We hear people talking about "presence," "mindfulness," "consciousness" or "being present," and I want to describe what that means in simple terms, and how it can help us in our lives.  The idea of being present is not new - has been practiced by many spiritualists for thousands of years.  For purposes of this blog, I will call it "presence" or "being present." 

To be in a state of presence, means that a person is fully focused on where they are and what they are doing.  Many experience this presence when they work in their gardens, build models, exercise, meditate, practice yoga, or engage in an activity that allows for a single-minded focus.  While in the state of presence, we lose track of time.  We feel an intense aliveness and peace.  You can probably think of some activities you engage in where you are very present. 

The really great news is that you can learn how to get into a state of presence any time you want, doing any activity.  After making a list of some of the activities you already do where you feel present - like the examples above - take a few moments to appreciate how you feel during those activities.  Then begin where ever you are!  If there is laundry to be done, or dishes, or paperwork or work to be done at your job, pay attention to the movement of your hands, the sensations in your body - focus intensely on whatever it is you are doing.   If you are walking around, pay attention to your feet as they lift off the ground, the pressure as you place your foot on the ground, how do your muscles contract or move as you reach or lift.  Focus intensely on your movements.  Are your eyes blinking, are you bending your arms, closing or opening your hands, can you feel your heart beating, is your breathing fast or slow?  Practice this as much as you can!

What you will find is that over time, you begin to notice how less you "react" to things that used to "stress you out."  Instead, you pause, and can respond from a much higher - and less volatile - place.  Some of the best litigators, doctors, parents, teachers that I interact with have this presence figured out - at least in their professional lives (they may not be so present in other areas of their lives).  Just like any skill, the more you practice the better you get.  And, as an aside, when I do readings, I am in a state of complete presence.  I have to use a clock to keep me to the time limit of the appointment, otherwise I would go on and on!

Why is it important to nurture and develop our natural psychic abilities?  We are all born naturally psychic, and we are taught by our society at a very young age that survival in this physical world and our society, depends more on external things that can be understood with our minds and obtained with our actions.  We use our observations, direct experience and mind generated ideas to push through our lives. Obviously, there are exceptions to this, but if we look at societies that depend more on the seasons, and things like, hunting, planting and/or gathering, we can see anecdoticly at least, that those societies are more connected with their intuitive senses, such as a sense of "what kind of winter/summer it's gonna be," "when to plant crops," "go hunting and/or fishing," or even when danger is present.

Our thoughts and ideas about what is "good" or "bad" depend on what our society and/or environment teaches us.  These thoughts and ideas form our judgements, and so, we are in this modern society, constantly judging ourselves and others unconsciously. These judgements cause us to feel emotions that we do not necessarily need to feel, because our judgements are skewed by what our society/environment has shown us is "good" or "bad."  For this reason, one of the first steps in developing a deeper connection with our intuition or psychic selves, is to rehabituate our thinking.  We learn how to become more aware of our thoughts, words and actions/interactions, without judging them as "good" or "bad."  This requires some commitment on our parts to "stay aware" of what is going on in our minds.  But if we learn how to observe what's going on in our minds, we can stop the cycle of negative emotions and reactions, and learn to feel more joyful about just being as we are. 

Eckhart Tolle had a wonderful example in his book, The Power of Now.  He suggested using driving a car in traffic as a place to practice being more present (if you are a road-rager, it may NOT be the best place to start).  The way I understood his suggestion, and applied it, is that we should pay attention to our thoughts and emotions when we are driving. If we are late, we might feel frantic and anxious about that - we might be think,"I'm always late! Why can't I be more organized!"; or maybe a car just cuts us off, and we might think,  "How dare you cut me off! You think you are better than me?"  both of these mind patterns will likely cause us to feel feel anxious or angry. As a result, we might begin acting more aggressively on the than we otherwise are.  We may drive more carelessly, or cut someone else off - leading to an accident.  So the next step is that we should pay attention to how those thoughts are affecting our emotions and body. 

We should ask ourselves, "Where, in my body, am I feeling the emotions?  Is it in your stomach, your chest, throat, jaw, eyes - or do you feel pressure in your head?  Pay attention to where in your body you are feeling this.  What happens when we do this, is that we begin to notice that the initial feeling that caused the discomfort in our bodies, disappates, or disolves.  When that happens, we can almost laugh at ourselves for generating the thoughts, that caused the emotions, that caused the discomfort.  We connect to our consciousness, our very being!

We have to stick with it - keep practicing and applying these ideas - it might only help a little the first few times we do it - but over time, we will see that it will change the way we interact with others (and other cars!!!!).  Once we have the method down, we can begin applying it to other situations.