The Path of Presence: 8 Awareness-Expanding Energy Practices to Ignite Your Purpose
272
The Path of Presence: 8 Awareness-Expanding Energy Practices to Ignite Your Purpose
272eBook
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Overview
The light of your Presence is the radiance of your essential self.
Are you dedicated to a spiritual path, but not feeling as connected as you would like? Do you seek positive change for the Earth, but feel helpless to act? Are you overwhelmed with personal challenges, or paralyzed with fear, pain, or loss? Do you have a vision that you have not been able to manifest? If so, it’s time to magnify your Presence and leave the wishful state of hoping for the active state of creating.
The Path of Presence introduces you to eight energy-based, awareness-expanding practices that will awaken your inner light and magnify your Presence. Activating Presence will help you:
The Path of Presence invites you on a journey into your heart and into the heart of the universe.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781632659347 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 10/24/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Andrews has written or coauthored seven books on healing, subtle energy, and consciousness, including The Path of Energy and The Path of Emotions. She taught for 15 years at the Connecticut Center for Massage Therapy and 7 years at the Kripalu Yoga Institute. Andrews is an authorized teacher of Jin Shin Do Bodymind Acupressure, a Reiki Master-Teacher, and an instructor in energy awareness for personal and professional development.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
In the Light of presence
Awakened Perception
Awakened Perception
Occasionally, and without warning, the world around me changes: The light is brighter and more alive, streaming in a multitude of colors, shades, and densities into, through, and around objects, trees, animals, people, and me. I am incorporated into this stream of light that is all-that-is. In such moments, I am home.
The change can happen on an in-breath and be gone on the out-breath. The experience is both fleeting and eternal. It does not need repeating to be imprinted in my memory, yet several times I have been graced: once in a yoga class, once in a copse of pine trees, once looking into the eyes of the man who would become my husband, and once as my world fell apart. Twice more it occurred as a prolonged interaction.
In her TED talk, titled My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor eloquently describes a similar experience that occurred during her stroke. Watching her talk, I wondered whether my flashes of self-realization were the result of mini strokes. I concluded they were not. Rather, they were flashes of awakened sight. In those nanoseconds of sentience, seeds were planted whose need to grow directs the course of my life.
These moments of clear sight are not unique to me. Many people have such experiences or feel them just beyond the edge of their consciousness. Perhaps you have had a similar event and appreciate that there is a part of you, outside of your everyday awareness, that operates within this arena of light. That part is your Presence, a reflection of the deeper totality of who you are. It orchestrates your life, instills you with purpose, and works toward your highest good. When you develop Presence, your path is illuminated as your inner self shines.
The conventional view of Presence is that it is a set of qualities you project that influence people to perceive you in a certain way. In this book, Presence is a spiritual force within. It is developed through your relationship with eight specific aspects of being alive: a reflection of how consciously you use the precious force of life.
The Power of Presence
Presence is the canvass that conveys your essence to the world. It communicates the turmoil or serenity of your thoughts, the turbulence or coherence of your emotions, and the conviction of your truth. It reflects how you process, integrate, and use life-force. Presence carries the force of your spirit to interact with the whole of reality.
As your inner self is reflected outwardly through your Presence, you draw to you everything needed for the lessons and achievements of life. If you pay attention, Presence guides your path and gives you the conviction to pursue your dreams. When tragedy strikes, as it will in every life, Presence provides the grace to meet the challenges with strength, calm, and courage. Through Presence, the continuity between internal and external reality, the continuous flow from one to the other, is experienced.
Since the reality you perceive is filtered through your Presence, the more developed your Presence, the greater your awareness of deeper layers of existence. It's your choice whether your awareness is based within the single layer of the material world or it expands into the spirit within everything and further into the dimension of light. Developing Presence is a process of developing awareness. As you do, the richness of life increases exponentially.
The flow between internal thoughts and feelings and the creation of external experiences can sometimes be obscure, and you might not see the connection. Then it can be a struggle to manifest your dreams and live from your inner truth. You may have difficulty rising to the ever present challenges of life and feel obstructed in being your authentic self. Obstruction is usually due to learned limitations that are reflected in your Presence. Here's how it works.
The essence of who you are, along with what you came to achieve in this life, exists at the very core of your being: in your heart, which is the throne of your spirit. Your heart is fed and enabled through life-force, which streams to you from the heavens, the Earth, the air, and the food and water you eat and drink. When you were young, your core self radiated unimpeded into the world. Inevitably, criticism, judgment, perceived failure, and other inhibiting experiences created beliefs that overlaid your radiance, causing distortions. To hide these perceived imperfections, defenses were laid on top of the distortions. As a result, not only is your perception filtered through limitation, your life-force is spent sustaining this very complex arrangement. Using your life-force to uphold limitation and defense restricts the emanation of your core, essential self, hampering the quality of your life.
Restoring the light of your Presence is a process of letting go of distortions and false beliefs. It is a renewed appreciation of the radiance that is your true self. You can address distortions through talk therapy, bodywork, meditation, and many other practices. It can take a very long time, or no time at all. It can be as simple as awakening.
This book reflects my path as a naturopathic doctor, energy intuitive, and mother into eight energy-based practices centered on eight unique levels of awareness. I call these the Eight Pillars of Presence. These practices magnify Presence and ignite purpose. Purpose is not some grand and monumental task you assume for this life. Rather, purpose is a natural extension of who you are. Your purpose is to be all of yourself as fully, completely, and lovingly as you can. Practicing the Eight Pillars enables your authentic self to shine.
The purpose of your life is to be your true self. Freeing your essence to shine is the purpose of developing Presence.
The Eight Pillars of Presence
Your energy is tied up in relationships with everything around you. You have relationships with people, governments, organizations, your inner self, Earth, plants, animals, ideals, goals, and more. Everything you give your attention to results in an exchange of energy that creates a relationship. Quantum physics calls this entanglement. Each relationship requires you to look at the world in a slightly different way. Some relationships distort reality; others clarify.
The Eight Pillars are Being, Connecting, Grounding, Centering, Balancing, Aligning, Clearing, and Honoring. Each Pillar reflects a specific relationship based in an essential awareness that supports the uncovering and expression of your authentic self. Being, for example, reflects your relationship, or lack of, with death and your ability to engage present-time awareness. When death becomes your ally, you are enough, just as you are, and able to be present in the moment without running to hide in the past or the future.
You are in constant internal and largely subconscious dialog with the relationships within the Pillars. In this book, these dialogs are brought to light and interacted with. Practices of self- reflection and energy exercises guide you inward for the encounter. The growth of doing so is reflected in your Presence and vitalizes your dynamic, creative engagement with life.
The benefit of developing and using the Eight Pillars was dramatically demonstrated to me when my daughter was in a near fatal car accident while I was writing this book. My world was rocked as I struggled to rise to the turmoil and pain that unfolded. If any of the Pillars had seemed theoretical to me before, they revealed themselves as fully relevant, multi-layered, and beautifully functional. Consequently, I can say with certainty that the Eight Pillars can carry you beyond your current limits to connect with a deeper reality. The journey they take you on provides meaning, joy, and empowerment. They will help you overcome challenges, yes, but also help you to live you light and share your brilliance with the world.
Using the Eight Pillars and developing Presence transforms your awareness and changes the nature of your reality. You become part of the healing and transformation of a world that is out of balance. You become part of a new wave traveling through Earth.
Tools for Developing Presence
Your access into the Eight Pillars occurs through your body-mind in the integration of your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual perceptions. Access to the body-mind is achieved using conscious breathing and felt-perceptions. Conscious breathing leads your awareness into the exercises, while felt-perceptions, also called felt-senses, provide the feedback necessary to chart your path.
These are not complicated tools that you need to learn. They are natural, innate functions of your body-mind. You use them every day, sometimes consciously, most of the time unconsciously. All you are doing now is becoming aware of how you use them and doing so on purpose.
Felt-Perception: Speaking With the Language of the Heart
Felt-perception is awareness based on a combination of mental insight with body sensations, emotions, and feelings. Felt- perceptions are the basis of intuition, gut feelings, hunches, and deeper insights that reveal your inner truth. They represent the language used by your heart to communicate with your conscious mind.
Although you may have forgotten it, you were born knowing this language. It is a method of communication using your body- mind that engages in a conversation where words aren't necessary. Body sensations, feelings, emotions, and unique perceptions are the vocabulary.
Here is some of the vocabulary of this language:
* Sensations such as goose bumps, shivers, hot, and/or cold that arise in response to situations.
* Emotions that come from deep within, arriving with no apparent stimulation during conversations, activities, or meditation and shift your energy.
* Gut feelings about people, places, or choices.
* Sensations such as feeling pushed away, feeling weak and lacking energy, or feeling disconnected and detached are signals that something is wrong.
* Sensations such as feeling drawn forward, feeling stronger and more energized, or feeling more engaged are signals that something is exactly right.
* Feeling a sense of connection, opening, or flow when your actions or thoughts are in sync with your vision, the flow of the universe, and present-time information.
* Visions or images that produce deep feeling and have a profound sense of reality that guide your direction.
* Pulsations, waves, and flow within the body.
* In situations where the body's wisdom has been ignored for a long time, the body might be forced to speak with pain, dysfunction, and possibly disease.
* The arrival of new thoughts, ideas, or concepts that seem to come from nowhere.
Using this language, truth is recognized when information you receive is accompanied by body signals. Deeper understandings are found with unexpected images that impress on your awareness. Directions are made clear when you sense a flow within your body as you make your choices.
There are myriad ways to speak with a dialect for each person. The nuance of the vocabulary of this language is uniquely yours. To understand it, you need to attend to the signals you receive, notice what they relate to, and start a personal dictionary. Perhaps you have already begun to pay attention and to chart your personal vocabulary. However, if you would like, there is more information in my book The Path of Energy (New Page Books, 2011).
On the journey into the Eight Pillars, felt-perceptions are your constant guideposts. It will soon be second nature to assess life using these tools.
Conscious Breathing: Accessing Your Attention
Your attention is the most powerful tool you have for perceiving the world and engaging intention. Being able to direct your attention opens the gate for living with full engagement, accessing all parts of self and bringing your fullness to the situations you encounter. Attention rides on the vehicle of your breath which leads your awareness into the felt-perceptions of the body-mind. Becoming aware of your breath shifts your internal state of Being and frees your attention to explore life.
The breath is the link between the body and the mind. When the breath is shallow and limited, attention is kept in the head or outside the body. This pattern develops in order to avoid uncomfortable feelings. Taking short, shallow breaths or holding the breath for short periods of time protects you from feeling uncomfortable emotions and sensations in your body. It also keeps you from feeling what is real. Bringing your breath more fully into the body allows you to feel and engage your felt- perceptions.
Conscious breathing is nothing more than becoming aware of the breath and using it to direct your attention inward. This shifts your state of Being, opens new levels of awareness, and accesses felt-perceptions. Conscious breathing is your vehicle to contact deeper parts of self and shift into deeper levels of awareness. Each of the particular aspects of awareness within the Eight Pillars is accessed through conscious breathing.
Take a deep breath right now and notice how your mind is instantly calmer and your awareness of your body instantly increased. If you want to intensify this awareness, deepen your breathing even further. Deep, relaxed, unforced breathing draws your attention down, out of your mind, and inward to your heart. When you deepen your breath, it's impossible for your body-mind not to change. Within a few minutes of such breathing, you will be in a different place from before you started. Your mind will be calmer and clearer, your muscles more relaxed, and your attention more focused. This is inevitable.
Combining conscious breathing with felt-perceptions is used throughout the journey into the Eight Pillars. Conscious breathing opens your awareness, and felt-perceptions guide the journey.
The Culture of Confusion
Everyone has Presence: you, I, people on the street, leaders, celebrities, everyone. Only the degree of expression differs. You may wonder, if Presence is the key to a rich and meaningful life, why isn't it being cultivated by more people? The answer is confusion. Our culture has a way of confusing one thing with another. Sometimes it's difficult to see what Presence truly is.
The first time I presented the Eight Pillars in a workshop, I was startled at what happened when participants were asked to think of a person with Presence. Expecting examples like Nelson Mandela or Mother Theresa, I was surprised that many attendees named people who either projected an aura of glittering glamor or who were intimidating in their behavior. Needless to say, neither of these were what I had in mind.
In the first instance, where people provided examples of glittering personalities, Presence was being confused with charisma. It's easy to see why. Charisma projects energy. It draws people's attention and gives the impression of mastery. It embodies the fine art of presentation and first impressions. Casting a spell with the subtleties of body language, communication, and style, charisma can mesmerize people.
However, despite the importance of first impressions, charisma can only express one aspect of who the person is: the persona he or she is presenting to the world in that moment. Charisma tends to fall apart when sufficiently challenged. Charisma will not see you through tragedy. It is based on what the person wants to project, rather than who the person truly is: presentation, not essence.
Presence is not the same as how you present yourself. Although Presence is conveyed through what you say and do, also included is the vibe you give off while you do it. You can control your expression and how much grip to give your handshake, but it is impossible to mask the energy you radiate. While charisma polishes your veneer, Presence reveals your true self and ignites your purpose. Existing beyond will or reason, Presence cannot be manipulated into Being. You can only open to it and let it shine.
In the second instance, where people who were overbearing and intimidating were named as having Presence, self-importance was being confused with personal power. Because Presence does increase personal power, it's fair to question the distinction. After all, con men, dictators, politicians, and false gurus all have both charisma and very powerful projections, enough so that people become followers in a personality cult.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Path of Presence"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Synthia Andrews.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword: The Path of Presence,
Introduction,
part I: journey into the Eight pillars,
Chapter 1: In the Light of Presence,
Chapter 2: The Pillar of Being,
Chapter 3: The Pillar of Connecting,
Chapter 4: The Pillar of Grounding,
Chapter 5: The Pillar of Centering,
Chapter 6: The Pillar of Balancing,
Chapter 7: The Pillar of Aligning,
Chapter 8: The Pillar of Clearing,
Chapter 9: The Pillar of Honoring,
part II: stepping into presence,
Chapter 10: The Eight Pillar Process,
Chapter 11: Being Me,
Chapter 12: Foundations of Creating Your Vision,
Chapter 13: Opening to Nature's Design,
Chapter 14: Presence in Conflict Resolution,
Chapter 15: Walking a Path With Heart,
Conclusion,
Appendix: Emotional Meaning Chart,
Glossary,
Notes,
Index,