This is my second week of The Presence Process, a 10-week program designed to get people in touch with the emotional undercurrents of their behaviors and come into alignment with their inner presence. The statement that I begin this week with is “I acknowledge my reflections in the world.”
First reading this, I found myself detached and a little confused because it sounded like psychobabble to me. In reading the accompanying materials, it became much clearer. By reflections, Michael Brown means the idea that we will be drawn to events and situations that reflect our unresolved emotional issues, because they are still sensitive, and they want to come to closure. So like a finely tuned mirror, we reflect more clearly those things which have yet to be integrated within ourselves. The language that these things speak is that of emotions. He argues that this is the case because as we grow in the world, before we have the ability to think logically and sift through situations with objectivity, we are essentially raw emotional beings. That is the consistency of our experience. In the process of transitioning into a more thought/behavior-based way of engaging with the world, most of us sublimate these raw emotions and are left with wounds that persist below the surface of all of the skills we learn to function in the world.
So when we have these emotional responses to people, situations, words, sounds, we are actually speaking that primal language to ourselves, and being invited to tend to and heal these wounds.
Sounds pretty deep and difficult to me. But it turns out that really how it’s handled is through breath and consistent diligent attentiveness. That’s all. But it’s not easy.
As I sat this morning breathing and repeating to myself, “I acknowledge my reflections in the world.”, my dog kept running into the room, jumping onto the meditation cushion, thrusting a toy into my perfectly poised mudra-ed hand, doing his best to get my attention.
I couldn’t help but laugh. He does this every morning, and I find that if I stick to my meditation and leave him be, he eventually calms down and lays next to me, often hypnotically chewing on a stuffed animal.
He IS my reflection in this world. He is just like my mind, wanting attention, wanting to drag my attention away from this practice that threatens with the real possibility of living in the moment. And when I stay connected to my practice, he quiets down, just like my mind.
There are these moments during my morning practice where I have these waves of joy, waves of intense feeling, waves of being able to feel every bit of my skin, see colors behind my closed eyes that swell and soften with my inhales and exhales. There are also these moments where this nagging feeling beckons from my belly. My mind interprets it as “I need to go. When is this going to be done?” I’ve been trying to just be more curious and amused about this feeling because I know it’s just like my puppy, trying to drag me away.
