07Feb
What conditions make it possible to be fully present and hold space for our potential future selves to emerge? What does it take to let go of what holds us in the past and be open to a future impulse that wants to come into being through us?
Perhaps we do not always know it, but we experience many small and big Presencing moments in our lives: moments when we are fully in the moment – reading, listening with the heart, and sensing into what announces itself or is coming about.
Have you ever looked for something in all the familiar places, focusing on the act of searching and – when you have failed, given up, and stopped for a moment – known exactly where to find it? Or, have you ever experienced the loss of someone close to you and in the hours and days following the event, found yourself in a different state of being than usual? More open, quieter, more in touch with your feelings; feeling as if time is stretched, aware of things you want to change in your life, more creative and conscious of your actions as you execute everyday tasks? These are examples of Presencing: being wholly in the present, no longer led by the habits of the past, nor chasing the future.
In these spaces – or non-spaces – I have experienced a different kind of knowing. A knowing that comes to me when I am open and still. A knowing that feels as if it’s coming from the periphery of my awareness. Have you noticed how there is, without fail, a moment of nothingness in these open spaces? There is a gap between giving up on the search, and the instant of knowing where to look. Or, in the moment of hearing about a beloved's passing, time and space seem to extend into stillness, suspended.
Some conversations and meetings can be of this nature: two or more people come together and, often in or after a moment of stillness, something new arrives that no participant could’ve come to on their own. Being still with an open disposition in nature can have a similar effect: one witnesses or experiences something out of the ordinary. Faced with making a weighty decision can often move one to greater openness and the kind of inner quiet space where a solution arrives like a gift.
These are Presencing moments.
When we use the methods and tools developed by the Presencing Institute (www.presencing.org), we consciously facilitate the conditions that lead to Presencing, and learn to capture the wisdom granted from our future selves.
The process has several steps, for instance:
- finding firm ground in the moment
- suspending any judgments, and cynical opinions
- opening the mind and heart for a deeper connection with reality
- becoming curious and compassionate
- letting go of what holds us in the past
- accessing our courage to not know, and to be with our discomfort
- allowing stillness and listening to the heart’s intelligence
- sensing what emerges
- reflecting on and writing down the emergent insights and experiences.
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