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[post_content] => During a particularly hard break-up in my 20s, a friend advised me, “The more present you are during this process, the bigger the present you’ll get out of it.” And though I barely understood what that meant, I gave it a try and an odd thing happened. I saw that I was choosing the big, dramatic grieving process I was going through. And that meant it was optional.
In The Art of Presence, Eckhart Tolle says, “Through thought you cannot possibly grasp what presence is.” But he gives some clues to point us in the right direction. He says it’s there, “when you’re not thinking about the last moment, or looking to the next one.” And he uses phrases like “a state of relaxed alertness” and “a spacious stillness,” to describe it.
Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.”
Our presence is tremendously rare and hugely valuable. Especially in this age of epidemic distraction, it’s increasingly difficult and uncommon to choose a voluntary time-out from technology, data, and our own mental analysis. But unlike the artificial value of a coin that accidentally got stamped with a head on both sides, our presence can do for us what nothing else can. And we can make it more abundant by simply choosing it.
Although it may not put food in our belly, most other problems disappear with presence. The need to fix or relive the past disappears. The need to avoid certain unwanted events in the future disappears. Even if we're working on something now that will benefit us in the future, with our presence, we work on it now in order to work on it now. And that’s enough.
The allure of distraction, which so often threatens our presence, dissolves when we practice being present. Do you know the word obviate? I like to write using words that almost everyone understands, but there’s only one word I can think of that means “to make unnecessary,” and that word is obviate. Learning to deepen our presence obviates the urge for distraction and mental departure from our current reality.
With presence, we perceive all kinds of intelligence and detail that we’re otherwise deaf and blind to. We know when to eat and when to stop eating. We know how to move our body in a way that doesn’t cause pain or injury. Our work becomes more interesting. Our relationships become healthier. We listen better and we feel heard.
With two kids, my presence is requested almost incessantly. I hear the word Papa at least 100 times a day. Often, I hear it ten or more times in quick succession. We all yearn for someone’s total presence with us. These are the moments of connection between what is the same in both of us. Presence uncovers what’s real in this moment. And that’s refreshing, exciting, and affirming.
When we’re all so busy that we see time as a commodity, it can seem that giving our presence to someone else is like giving away our treasure. But are we actually giving something away?
Of course not. When we “give” our presence we gain the present. To withhold our presence means both we and the other person miss out.
So, how can you learn to be more present? It takes practice. If you’re new to this, I don’t recommend making a goal like, “I’m going to be more present from now on.” I don’t want to discourage you, I just want you to be realistic about what you’re up against – a lifetime of habits and a sea of tantalizing distractions.
Try something a bit less ambitious, such as this: Once a day, as you begin some activity – whether it’s buying groceries, playing Candyland, eating a meal, and listening to a friend’s problems – select this activity as an exercise in presence. In your mind, identify what exactly you’re doing – “I’m vacuuming the floor” – and devote yourself to that. Don’t run away in the middle of the activity. This means don’t pick up your phone, don’t depart in your mind to explore other thoughts and ideas, don’t visit the past, don’t anticipate what’s next, don’t judge. Just dwell in the present. Be saturated by the present. Feel everything. Accept everything. And let each next moment come.
Over time, quicker than you might think, you’ll start regaining your attention. You’ll be able to focus on something for more than five seconds. You’ll begin to yearn for this, which will make your practice much easier. And as you start willingly selecting more and more moments to be completely present, you’ll experience an unending offering of presents.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => Imagine you’re brought to a beautiful place where you’ll be meeting a person with whom you’ll share an incredible, lifelong love – a romantic love or a powerful friendship, or both. If such a person already exists or existed in your life, you can use them for this exercise. Whomever it is, know that they completely love and accept you.
The environment is perfect for you – airy or cozy, with a fire or open windows, vases of flowers, your favorite music, and curtains blowing in the breeze. Maybe it’s a garden, or the top of a mountain, or at the fanciest bowling alley in the world.
Try feeling into this. You’re in this lovely space, about to meet someone who makes you feel both strong and at ease. Imagine you’re facing this person and walking toward them. As you do so, consider your posture. Sit up, lift your head, open your heart, carry yourself as if fully welcoming this fun and inspiring partnership. Take a moment to ride this visualization forward. Feel it in your body, let a smile spread across your face as you imagine coming together and hugging or laughing or dancing because you find each other delightful.
Now, come back to your posture. Feel that straight spine, that open chest, that “lifting” energy?
Our posture is an expression of how we’re carrying our lifeforce and meeting the world. How might life be different if you met each situation with the same posture that you’re meeting this beloved person?
Too often, we collapse, clench, or curl in on ourselves as an unconscious reflection of feeling burdened, apprehensive, untrusting, timid, or vulnerable. Consequently, we feel tired, weak, indecisive, and unconfident.
We also use posture to show dominance and submission, and to indicate prowess. But rather than “posturing” like a puffer fish in an arrogant or animalistic way, I’m suggesting we use posture as a conscious embodiment of who we choose to be and how we choose to relate to life.
In a happy moment, our posture often automatically improves, and it also works the other way around. When you carry yourself with a combination of strength and ease, your mood improves, you relate more positively to the world, and the world responds more willingly to you.
What are your values? What are your gifts? What’s your life purpose? If you have our Dreambook, revisit these sections to remind yourself of what’s most important to you and what you have to share with the world. Who do you want to be?
How do you want to relate to life? With kindness? Openness? Trust? As if it’s an incredible game? As an opportunity to experience a splendiferous palette of flavors, sights, and experiences?
Write a bit about who you choose to be and how to choose to relate to life. Now imagine embodying these intentions and surrender to how your body wishes to reconfigure itself in order to be a cleaner, more accurate and aligned vehicle for this spirit. Throughout the day, bring yourself back to this intention and take just a moment to again reconfigure your body to express this attitude toward life.
Notice how this reconfiguration process changes over time. Sometimes it may be a gross adjustment – your head lifts, your ears come in alignment with your shoulders, your shoulders drop and draw back, your chest opens, your belly relaxes, your jaw unclenches, your breathing deepens. Other times, you may experience it as a subtle unraveling of inner constraint, or as a ripple that emanates through you, bringing all your parts into harmony.
The hardest part is simply remembering to do it.
I’d love to hear what you notice about the positive in negative ways your posture affects you. Feel free to share in the comments section below.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => How You Hold Yourself Can Change Everything
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[post_content] => Unbeknownst to most Americans, the world is full of animists. According to Professor Stephen Asma of Columbia College Chicago, “Pretty much everywhere except Western Europe, the Middle East, and North America” is dominated by animistic cultures. Animism is the belief that everything has a soul or spiritual essence; not just living things, but also mountains, fire, the sky, the sea, and sometimes even words and human-made objects.
In practice, though, it’s more than just a belief. It’s a sensibility, a way of experiencing and interacting with the world. Animists relate to their surroundings with a certain intentionality, as if constantly among old friends.
To people in the developed world, such beliefs might seem primitive and superstitious. After all, who needs a world full of spirits when we have science? Science has given us explanations and inventions that have alleviated many hardships and dispelled so much fear.
But it hasn’t made us invincible or immune to fear. We’re still afraid of death, suffering, being alone, poverty, public humiliation, paper cuts, and so on. There’s little solace in science from these bugaboos.
Its other major shortcoming is that science has sucked the spirituality out of life. By reducing everything to cells and atoms, electromagnetic waves and neurotransmitters, it puts the whole phenomenal world beneath us. This promotes a certain feeling of ownership over the world – rather than a sense of belonging to it. If we put all our eggs into the science basket, life can seem random, lacking meaning and soul.
Science and Spirit aren’t mutually exclusive. But ever since early anthropologists looked down their noses at animistic cultures – seeing them as too dumb to know the difference between living and nonliving things, and giving their leaders justification to colonize and oppress them – the developed world has favored science as the ultimate authority. As we seek to right such wrongs, perhaps it’s worth considering not just what indigenous cultures lost, but what the oppressors also lost.
To an animist, the scientist is missing out on an entire plane of reality that’s beneath the surface and accessible only through an expansion of consciousness. To a scientist, the subjective reality of the animist’s consciousness is unmeasurable, untestable, unprovable, and therefore unscientific and even unreal.
What would be possible if we stopped using science to dominate or invalidate what we don’t understand? Can we concede – scientists included – that not everything is a scientific matter? This applies foremost to consciousness itself, which is entirely beyond the grasp of science, and arguably the only thing we know for certain to be real. We also know that humans yearn for a connection that’s beyond the ability of science to explain or provide.
You don’t need to be anti-science to be open to a spiritual reality. I say this as a scientist and animist.
If you’re open to it, I have a simple assignment for you to try this week. Consider this: how might your life be different if you treated your surroundings as if you were in relationship with them? Make it a lighthearted game.
What happens when you express gratitude to your bed, sheets, and pillow upon waking? What happens when you allow yourself to be in awe of the shimmering water that flows, as if by magic, from your showerhead? How does it feel to thank it for invigorating and purifying you? Does it feel any different to bless your food before eating it and thank it for giving itself to nourish you?
What is it like to thank your home for keeping you safe and comfortable? When you step outside, what happens when you experience the earth as the ever-present stability beneath your feet, supporting you and nurturing everything that grows upon it? What do you notice when you give names to the familiar trees or rocks in your neighborhood? How does it feel different to think of the sky as a beautiful, conscious dome over you versus your usual way? What changes when you think of all the animals you encounter as non-human people, each with an equally valid reason to be here as the human people you see?
And what happens when you listen and feel as if all these aspects of the world have something to communicate back to you?
When I say, “What happens?” I’m not (necessarily) asking, “Does your pillow respond, ‘Thanks for finally saying something! It was a pleasure to cradle your head all night!’?” More importantly, I’m asking, how does it make you feel to relate to the world in this way in comparison to your usual way? And if the answer is, “good” or “better” or “playful,” then keep going with it.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => During a particularly hard break-up in my 20s, a friend advised me, “The more present you are during this process, the bigger the present you’ll get out of it.” And though I barely understood what that meant, I gave it a try and an odd thing happened. I saw that I was choosing the big, dramatic grieving process I was going through. And that meant it was optional.
In The Art of Presence, Eckhart Tolle says, “Through thought you cannot possibly grasp what presence is.” But he gives some clues to point us in the right direction. He says it’s there, “when you’re not thinking about the last moment, or looking to the next one.” And he uses phrases like “a state of relaxed alertness” and “a spacious stillness,” to describe it.
Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.”
Our presence is tremendously rare and hugely valuable. Especially in this age of epidemic distraction, it’s increasingly difficult and uncommon to choose a voluntary time-out from technology, data, and our own mental analysis. But unlike the artificial value of a coin that accidentally got stamped with a head on both sides, our presence can do for us what nothing else can. And we can make it more abundant by simply choosing it.
Although it may not put food in our belly, most other problems disappear with presence. The need to fix or relive the past disappears. The need to avoid certain unwanted events in the future disappears. Even if we're working on something now that will benefit us in the future, with our presence, we work on it now in order to work on it now. And that’s enough.
The allure of distraction, which so often threatens our presence, dissolves when we practice being present. Do you know the word obviate? I like to write using words that almost everyone understands, but there’s only one word I can think of that means “to make unnecessary,” and that word is obviate. Learning to deepen our presence obviates the urge for distraction and mental departure from our current reality.
With presence, we perceive all kinds of intelligence and detail that we’re otherwise deaf and blind to. We know when to eat and when to stop eating. We know how to move our body in a way that doesn’t cause pain or injury. Our work becomes more interesting. Our relationships become healthier. We listen better and we feel heard.
With two kids, my presence is requested almost incessantly. I hear the word Papa at least 100 times a day. Often, I hear it ten or more times in quick succession. We all yearn for someone’s total presence with us. These are the moments of connection between what is the same in both of us. Presence uncovers what’s real in this moment. And that’s refreshing, exciting, and affirming.
When we’re all so busy that we see time as a commodity, it can seem that giving our presence to someone else is like giving away our treasure. But are we actually giving something away?
Of course not. When we “give” our presence we gain the present. To withhold our presence means both we and the other person miss out.
So, how can you learn to be more present? It takes practice. If you’re new to this, I don’t recommend making a goal like, “I’m going to be more present from now on.” I don’t want to discourage you, I just want you to be realistic about what you’re up against – a lifetime of habits and a sea of tantalizing distractions.
Try something a bit less ambitious, such as this: Once a day, as you begin some activity – whether it’s buying groceries, playing Candyland, eating a meal, and listening to a friend’s problems – select this activity as an exercise in presence. In your mind, identify what exactly you’re doing – “I’m vacuuming the floor” – and devote yourself to that. Don’t run away in the middle of the activity. This means don’t pick up your phone, don’t depart in your mind to explore other thoughts and ideas, don’t visit the past, don’t anticipate what’s next, don’t judge. Just dwell in the present. Be saturated by the present. Feel everything. Accept everything. And let each next moment come.
Over time, quicker than you might think, you’ll start regaining your attention. You’ll be able to focus on something for more than five seconds. You’ll begin to yearn for this, which will make your practice much easier. And as you start willingly selecting more and more moments to be completely present, you’ll experience an unending offering of presents.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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