the very fact of their reducing ‘resistance to what is’ in their life. Soft and smooth is the order of the Day.
You’ll have known that yesterday or so, our government announced new, ramped up pandemic-response restrictions, flagging that they are likely to be in place for the next six months. Almost exactly sic not sure Dter the initial lockdown began. These are days of extraordinary uniqueness.
And in the initial six months of this pandemic, your turning around your life from one of hustle and bustle, to one of peace and tranquillity, has been a remarkable outcome of these days.
I’m very grateful.
Shall we..?
Let’s.
***ThePPpage131***
EXPERIENCING PRESENCE
The simple breathing practice of The Presence Process facilitates an experiential awareness of Presence through activation of present moment awareness. However, the mental body is immune to such an experience, seeing no value in it. If it’s allowed to have its way, it distracts us from making progress. By keeping the following in the forefront of our awareness while we attend to our practice, we train ourselves to bypass the antics of the mental body:
1. WE BREATHE WITHOUT PAUSING, NO MATTER WHAT. This point cannot be emphasized too strongly. Our personal experience of Presence during a breathing session is cumulative based on the length of time we breathe without pausing. We therefore keep our breathing rhythmically connected throughout our breathing practice, no matter what. Our experience of Presence builds exponentially with each moment our breathing remains connected.
2. WE REMAIN AS PHYSICALLY STILL AS POSSIBLE THROUGHOUT THE SESSION.
***ConsciousConnectedBreathing10mins***
Interesting. ‘Submitting’ to the work of conscious breathing, which in qi gong is a ‘tonifying practice,’ was invigorating, and left me with a sense of … mastery. As if I’d swum in cold water. I didn’t cease breathing, and I didn’t wriggle… and to a certain extent I put thought to one side.
You were training yourself ‘to bypass the antics of the mental body’.
I guess I was. These mental body antics… What are they?
The mental body adores the ‘there and then’. It sees no value in the ‘here and now’. As you ditch its ‘antics’ and come into alignment with the here and now you find the very state which the mental body fears: peace in presence.
And the mental body fears it because..?
It believes that it is fear, alertness and concern about the ‘there and then’ that is key to your survival. If you rest in the ‘here and now’, it says, you might be eaten by a lion… to put it at its simplest.
Got it. That mastery I felt just now. I liked it…
Yes, your ego was afraid you might find mastery. Your ego would keep you small, ashamed and hustling. Why? ‘To keep you alive.’
How do I convince my ego or mental body to let me rest in peace in presence?
Practice. Practice. Practice. The proof must be in the practice. By practising you demonstrate to the mental body two things:
- You can sit in peace in presence without being eaten by a lion
- You will not respond to the mental body’s alert signals, so it might as well lessen them.
For all its doggedness, the mental body does at least have the faculty of learning. If you teach your mental body that you are its master, not vice versa, it will ‘submit’. Play with the notion of mastery. It’s such a subtle unique state. It sits right next to sovereignty (your birth right) and diametrically opposed to narcissism which is the outmanifestation of that egoic mental body – aka ‘fear of extinction’.
Thank you. I am training today, and practising qigong, and mediating. I will play with the notion of mastery. I am grateful for this practice. May I approach it with due humility and wisdom.
I am playing with the notion of mastery