Weekly Inner Work from Inner Frontier: Present Through and Through

Inner Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

Inner Work

For the week of December 8, 2008

Present Through and Through

To be present, truly present, embraces several interlocking levels within our integral unity. First, we allow our automatic processes to flow as they normally would, but within the umbrella of our presence. For example, in walking, speaking, reading, or typing, our body knows quite well how to carry out those actions without our intentionally guiding every detail. Our body knows how to walk, how to form the words we speak and recognize the words we read, how to move our fingers across the keyboard to type a message, and how to tie our shoes. All such skills happen entirely by the automatic energy, once we have learned them well. The beauty of that level of action consists of its semi-independent efficacy, in not demanding our conscious involvement in each minute detail. Presence need not interfere, but we do keep our automatic actions within the purview of our intention, within our overall guidance. Without presence, we tend to be led around by our habitual patterns of behavior.

A second level of presence engages our sensory awareness, first and foremost of our body. We sense our body. That means visceral perception of our body through the sensitive energy, which enables our direct contact with our body. We also sense our thoughts, becoming aware of our thoughts as thoughts. We become able to intentionally direct them, no longer at the mercy of having our thoughts wander ceaselessly in an aimless and automatic fashion. We become aware of our emotional states and able to step back from the precipice of destructive emotions. With sensitive awareness in all three, body, mind, and heart simultaneously, we move toward wholeness, toward the next level of presence.

The third level is being the one who is present, having the sense that “I am” here, doing what I am doing, consciously experiencing what I am experiencing. Our I acts like a structural and communications column that reaches throughout our being and connects, guides, and supports the whole of us. Our I unifies us. To be present through and through means to have our intention and attention, our will, our central I extending from our innermost consciousness, our experience of being our self, through our thoughts and emotions, through our sensory and body awareness, and through our automatic functioning. Present through and through means to inhabit the whole of our being. Such presence confers true wholeness.

This third level of presence also entails being conscious, being in that energy of pure awareness, the cognizant stillness underlying all experience. By practicing the meditation style of just sitting, we acquire the taste of stillness, the taste of the crucial energy of consciousness. But that is a different matter than being in our I, being the one who is present. The will and intention that is our I is primary. By intentionally being here and now, being present, we draw the conscious energy to us. Together, I and consciousness form the core of presence.

Of course there are higher levels, where we surrender our I in moving into the Sacred Presence. But for this week, please focus on extending your presence to incorporate these first three levels.