Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the Week of January 16, 2023


Presence and I

(I and Me: 4)

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Full presence consists of three elements from the realms of the sensitive energies, the conscious energy, and will. If any of the three are missing or weak, then presence is missing or weak. The sensitive energy in the body, which we call sensation, gives substance to presence. It is the foundation of presence. If we wish to live in presence, we need to sense our body, our whole body. Without a strong sensation in our whole body, our presence is at best thin. The more we practice sensing, the more we come toward realizing the possibility of living in sensation.

And as we practice sensing, feeling awakens. The very intention to practice comes with a feeling component. The sensitive energy accumulated by sensing our body spills over into the sensitive energy of feeling, into the longing to live with more quality, more aliveness. In the process, that feeling energy takes us out of the thrall of our automatic, reactive emotions.

As the sensation and feeling energies spill over into mind energy, we have more clarity of mind, awareness of the contents of our mind, awareness of thoughts as thoughts. Mind energy takes us out of the thrall of our automatic, associative, and reactive chains of thought.

The three forms of sensitive energy together create a substantive base for presence. And it all begins with the persistent practice of sensing our body, perhaps aided by energy breathing (drawing the sensitive energy from the air), to the point that our experience of our sensitive energy body is as strong or stronger than our experience of our physical body.

Nevertheless, without some conscious energy being involved, our mind and emotions remain prone to being driven by automatic emotional reactions and associative thoughts. The conscious energy enables the transition from me to I, with the former resulting from an abdication of will to the automatic, conditioned, habitual mode of living, and the latter consisting of reclaiming ourselves, becoming who we are, willing ourselves to be, simply, directly, and now.

The conscious energy comes as cognizant stillness, as the boundless space of peace and pure awareness underlying all our experience. Quiet meditation opens us to the reality of consciousness, the substrate of pure awareness beneath all the contents of experience. With practice, we begin to see that consciousness is always here, always available, if we avail ourselves of it, if we open to it. It is a subtle but very significant change, as we come to live in inner peace with a clear mind and open heart.

Conscious energy is the appropriate receptacle for our individual will, for our true I. For example, when we pay attention to something, it is our will, our I, acting on and through the conscious energy to direct our awareness, to focus our consciousness and senses. When we are present, really present, there is someone who is present. That someone is us, our I, our will, our willing ourselves to be. Without the conscious energy, there is no lens of wholeness for our will to shine through. Without that lens of wholeness, our will is scattered among the automatic impulses that form our me. With the conscious energy we transition from an amorphous me to a singular and whole I.

For this week, please practice moving from your me to your I, and abide as that.


     

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