Becoming Present

I have used many ‘outs;’ many stategies for escaping the present.

It’s possible that creating each ‘out,’ during my formative years, was a stroke of genius that made survival possible.

It’s also possible that continuing to use these ‘outs’ to avoid the present is now getting in the way of me living full out in the present.

In any case, I have chosen to develop my ability and capacity to be more present. A key to this, I have discovered, is to catch myself in states where I am feeling emotions: feelings from the past.

I am not saying anything is wrong with feeling emotions. I am just saying that in order to be more present, I am choosing to use emotions as a hint that I am not as present as I could be.

I came to experience this distinction more clearly recently when, as I was coming to the end of an Emotional Healing Process (where I was helped to use an emotion that had come up as a doorway to healing), intense sadness mixed with joy came up.

The Possibilitator holding space asked me if this was a feeling from the present, or an emotion from the past. I discovered that it was both: a feeling of joy about being present and alive, now… and sadness was about how much of my life I have missed out on while I was not present to being alive! The sadness was an emotion! It was about the past.

The next questions was, is this what I wanted, to have emotional sadness about the past be happening while I was in the present?

I realized my answer in that moment was, NO, I wanted to be more fully present to the experience of being alive, NOW.

I asked, how can I do that?

The Possibilitator coached me to use my Possibilty Stone. As I touched my Stone, bringing my attention to the sensation in my fingers, the temperature, the texture, the pressure, dropping out of my mind, I experienced more purely being Here, Now.

I admit that I expected to feel much more authentic joy in the present. I did get a taste of it. More of a whiff, really. Mostly I felt waves of fear and anger as I navigated out of thinking, into sensing, and back, then, with intention, navigated again away from thinking and into sensing.

It was like doing a physical exercise. I had made ‘moves’ like this before, but not with this degree of clarity and intention. Into my senses, and back into my mind, back into my senses…hold…!

As I write, I feel sad and scared about how the joy I am most familiar with is a sort of pretend happiness which I have been using as another ‘out’ to escape the present.

A-HA! This sadness and fear is part feeling, part emotion! The sadness is about how it’s gone in the past! The fear…some is about the present (oh no, I am doing that thing again!) and some is about the future! (What if I never learn this!?)

As I notice this, some low level anger arises, and, using it consciously, I choose RIGHT NOW to remove the emotion from my experience. Not because it is bad or wrong, but because I want to experience the present, not the past, right now.

I feel glad I have my Possiblity Stone right here.

I feel a low level intensity joy as I continue now to write and share this, because this worked! I have a way to become present! Though I had heard and used my Stone before to practice becoming present, it was not until the process gave me lived experience that the possibility really landed in me as an available and deeply practical tool.

I have created an experiment to further build my presence muscles:

For seven days, at least twice a day for at least 5 minutes each time, I will sit, close my eyes, and hold my Possiblity Stone. I will write in my Beep Book each time about how this goes. At the end of the week I will write again for at least 30 minutes from my findings and publish the writing here.

I invite you to experiment, too.

You can ask yourself, “How am I avoiding being present…right here and right now?” and “How might I experiment, right here and right now to build my capacity to be more present?”

No one can do it for you. No one is stopping you.

I hope this article empowers you.

I would love to hear from you about this.

Love, Nicole

With thanks to Gabriel Millinger, the Possibilitator who held space for me for the process mentioned here, and to Clinton Callahan, who gave me my Possibility Stone and first gave me possibilities about how to use it.