Having prevailed after navigating energetic doldrums three times in four months, a few things have come to light. They now seem incredibly obvious, but evidently they were not so earlier, else I would not have been in the doldrums in the first place. And though they seem obvious and even simple, that does not mean that they are necessarily easy to achieve.
Feeling is vital to being present. Without it, one cannot tell presence form absence. Practically from birth, we are conditioned to ignore our feelings: our needs as infants sometimes do not seem to count; our parents are absent, distracted or traumatized; our needs must not count because they are ignored; because we are punished for showing our feelings, they must be wrong, etc. The purpose of this disconnection from feeling is to keep us from who we really are. After all, if you cannot feel, then you cannot be present, and if you are not present, you cannot be who you really are. What you can be, however, is dependent upon your family, your culture or the society at large to determine who you are, who you should be, and, ultimately, who you will be.
If you desire to be who you really are, you must be present. In this case, you must be present to win. This requires the ability to feel what is going on inside yourself at any given moment, and also what is going on around you – a kind of energetic situational awareness. You cannot do this if you are not present. You must at least be able to check in with yourself to see where you are, energetically. Better yet, you are able to be present in a way that allows you to feel your being and the energy field around you.
This is very simple. However, it can take a bit of practice to open to your own presence, and realize when, in fact, you are present, and when you are not. To do this, first you have to learn how it feels for you to be present: am I present now? What does that feel like? This is what may be described as a felt sense. It is a sense that you feel within your body and within your energy field. It is a connection between you, the earth and energies that are present within and beyond her.
Learning how one feels when one is present gives the vital baseline which allows one to know what imbalance feels like to your being. Once you are aware and conscious of how your own energy feels when you are present, then you can check in with yourself from time to time and ask: how do I feel? Am I imbalanced? If so, how? Am I compressed? Have I collapsed? Am I cut off? Am I separated or split? With enough practice, you won’t have to ask these questions. Rather, your felt sense will alert you when something is amiss, and, as a result, you will be able to move directly to conscious action to release trauma and balance yourself once again.
A friend of mine independently and almost instinctively discovered a way to clear imbalances in the moment in order to remain clear and continue on with her work. Brooks Greene-Barton had recommended this type of conscious action to me some time ago and still supports it. My friend was in a situation in which she was in a new environment, out of state, by herself, and single-handedly shifting the energy of a well established, imbalanced industry which has a very masculine energetic. What she discovered was that if she handled her emotions well, she could continue moving forward in her quest. So, when she felt unstable, she would retire to the powder room, sort things out, release her emotions, collect her self, and then return to business feeling grounded, balanced and refreshed. What she was doing was taking conscious action to release trauma as it arose in order that she not merge with it. In this way, it did not keep her from being present as who she was in those moments. She was always present when she needed to be and was able to complete multiple deals in a compressed time frame in a way that had never been done before.
Another way that my friend found to allow herself to be present in the whirlwind of activity at the event was to realize that she had a loving gift to offer to those at this particular gathering. She realized that it was very helpful for her to offer that gift to others by asking in her mind “How can I help you?” There is a notable distinction here. This is not condescension, or an attitude of “better than”, but rather, it is a very loving, nurturing, and feminine way of approaching and supporting collaboration. In the end, all parties help each other. That is a very balanced, very good deal for everyone.
Learning how to distinguish my presence from my absence has been challenging, on occasion. In my experience, it takes a bit of practice, a few stumbles, and the support of many friends, which brings me to my next point. Love is as vital in this endeavor as it is in any other. It may take quite a bit of love, patience, and gentleness towards oneself, most of all, to return one to the opening, clarity and light that you are. My experience has been that sharing those qualities with myself is far more challenging than sharing them with others. I have found myself being more compassionate, loving and patient to strangers on the street here in Gotham than I am to myself in the comfort of my own home. Loving, supporting, and balancing oneself is vital if one is to do so properly for another.
The abilities to feel, to be present, and to Love are all essential to who we are. If you don’t have love, compassion, patience and gentleness for yourself as well as for others, the experience of being present can be extremely illusive. This can make our road quite a bit more difficult to travel. With practice, one can invite the opportunity of presence for oneself and for others with greater ease and joy.