Q: I am now in week nine of the Presence Process, and it has been a profound – and intense – journey. Many things have arisen over the past several weeks (various aches and pains, situations in my life, lots of feelings to integrate) but now something is happening and I’m having a hard time knowing what to do with it. Someone in my life (my ex husband) is acting out in a really scary, angry way towards me, in a way that feels threatening. This is a mirror of something inside me coming up, yes?
A: Yes. If you are feeling the impact internally, then it is mirroring your own suppressed fear and rage.
Q: I am trying to breathe through the fear, but I don’t know what to do externally to mitigate this situation.
A: Do not try to 'breathe through the fear' - as in 'trying to use the breathing to make it go away'. Rather be with the fear unconditionally, as it is arising in your experience, whether you are experiencing this fear during your 15 minute breathing sessions or outside of the practice. Whenever this fear arises within your awareness, be with it unconditionally through pure felt-perception. Feel it as it is and allow it to be with you as it is. Do not try to manipulate the experience by attempting to turn the feeling into something else - into what you would rather be feeling.
Q: You say in the book that people who are connected to us from the past are, in some way, going through this process with us. Is that what is happening here?
A: Possibly.
Q: Could I be harming him by being in this process if it’s stirring up so much anger and upset in him?
A: Absolutely not - this process is about you, not him. You are telling 'a story'. The only way you may harm him is if you react on the reflection you are receiving from him by attacking him emotionally, mentally or physically. You are not stirring up anything in him - his own imprinting stirs him - just as yours stirs you. You are responsible for the quality of your experience and he for his. Careful of mistakenly cleaning the mirror because of the reflection. However, all this being said: Be responsible for your well being. If you perceive you are really in physical danger, respond by removing yourself physically from this predicament in whatever way is efficient. However, even when removing yourself, if indeed you feel it necessary, you are still not excused from taking responsibility for the fear this encounter is bringing up within you. The feel you fear is yours. You are afraid of your own unintegrated rage.
Q: By week 9 in the process is it still to be expected that this big issues would be arising to be cleared?
A: Do you really expect you are able to clear generations of imprinting in nine weeks of any procedure? Do not be unrealistic. The first time through The Presence Process introduces us to the tools required to take responsibility for the quality of our experience. I now suggest to everyone that we move through this procedure at least three times. This teaches us the dynamics of living responsively. This responsibility to respond to our life experience then continues as long as we are alive. While we are in this world we are facing our imprinted condition - which is deep and many layered. This is one of the reasons why we are here. Responding is a way of life we embrace ongoing - not simply something we do for ten weeks. Long after we have completed this procedure we shall still be faced with challenging felt-encounters. However, once training ourselves into perceptual response, and behaving accordingly, the quality of our encounters, whether challenging or not, take on a different resonance. They are imbued with awareness. The challenging experiences of life as a human being continue - but when we embrace them through responsive awareness - our suffering through them gradually decreases until we no longer suffer no matter how bumpy the ride. Everyone has challenges in this life - however, those who respond instead of react do not suffer these - they, as challenging as the experience may be, embrace them as divinely given growth-points.
Q: Or maybe there’s something going wrong here?
A: No. You are receiving exactly what you require in this moment to bring your awareness face to face with what is deeply suppressed within your own emotional body. Your experience is valid - now validate it by responding instead of telling fearful stories and reacting to these.
