PRESENCE PROCESS Q&A

Completion, Appreciation, and Continuation

2009-11-22T03:21:00.000-08:00

This Question and Answer format is now complete as it is running here. Thank you for your participation through emails and reading. This format will pick up again on the new Namaste participation-interactive website to be launched in the next couple of months. In line with the up-n-coming release of The Presence Process 2nd Edition, all current discussion about this procedure are going to migrate to that new facility. The Presence Portal shall continue as the library portal it currently is.

Can I make a list of what I want each time I start the procedure?

2009-11-09T20:58:00.000-08:00

Q: I have just finished my 2nd time with the Presence Process and I'm going to wait for 3 weeks and finish my 3rd session! I have had such great success with releasing the negative emotional charge around many of my addictions. I listed as my intention when starting the 2nd time...to release the negative emotional charge around my infertility, along with my food and sugar addiction. Does it usually take more than one time through the PP to heal a physical ailment (infertility)? When you say that our Inner Presence knows no order of difficulty, do you mean that we can ask for 2, 3, or 10 things that we want to heal each time we move through the procedure?

A: No, 'no order of difficulty' definitely does not mean you can ask for what you want and then you get it. This is not a shopping spree. It means we receive exactly what we require for our personal growth and development. Do you really believe you know what this is? How do you know having a child is even required for you? Or is this just what you want?

Inner Presence knows no order of difficulty in setting us up to perceive outwardly what is inwardly unintegrated, so that these inner blockages may be consciously cleared. This work is definitely not about making a shopping list and expecting all the items to be delivered, pronto. This is not The Secret or any Law of Attraction technology.

I suggest you contemplate what the difference is between the word 'want', and the word 'required'.

This work is about what is required, not what we think we want. Integration of any condition takes as long as is required. Do you tell your body exactly how long it has to digest a meal and exactly when to have the consequent bowl movement? You have just as much say over how your heart approaches and accomplishes integration. Doing The Presence Process is like the eating of the meal - which is our part in the process. The digestion and elimination - if we keep our heads out of the way - happen organically, according to the required pace.

Congratulations on having completed the journey twice. May your third time through open you to what is required for you. May you gain deeper insight into what it means to "get out of the way".

Will The Presence Process help with chronic procrastination addiction and self-sabotage.

2009-11-04T10:18:00.000-08:00

Q: Can the Presence Process help with chronic procrastination addiction and self-sabotage? I am 42 and have studied law of attraction, personal development, time management, setting goals, etc etc etc...Yet, I'm still nowhere near living up to my goals, dreams and potential. It's so painful to live a life of failure instead of a life lived by my talents and passions and mission. I'd rather die and have considered leaving this planet often, when the pain is too much to handle. Can the Presence Process help me to break through this life-long inertia?

A: Yes, but we can also do a little exploring right now. The first step is to consider that chronic procrastination addiction and self-sabotage - as you call it - is also called "ambition". When a cell in the human body becomes ambitious - and tries to do exactly what it wants - we call it cancer - or variety of Latin names.

For a moment I suggest you drop your goals, dreams, and thoughts about what you perceive as your potential. When they drive us into the future, most of these are driven by unintegrated emotional imprinting.

Take a break from ambition.

All this stuff is mental garbage when it comes to authentically realizing the peace already inherent within all human experience. Rather focus on where you are right now within your life. Your life exactly as it is right now, especially what you perceive as "difficulties", is the nutrition you require digesting in order to be at peace within your experience.

While you chase what you think you want, you miss what you already are given - a possibility beyond trying to do something fantastic so you can feel better about yourself.

You are already all you can be, like a seed is already a tree.

Germination of our human seed took place long, long ago. After germination we go through an evolution of experience: We do stuff; we root and extend above the soil. Then we think about stuff; we branch out and spread our leaves. Then we feel stuff; and so our flowering unfolds. And as we graduate, we real eyes the miracle of it; this is the fruiting.

While we are arrogant enough to assume we know the will and means of the gardener, or that we can disregard such a notion, we run around trying to do whatever it takes to avoid the divine task at hand. And we simultaneous manufacture ideas about "our goals, dreams, and personal development". And so we suffer. But this too has great purpose. Suffering also becomes pointless once this purpose fulfills itself.

Everything required is already given for us to accomplish our fruiting - if we are able to just stop ourselves long enough to perceive and receive this.

Your life as it is is no accident. The word accident is the vocabulary of the unconscious. There are no accidents - only consequence. Your life right now has great consequence. We all need you. But not to help us. And, we definitely don't need you to show us how successful you can be as 'a mortal'. Being successful as a mortal had its place, but that part of our journey too is complete. Mortality-consciousness is about to become extinct.

Rather than trying to manufacture something, realize your authentic predicament. You shall never die. Others may perceive your physical departure from this experience - and so think of you as 'gone' - but for you, there is no holiday from life. Life goes on forever AND EVER, amen.

We are so afraid to face this truth. We think one day we can 'retire' . Some of us are secretly glad we are going to die one day. Some of us want to bring this date forward. The notion of 'a death' brings some sense of relief. We want to die one day [just not actually right now] so we can get out of our current relationships, job descriptions, and boring predicaments.

However, physical death does not release us from "wherever we go, here we are". It does not absolve us of the ongoing consequence of running from our discomfort into the arms of anything that promises us relief from having to face this moment.

There is a point in our journey at which this reactive behavior is to become extinct - and we are in this moment.

It is only in this moment that all of this is unfolding. It is only in this moment we fruit. If we cannot hold our awareness within this moment - or at least intend to do our best to - the fruit is not sweetened. 'The sweetening the fruit' means bringing 'the light of the world into it' - which is the sun of our unconditional beingness.

This means deliberately stopping, turning within, and facing the discomfort within our own heart.

And, this is not about perfection either - it is about participation. What we feel now in each moment is where our most important work is.

This is also not about 'getting anything done', but about consciously being in it - as long as it takes.

It is the radiance of our unconditional being that accomplishes anything worth accomplishing. Once we are consciously radiating unconditional beingness into our experience, by feeling it as intimately and consistently as possible - then everything we do is causally activated to bring us into full, fruiting, awareness.

We are finished with 'the group work'. Group work had its place. But now we are to rejoin our authentic group by taking responsibility for our personal experience, no matter in whose company we are in. We are always within the heart of our authentic group - whether we stand among plants, animals or people.

The felt-aspect of our experience is what unites us - not our physical or mental capacity. The heart is the hinge upon which all our inteconnectedness swings.

If you seek success, then become a successful self-facilitator. Tread the road of impeccable personal intent. Be prepared to become a master of picking yourself up, because on this current winding of the home road, we are all continually falling over. Those who appear not to be are in resistance -or at least trying to stop what is unfolding. Falling over is not significant, being prepared to get up and carry on no matter what, is.

You want to know if The Presence Process can help you? This is what The Presence Process makes possible: A way of being responsible in the world regardless of the world's ongoing drama - and in spite of our own.

This is because through this procedure we draw insight from within which assists us to more clearly recognize and respond to what is required for us individually. If I am doing my best to take care of what is required of me - within my current unfolding human experience - then I automatically contribute to supporting you in what is required for you.

This is because the insight about what is required - as opposed to what I think I want to do to make me feel better about myself - is coming from the same source.

When we ride our insight, we ride in harmony with all others who are riding their insight. This brings us in harmony with the gardener. And, whenever we encounter another who is being driven chiefly by their unintegrated emotional imprint, our insight reveals how to respond, not react, to the situation.

An awareness of peace therefore arises within our experience and radiates into the experiences of others - without our fiddling with them or their experience.

But no one pats us on the back for this level of responsibility - because it is seamless. So there is no applause, degrees, and fancy awards. It is internally initiated, not outwardly projected. Some of our best work is done in the rush hour traffic, or alone in our bedroom.

So it all depends on what your intent is as to whether The Presence Process will be of use to you. It won't help you get what you want. What we want hurts us when it is driven by covering up our hurt.

This is one of the reasons why you are restless and hurting now - because of what you want.

What we each individually require is already given. It is what is happening in our life today, it is what is happening right now.

Whatever is happening to you right now is required. From a mortal-consciousness 'point of you' this realization may appear horrific, unkind, and completely heartless. But your current experience is not. It is deliberate. It is divine. And, the word "deliberate" contains the word liberate. And the word 'divine' says "dive in".

Your life right now is intended to liberate you - it is the key to the door your heart is calling you to participate in opening.

It is your sacred work to consciously feel the feelings as given you daily, without getting lost in the attached mental stories - or engaging the projected physical behavioral reactions. This is challenging. Like an art form, it is only mastered through practice - consistency - living it every day without a destination point by which to keep going.

Destination points eventually cause chronic procrastination addiction and self-sabotage.

The Presence Process teaches living responsibly because there is no choice, really, aside from ongoing suffering.

And, the discomfort we have to face within our own hearts is not actually our point of suffering; it's our trying to get away from our current discomfort that manifests the suffering. When we turn inward and face our discomfort consciously, by willingly feeling it as it reveals itself to us in each moment, the suffering part is over. The discomfort continues, and does so on various levels until full felt-perception is installed.

We are approaching this moment of full installation of felt-perception. Every day is an opportunity to integrate more heart-capacity. Each moment of integrated discomfort installs more felt-perception, and with growing felt-perception comes growing insight, and growing capacity to feel the peace already given to us all.

The Presence Process moves our experience toward authentic inner knowing and inner peace, as opposed to more outer information and striving for some manufactured experience called "happiness".

If what is written here resonates with you - give the procedure a try. Let your experience reveal what is true for you. There are many useful integrative approaches to our current human predicament available on the planet right now. The Presence Process is just one - if it does not work for you - be open to encountering an approach that is.

I don't want to lose my confidence.

2009-10-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

Q: The Presence Process has made my body less numb, which means I feel a lot, even anxiety's. For example, today I had my first presentation ever before an audience and I was shaking, it was strange though, because it was like there were two me's. I don't want to lose my confidence, please shed some light on this.

A: Now you know how you are really feeling inside. Be with this anxiety whenever it arises, just as it is; it is the road leading you authentically into your own heart. Once you become comfortable being in your heart, no matter what the emotion arising, you are authentically confident.

Confidence doesn't come from from controlling how we are feeling; it comes from being at ease with whatever it is we are feeling - including anxiety.

Do you know that Bono of U2 throws up before every concert. Yet, he can still walk onto a stage in front of 1000's, or into meetings with world ambassadors. Does he not appear confident to you when appearing in public? He experiences as much anxiety as you - if not more.

Maybe you simply have no clue what confidence is? It is definitely not "being in control of your emotions". Confidence comes through being at ease with our vulnerability.

This work is not about changing or controlling what it happening through us - it is about being at ease with what is happening through. As long as we continue the journey of confiding with our heart, by feeling what it is transmitting in each moment, we develop authentic confidence.

How can I become accredited to teach The Presence Process?

2009-10-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

Q: I AM IN AWE OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS. I FEEL I HAVE WAITED A LIFETIME FOR THIS COMPREHENSIVE MATERIAL. I WANT TO TEACH THIS PROCESS!. DO YOU OFFER OR WILL YOU CONSIDER SOME TYPE OF CERTIFICATION, (FOR LACK OF A BETTER WORD) IN ORDER TO PRESENT YOUR MATERIAL IN PUBLIC FORM?

A: I appreciate your feedback and enthusiasm.

Being in awe of my consciousness is to miss the point. Be in awe of yours. If you comprehend this work, you are functioning from the same 'point of you' as I am. Appreciate this. This work is also not who or what I am, it is simply a function I perform.

We teach this work by living it - through example - through how we carry ourselves within the mundane flow of our daily lives. This heart-work is self-facilitation - not "other-facilitation". There are no programs to accredit people to do this work; our daily life experience is the program which accredits us to do this work. The books The Presence Process and Alchemy Of The Heart invite us to engage with our own life experience in this way - they are not about becoming distracted by engaging in others life experiences as if we are responsible for them. If we try to use this work to save others, we have missed it's essence completely.

Alchemy for us individually - which is the essence of this heart-work - only takes place within our own heart - not through our mouths. When we accomplish this authentically, others are touch energetically, and then moved internally, accordingly. It begins and ends with us, and when we realize this, all others benefit.

Just as this work has found you, and you it, just when you are ready for it - trust too that others are drawn to it, and it to them, when they are ready for it. The heart knows who is ready as the readiness is purely of the heart.

Emotional Body Awareness and Parasites.

2009-09-30T22:42:00.000-07:00

Q: Is there a similarity in consequence between the approaching the vibrational practice and the activating emotional body awareness practice with the salt baths? And, after doing the activating the emotional body awareness practice one time, is it possible to accumulate those parasitic presences back again?

A: The emotional body awareness practices in Being Our Companion open the way for increased awareness of what unfolds through the Consciously Approaching The Vibration practice.

When we learn how to energetically close a door to parasites - and so to contain the energy for our own vehicle's development - it does not mean we do not have the capacity to open that door again. This is why responsibility is one of the themes of this work.

Once we assume responsibility for our energy field - then we are responsible for it.

Relying on doing anything "one time" is destination-consciousness.

I don't understand the question...

2009-09-30T22:16:00.000-07:00

Q: Sorry, but I didn't understand your question. Can you explain please?

A: It is a simple question: "Do you recognize your ongoing experience as being valid - or do you unconsciously dismiss it because you are searching for an experience you assume you are supposed to be having?"

Our experience, exactly as it is in each moment, is what is required for us individually. If we in any way dismiss it, like saying, "I have been doing The Presence Process, but nothing is happening...", then we are stuck. To be able to say, "nothing is happening" requires an intensity of felt-numbness. It means our capacity for felt-perception is severely subdued. This condition is exaggerated by "thinking", because we cannot think and feel at the same time.

If we are doing this process and also thinking about it intensely - we are not experiencing it at its causality - which is on the level of felt-perception. If we are doing this process in hopes of having specific experiences we have though about - then we are immune to feeling what is currently unfolding. We leap-frog over this moment into our future expectations. This is the side-effect of destination-consciousness.

We are so fixated on having an experience sold to us by others that we miss the one we are currently having. In my rewriting of The Presence Process I have removed all language that invalidates the moment. We do ourselves a great disservice when we dismiss the moment we are in as being invalid.

So, the question is very simple: "Are we aiming for an experience - at a specific thought-out outcome - to the point we are unable to recognize the one we are already in?" Because the experience we are already in, exactly as it is, is the portal into everything we seek. It is what is required of us. It is the door. When we embrace it accordingly, we are the door.

It is not that we cannot intend having a greater awareness of peace than we are experiencing right now - or an experience of more love in our lives. These are healthy intents, as long as they do not cause us to dismiss the experience we are currently in.

It is only by integrating what is happening to us now - not by dismissing it - that we evolve into the capacity to feel subtler vibrations like peace and love. If we feel "nothing is going on" - it is not our experience that is at fault - it is our capacity for felt-perception which is lacking.

This human experience is so saturated with vibration that to let it all in may be overwhelming. We say we want to know God, but cannot yet stand sitting in a room with people who appear completely different to us. Imagine sitting in a room with everything, and feeling it all at once.

Don't be in a hurry on any level with this work. Trust the process - not just in terms of The presence Process - but in the process of life itself. First we intend to become open to consciously containing the experience we are in right now - exactly as it is. If it is nothing we feel - then we develop the capacity to be at peace with the numbness of nothing. Feel the nothing without condition. Accordingly, what initially appears to you as numbness is allowed to move freely and so reveals itself as full of vibrating life.

Nothing is happening in this process, what do I do?

2009-09-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

Q: Ok, let me just say that I have read all the q&a on your website. I know you said that whatever happens during the breathing process is supposed to happen, but I am not experiencing almost any emotional or physical intensities, let alone the need to cry or something that extreme. I mostly feel normal during the breathing: I feel a little need to move and not stay still, and my mind wonders frequently. I am on the fourth week BTW.

A: No matter what experience you are having, it is valid. The real question is: Can you recognize your own experience, or are you so fixated on "having an experience other than the one you are already in" that you have become numb to what is?

My thoughts seem to come before the emtional signatures attached to them...

2009-09-28T00:39:00.000-07:00

Q: I've had many questions percolating as I repeat TPP. I'm on the second round, week 7. It seems that I can be feeling rather 'neutral.'

A: Then be with this feeling. It is valid.

Q: A disturbing thought comes to me. Then I feel the negative charge associated with it. I know the emotional body is causal but often the thoughts seem to 'cause' the disharmony. Any insight into that? One example is upon awaking in the morning. I'll often feel pretty good. Rested. I'll lie in bed for a few seconds and BAM - a thought of a person who I'm sad about. Then my heart aches. It seems that it happens in that order.

A: Yes, when we occupy primarily a mental frequency, we perceive the story and our addictive analysis of it way before we engage the emotional signature driving it. And, for most of us, unless self-trained in this work, we miss the emotional signature altogether - because when we believe the story encasing it - we are driven into projective behaviors which take our attention outward toward physical reactivity.

This is because The Pathway of Awareness, as it moves toward causality, goes from physical, to mental, to emotional, to vibrational. We naturally engage with our imprinting from where our awareness is currently anchored. Most of us are still mentally anchored - so we get the story first - then we act it out. Consequently, by acting it out, we are moving along The Pathway of Awareness in a direction away from causality.

What is causal to there being discomfort within our human experience only becomes evident when we respond to our experience - when instead of allowing the story to drive us toward physical projection - we allow it to awaken us to emotional integration.

We can keep changing the story forever - and analysing it to death - and then nothing ever changes. The story is not causal to the quality of our experience - it is a mental expression of an energetic predicament which at its core is to be "felt" for its causality to be realized.

This realization of what is authentically causal does not come through discussion, debate, or any understanding arising from such mental activity. It comes from in-sight - seeing within through the eyes of felt-perception. This insight is a direct consequence of experiencing integration through the alchemy of felt-perception.

The Presence Process and the experience of oneness.

2009-09-27T23:56:00.000-07:00

Lately, in my emails, there have been an increased suggestion to discuss the experience commonly referred to as 'Oneness'. The problem with entering a discussion on oneness is it requires more than one.

These questions and comments about oneness are likely being initiated by Jordan Shafer's The Daily Now printing of excerpts from Being Our Companion [which is available on Free Downloads on the website]. I wrote this book about five or six years ago - and have not read it for a few years.

I would rather place my contribution to this discussion from the point of view of how I experience it now. This is best shared by placing an excerpt from the newly revised, The Presence Process Recreated. This book is currently being edited by David Ord of Namaste Publishing - who has told me he is making it more palatable for the readers. So, what is printed here is my pre-Ord-edited version. It unwraps oneness through the expression, "the unified field". It is just words, but I prefer this point of you.

I pop this excerpt into the unified field as my contribution to deepening our direct experience of oneness. However, discussions of the subject, for me, are a funny paradox.

This is also the first time an excerpt from the new book is being shared. Enjoy. It will be available sometime early in 2010 from Namaste Publishing.

CONSCIOUSLY ENTERING THE UNIFIED FIELD

Cause and effect states that “what we seek, we find” and “what we ask for, we receive”. Therefore, the automatic and unfaltering consequence of this is, we always see exactly what we are looking for, and the experiences we have in each moment are exactly what we have asked for. Our life and the way we experience it is therefore an ongoing answer to questions we continually ask and an ongoing revelation of what we are seeking.

The reason why this predicament is not clearly apparent to us is because most of our seeking and asking takes place unconsciously, driven by the emotional charge imprinted into our energy field as children. If we had the felt-capacity to peer inwardly and feel the sum of the charge of our current imprinted condition – and if we had the felt-capacity to then peer outwardly and feel the sum of the felt-resonance emanated by the emotional, mental, and physical facets of our current life experience – we would realize they are a precise match.

Therefore, when we are not in harmony with the quality of what we are now experiencing as “our life”, it is our responsibility to integrate the imprinted condition which is causal to this predicament. No one can accomplish this for us. Having the capacity to accomplish this for ourselves is what free will is. This is what The Presence Process procedure gives us the opportunity to accomplish: TO LIVE ON PURPOSE WITHIN THE UNIFIED FIELD OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE. Let us explore how this may be practically applied within the context of our day-today life experience:

There is a gap between us and every other human being. This gap is the space we perceive between us. This gap appears authentic because of our physical body-vehicle. In the gap between everyone else and us is where the world manifests. Our world is this gap.
Because our physical body-vehicle leads us to believe this gap is real, we believe we can be separated from others. We believe our body-vehicle is separate from the body-vehicles of others, and that we therefore have our own private physical sensations. We believe we have our own private mental body, and therefore our own thoughts. We believe we have our own heart, and therefore our own felt-states. We believe we have our own vibrational body, and therefore our own vibrational insights and revelations. This segregated perception leads us to believe that when we are not in the company of another human being, we are therefore completely on our own. Having a physical body-vehicle allows us to believe we may be totally alone in the unified field.

Yet, we all have experiences proving this is not so. Let us call these, “unified experiences”. We have seen others physically hurt themselves and immediately felt their pain within our own physical body-vehicle. We have thought about another, and then shortly thereafter, bumped into them or received a phone call from them. We have felt something behind us, and turned around to discover someone watching us. We have found that as we are about to utter a thought, someone standing next to us has expressed it exactly. We have been about to confide in someone as to how we feel emotionally, when they have pre-empted us by revealing they too are having the same emotional experience. We have also had vibrational insights and revelations we assumed unique to us, only to hear others verbalizing their encounter with the same insight and revelation.

We may call these unified experiences being psychic, transference, intuition, empathy, telepathy, and the consequence of being sensitive. It does not matter what label we give them – what matters is we adjust our perception about the nature of our paradigm according to the ongoing proof being laid before us by these unified experiences. The proof inherent in these unified experiences reveals that:

· Our physical body-vehicles, though appearing separate, are not. They are intimately, energetically, connected to each others body-vehicle.
· Our mental body is not the physical brain in our head. Its capacities extend beyond the confines of our physical body-vehicle to any distance we care to think about.
· Our emotional experience is not confined to us alone. They are shared by the world around us.
· Our ongoing and unfolding vibrational awareness is not personal and exclusive. It is universal and inclusive.

Aside from these obvious unified experiences, which the mental body dismisses as quickly as possible, what keeps us believing we are having a separate experience from others is our inability to clearly communicate what is happening to us. We do not yet realize that when explaining ourselves to others, we are constantly verbalizing the same experience to each other. We do not realize this because we are focused on our personal interpretation of the experience we are having – the mental story – and not on the felt-resonance of the experience itself. The moment we mentally interpret any experience, we personalize it, and in doing so turn it into an individual and therefore separate and seemingly segregated and isolate incident. When others cannot comprehend and relate to what we attempt mentally communicating to them, we feel a sense of separation and alienation. This then reinforces the illusion we are separate from others and may therefore have “our own experience”.

The obstacle we place before us when attempting to communicate our physical, mental, and emotional experience to each other is we are too focused on what our experience means, and not on what is happening within us on the level of pure felt-perception. Because of differing belief systems (mental stories) about the nature of experience, a specific occurrence means different things to different people. In accordance with our beliefs, we naturally see what we are looking for – which means we consistently bend the interpretation of what we experience to confirm that what we believe is true.

Another problem which occurs is when what appears before us does not fit into our personal mental story of what is possible. We then find a way to explain it away. This is the same as not seeing at all. This is the reason why the mental body continually explains away unified experiences – because they do not fit in with our present collective story which states our physical body-vehicle separates us from each other.

Therefore, there is no point in entering a debate and discussion on whether we are unified and not. Because, according to our personal stories, what “being unified” means to one person differs from what it means to another. It is more productive therefore to ignore what we think about being unified, and focus rather on what the experiences we have of being unified are already revealing to us. Let our experience be the proof. Let our experience be our teaching. Let our experience be embraced as valid.

If we think of someone and they immediately phone, why do we continue to behave as though we are separated from them? Is the overriding the proof within these blatant experiences that we are unified not enough?

As we now consciously approach the unified experience, which is the intimate connectedness of Presence within each other and all life, we also remember to what extent we are still unconsciously and perceptually enslaved by ancient imprints which are diligently passed down through the generations. These imprints translate mentally into age old beliefs systems which support the consciousness of separation. From the moment we entered our present experience, we inherited these ancient imprints through our parents – just as they inherited theirs through their parents.

Let us begin, therefore, by acknowledging that by their nature, these ancient imprints and the beliefs they spawn about “how the world is”, are out of date. Even though they are familiar and therefore comfortable to the mental body, they are ineffectual. We may acknowledge that they may at one point in our evolution have served us, but now they no longer do. Now they limit us and maintain the mistaken illusion we are separate from one another, that we may be alone, and that we have to “go out and get ours” or else we go without.

These imprints and the outdated belief systems they support are the foundations of much of our current suffering as a species. They, through the separation, segregation, racism, nationalism, and class society consciousness they encourage, are the foundations of eons of fear, anger, and grief. With the proof our current unified experiences place before us, maintaining the perception of being separate from each other on any level is madness. It is delusion and denial. It is the same as believing the earth is flat when we clearly perceive the curve of the open horizon before us.

An efficient and accelerated way to approach the updating of our perception, so we may accommodate the actuality of being unified, is to consciously invite encounters with of this unified paradigm to flood our awareness. We experientially initiate this updating by choosing from this moment onward to behave as if we are one with all life around us. In the same breath, we invite daily occurrences supporting the unified paradigm to impact our personal experience.
Ask and receive.

We activate this through cause and effect by consciously looking for experiential evidence that we are one unified body-vehicle, one unified mental matrix, one unified heart, and one unified vibrational field. By consciously looking for evidence of it, we perceive it, because cause and effect states we perceive what we are looking for.

Seek and find.

However, all of this asking and seeking hinges upon an agreement we make with ourselves: That when the experiential evidence is placed before us, we do not allow our mental body to explain it away. The best way to ensure this does not happen is to apply a procedure called containment:

When experiential evidence of our unified paradigm is presented to us within our daily encounters, we are not to reveal or explain it to others. By revealing or explaining these unified experiences to others, we are seeking acknowledgement that what is happening to us is valid. Yet, no one can ever confirm our personal experience of the unified field as valid. This is because the act of explaining an experience of being unified to someone else is an immediate acknowledgement of separation. The moment we explain “being unified” to another, we go from being one to two! Explanation of a unified experience between two individuals requires and reinforces the consciousness of separation.

Another’s agreement or disagreement with us has no bearing on the validity of what we experience. When we do not attempt explaining these unified experiences to others, they cannot be explained away. When we have a unified experience, and instead contain it, we digest it. The nutritional benefit of holding these experiences within is our faith in the unified paradigm grows into “a knowing”. This knowing permeates our awareness and behavior in spite of what the world’s ancient imprinting propagates. Faith does not require outer support – only belief does.
Anyone verbally informing us that “we are one” speaks from a point of segregated consciousness. Authentically being unified is a feeling that extends naturally into our behavior – not a conversation seeking validation, debate, or discussion.

After agreeing to contain and digest our experience, we can then accelerate the process of inviting this unified paradigm to flood our awareness: We accomplish this by taking an active step towards having this paradigm confirmed – we choose to live this way on purpose. Accomplishing this is simple. Accomplishing this is what The Presence Process procedure leads us toward. This is the invitation inherent in experiencing Presence. Being unified is the terrain of Present Moment Awareness, because experiencing unification with all life forms is only possible in the present. The present is the unified field.

Let us now place our attention back into the gap we perceive existing between us – the gap in which the world exists. In this gap between us, there is stuff – plenty of it. We know what the stuff is in the gap between us because we agree upon the names we give to the individual components.

For example, when we place a pen into the gap between us, we both know what it is because we agree about what we call this particular item and what its purpose is. Because of this agreement, we may then say, “Please pass me the pen?” or “Please refill the pen with ink for me?” Because of this agreement, we understand each other without debate and discussion. We understand each other because we are not debating and discussing what the pen is and what its purpose is. We agree upon these things.

This is the nature of all the items found in the gap between us – they all have a name and a purpose. The names of the different items appearing in the gap between us are mostly agreed upon. The names may change, because the person using the item may speak a different language, but beyond making the translation, we generally agree a pen is a pen, a car is a car, and a house is a house.

Where difference of opinion occurs, where the meaning of the item becomes relevant in the experience of the user, and where debate, discussion, and possible misunderstanding may occur about any particular item, is in the nature of its purpose. The pen itself, like all items appearing in the gap between us, is neutral. Of itself it has no purpose, and therefore no meaning. The user provides meaning and purpose, and it is at this point which the experience becomes shared or separated.

For example, a pen may be used to write a love letter or sign a declaration of war. The pen itself is not fueled with love or hate – it is wielded by it. Whether we support love or hate determines whether we share the experience of the person using the pen or not. The pen is there to facilitate experience.

To continue this line of examination – we are now invited to suspend our ancient beliefs about separation so as to consider the predicament this idea of separation places us in. We may easily accept there is a gap between other human beings and ourselves. We may also accept it is in this gap in which the world as we know it exists.

What The Presence Process now invites us to consider is this: That this gap between us, the one in which the world exists that we have named and given purpose, is the very thing standing between us and our experience of what our shared Presence is. What The Presence Process invites us to consider is, that the distance we perceive between any other human being (or any living creature) and ourselves, is the exact distance which lies between us an our experience of Presence. In the same breath, we are invited to consider that in any given moment, the significance we place on this gap is what prevents us from realizing that it is always Presence looking directly back at us from the other side of the gap.

It is beneficial to reread the above paragraph again slowly with intent of allow our heart to feel and digest the words.

The Presence Process procedure is inviting us to perceive that this gap between us – this world we have made – is a veil thinner than a butterfly’s wing and more transparent than a breath of air. Yet, because of the significance we place upon the items within the gap, and upon their meaning and purpose, we forget how to perceive what is “authentic”. We forget how to look across the gap and recognize what is authentic – that which never changes.

All the items in the gap keep changing. Therefore, the gap and all it contains cannot be defined as having any lasting reality to it. When – through developing felt-perception – we recall how to perceive what is authentic – what is eternal – we realize that the Presence peering at us from the other side of the gap is always the same. By engaging solely with what is inauthentic – with the gap and its contents – we focus on the expression of Presence, and not upon Presence itself.
To be able to look beyond the gap, we require remembering how to perceive beyond the trinity making up the structure of the transience of our human experience. We require training ourselves to place no overriding significance on the behavior, appearance, and life circumstance of the expression of Presence before us in any given moment. Why? Because these aspects of Presence are constantly changing and therefore not authentic. They are not causal and not to be perceived as such. They are part of the veil of illusion between us and what is forever unchanging. When we – through felt-perception – look across the gap and perceive what is beyond these changing expressions, we realize it is always the same Presence before us. There is only one Presence. Presence is shared – it is us, unified.

Being able to “see” this takes the development of felt-perception – and this felt-perception is accomplished by integrating the emotional chargers imprinted into us during childhood. While our emotional charges remain unintegrated – and while our felt-perception therefore remains undeveloped – we automatically believe our mental story that our behavior, appearance, and life circumstances represent our authentic identity. We therefore also mistakenly identify others in this way. While we cannot, through felt-perception, connect with Presence within ourselves, we struggle to connect with Presence within others.

Consequently, we do not realize we are one body-vehicle, one mental matrix, one heart, and one vibrational essence. Fortunately, choosing to dismantle this illusion only requires the wielding of intent. There are only two options before us in any given moment: We are either opening the gap between us by living according to our ancient imprinting, or we are closing it by opening ourselves to the unlimited possibilities of being Presence unified. We either value the gap and what is in it, or we value Presence on the other side of the gap. It is this simple. It is this obvious. It is our choice to make.

For example: When we pay for our groceries, we either focus on the items we purchase, or on the cashier who is ringing them up for us. We either fret about the prices of the products in front of us, or we greet the cashier warmly. We either worry about whether we have purchased the correct ingredients for our dinner, or we ask the cashier about their weekend. We either open the gap by focusing on the items within it, or we close the gap by acknowledging Presence on the other side of it. It is this simple. It is this obvious. It is this easy. It is a choice.

When we only focus on the stuff of life, on the world we have built between us, the gap widens. When we focus on the Presence on the other side of the gap, the gap closes. Each human encounter is one in which we either open or close this gap. Opening the gap is a reaction to life, while closing it a response. Each moment we live through is one in which we either support the veil of separation, or consciously part it in the name of remembering our unified, shared PRESENCE.

Opening and closing the gap is not “a doing” – it is a state of being. There is no specific time, place, and job description which makes opening the gap possible or impossible. It is a point of view – one which recognizes “a sacred point of you”. It is living from within the heart. It is a consciously chosen level of awareness. It requires only Present Moment Awareness.
Our interaction and relationship with the items in the gap also determines whether we are opening or closing the gap. We may use the items of this world to serve either purpose, because the items have no inherent purpose of their own. We may agree that everything in the gap we call “the world” is neutral, because it is. A bomb is a lump of stuff until we assign its purpose. A rose is just another flower until we give it to someone we love. We may agree the items are neutral because the user supplies the meaning and purpose of the items found within the gap. The user decides whether a pen writes love letters or hate mail. When we write love letters – we close the gap. When we write hate mail – we open the gap. The choice is ours, and our ongoing experience of life is a consequence of the choice we make and intent we set. It is this simple. It is this obvious. Or not.

Can The Presence Process cause harm when coupled with three hours of yoga a day?

2009-09-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

Q: I would like to know if intensive yoga, 3 hours daily, could intervene with the presence process as in cause any potential mental, physical danger - or result/experience wise? And, if It couldn't cause any harm, would it be safe for me to do the yogic exercises, both physical ( Hatha ) and Tratak ( for concentration - one pointed focus )?

A: Only when we approach The Presence Process with desperation driving our intent - to try and "get somewhere as fast as possible" - can we become destructive toward ourselves through it. Because then we unnecessarily add things to it because we do not really believe it is efficient. We assume more hours and effort attain more and quicker results. The Presence Process is not about results - it is about consequence.

If I brush my teeth for three hours straight because I want to remove years of stains immediately - my gums bleed and I make them so raw that I am not able to eat, and I also open myself to unnecessary pain and infection.

If doing three hours of yoga a day is already part of my daily beingness, like brushing my teeth, then The Presence Process cannot possibly couple with it to cause harm. If I brush my teeth five minutes longer twice a day with the right tooth paste there are favorable consequences.

When will I achieve clarity?

2009-09-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

Q: At some point do things become more clear? I no longer trust my emotions (what I thought was love is more like fear/anxiety etc.) and my thoughts & beliefs are equally dodgy as they're based on the past. I don't trust myself to make decisions; does clarity come at some point? And if so, how would I recognise it, and know what to trust? Things are what they are, but when I am required to make a choice what do I base it on?

A: Clarity is not a destination.

When we are aware of the felt-aspect of each experience we move through - and are committed to responding to each felt-experience as it arrises by being with it without condition - then we continually birth activity from within this attitude of response.

In each moment our arising responsive activity reflects the requirments of the unique unfolding moment we are currently in. Therefore, when we commit to responding to the causal point of the quality of our experience - through unconditionally feeling the felt-aspect of the moment we are currently in - we are achieving clarity.

The present moment contains all there is, was, and shall ever be. Responding to it unconditionally through felt-perception taps into this fountain of enernity and radiates into our entire experience accordingly.

Activity arising out of response is imbedded with insight - and thus resonantes as "clarity".

I asked to integrate everything and now I am going mental...

2009-09-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

Q: I need some help, may be just a kind word from somebody who could understand what I'm going through. At this time I sometimes question my sanity, and it certainly looks that way to others. I can't talk to anybody without be taken to mental hospital after it. In December 2004 I've undergone shocking spontaneous awakening. One late evening my body on its own assumed lotus position, something exploded in my head and spread like unearthly Peace. I realized I'm Buddha without knowing anything about Buddhism. Boy, next day I ran to the library for certain books. But it was Ekhart Tolle's teachings that helped me understand what has happened. Life from misery became a fairy tale with wonderful changes. Some experiences still troubled me,so you can't imagine what excitement for me was to find your book.I went through the journey experientially several times, and my life felt more and more like heaven. I started the first time 2 years ago.I was so inspired, I didn't think much. It's kind of nice. But then there was an abrupt end to my short lasting heaven existence.Without any spiritual maturity I dared to state an intention to dissmantle the entire imprinting before my last journey. Soon enough I got deadly pesticide poisoning and in a blink of an eye from a super healthy person became gravely ill.It happened on July 5 (like a joke - Got Independence? I mean imprinting) That event brought me to face Death. The experiences I had I won't dare to tell anyone except you.It throw me back into unconsciousness almost completely. I could hardly feel the Presence that occupied my whole essence before. I struggled with family , with doctors and others with their "help".But what is now most horrifying is the intensity of emotions. Like I've never did any inner work. It's so horrifying, all this time I'm out of work. Anguish, torments are unreal.And this torture lasts and lasts. It was so intolerable that my family forced me to take some medication. Now after 3 weeks I tried to get rid of it, but couldn't. It was dreadful. Many times I want to die which will end my sufferings. You told we are not given more than we can handle. But I seriously doubt if I am able to stand this ultimate test I asked for myself.I read all the time your writing about Kiss of Grace. It supports me,comforts me, makes me sit with my intolerable emotions and feel them fully again and again. It works but then a trifle can easy trigger a hurricane again.I really feel like Irina has died, there is no adult in sight and I'm a little girl scared to death to live. The imprinting turned out to be deadly: sickness, abandonment, unreal fear-panic to name a few.Thank you dear Michael just for listening to me. I know you understand my predicament. I know also that I'm the only one who can help me. I gave up all treatments, all "help" and surrendered to the Being, who can determine the outcome. I feel that some encouragement from you can uplift my Spirit to continue inner work no matter what.

A: In our naivety we are able to become irresponsible. Your situation is the consequence of this single sentence from your email: "Without any spiritual maturity I dared to state an intention to dismantle the entire imprinting before my last journey." Rather ask for gentleness, and to be able to receive what is being given, rather than to get carried away with trying to get what you think you want.

Reshape your intent accordingly - and include the word "gentleness" in there somewhere. Who stated it is your task to clear all your imprinting in one go. This is not about destination. This is not even about "perfection" - it is about full-participation. When we take one aware heartfelt step at a time, all of creation takes ten for us. Stop behaving as if you are alone in this, and therefore that you can decide what should and should not be integrated. When we behave as if we are alone in this experience - as if we can decide what is necessary - in complete disregard of all who enter and exit our environment - then we are behaving like a cancer cell in the body of all there is.

Each day we are each given enough to digest - asking for a whole lifetime of meals in one sitting is foolish. Realign your intent from "wanting and getting" to "giving and receiving".

You have glimpsed The kingdom. Remember that the resonance of entry in The Kingdom is "responsibility". Not responsibility for everything and everyone - like dictators assume they are - but rather responsibility for the felt-aspect of each encounter within the life flowing through your experience. Meet life exactly where it meets you - rather than leapfrogging into a "place" you "think" you are supposed to be in.

Everyone is already in The Kingdom - no one ever left - and realizing this is inevitable. This life experience is what it takes to enter consciously and responsibly into the realization. We require acquiring this experiential resonance of responsibility so we do not mess with those who already gather joyfully in The Garden. If we gain entry by forcing ourselves to integrate everything immediately - then we impose this attitude upon those who are already at peace within their experience.

Apparently, they don't allow such adult behavior in The Garden of God's children. Saint Peter stands at the gate and asks each of us a question. If we answer as an adult- we get sent to the back office for deprogramming until we are able to giggle again. If we giggle at the question, we are given an all access pass.

Returning to The kingdom is wonderful - to be sure. However, to miss the mysterious and magical journey through the a-maze-ment of our approach - because we are in a hurry to "get somewhere" - is to miss the point and pleasure of the play. We are already here - "Be still and know that I am odd" - an this too is wonderful.

I am feeling great heartbreak. Do I let the tears flow during my breathing sessions?

2009-09-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

Q: After reading "Naked" I realized (or assumed) you know heartbreak, so thought you'd have insight into my question. I am struggling with the loss of a woman who is precious to me. The emotional distress is so intense and constant that I need hardly start TPP breathing before tears of absolute anguish are flowing. As a result I don't know if I am tapping into the deep well of hurt that the breathing is meant to reach, or what is current. They seem interrelated but I don't know for sure. I wonder if the breathing exercise induces feeling the sorrow that is with me now, rather than cathartically digging into what is under the surface. And I also wonder if it helps my pain to integrate quicker or actually prolongs the process of grieving?

A: The heartbreak you have recently experienced is in itself a surfacing of a memory. It is something that has reoccurred in your life previously. It is something passed onto you through your parents. It took your recent encounter with "being with someone you wanted", and then experiencing the loss, to activate and bring this ancient memory to the surface.

It has nothing to do with this person you perceive yourself to have lost. She was simply the Angel who came to cleave this deeply hidden hurt from the center of your heart and pull it out into the light of your awareness. To focus upon her, or what happened to cause this sudden eruption of grief, is to misaligned your attention and intent.

The feeling of grief is your only hope now. Whenever the tears arise - cry. Do not let reasons and stories and self-assessment flow through these tears. Allow yourself to cry because you feel the grief of something deeply ancient that you cannot put words to. Sink into it unconditionally whenever the opportunity presents itself and you will realize, when you are able to let go the story, that it leads from "your grief" into "our grief". It only appears to be your grief while you are stuck in the "y". Let go the "y" of "your" and all that is left is our.

This is not personal - although - for you to engage with it and play your part in the integration of the collective human imprint - it comes to you as something that appears to have deeply personal impact. So cry tears as long as the body and heart gives them to you to cry. There is no schedule here.

The flow of these tears washes you into the realm of felt-perception in which the heart of The Kingdom is felt as a reality. Then the person with whom this heartbreaking encounter occurred is revealed as the Angel sent from within The Kingdom to facilitate your return. Your tears are valid. Honor them accordingly. Whatever it takes, for heaven's sakes.

When I really relax I start shaking, what is this?

2009-09-09T23:02:00.000-07:00

Q: Whenever I really relax, my body shakes. I can stop it any time, so I am not worried about it, but I am curious to know what causes it. Is it stored physical stress being released? Is it my emotional body trying to communicate to my mind? Is it my unconscious reacting against the introduction of presence? Thank you.

A: Your experience is valid and, because it is happening, required. It is an intimate teaching for you coming from within your direct experience. What you are likely encountering is a primal communication coming from within what I call "our indigenous self". This "shaking" is wonderful, integrating, and well worth exploring. Surrender to it and allow it to lead you.

Not being any authority on "shaking medicine", I recommend you explore the profound work of Bradford Keeney at http://shakingmedicine.com/ Many individuals coming to The Presence Process discover it awakens this primal aspect of their experience. My insight is if The Presence Process naturally initiates this, then be curious and explore it. Bradford Keeney is impeccable in his approach and teaching about this aspect of our humanity. He is an Elder of Shaking Medicine, and acknowledged as such by the its keepers across the planet.

I am in the 4th week and am bored because I am alone and have no friends.

2009-09-08T20:01:00.000-07:00

Q: I am in the 4th week of my second time through and my situation has changed completely this round. I recently became unemployed, live with my mom, and I don't really have any friends. My basic needs are taken care of, so I have all the time in the world 'to do' or to 'not do' whatever and whenever I want. I am finding it HARDER THAN EVER to stay committed to the process. The breathing sessions have pretty much become apart of my life. My trouble is with the presence statements and the perceptual tools. I am alone 90% of my time and I feel like I would be repeating the statements for 16 hours a day if I was to repeat them when I am not mentally engaged. I do sit with my feelings and my Inner Presence for about 2 hours a day and I have a couple hobbies but there seems to be no relief from the boredom and the mind chatter. Any insights?

A: Go volunteer at a homeless shelter or charity organization. The Presence Process is not a job or social activity. If you treat it as one you will feel immense resistance.

My distrubing family encounter...

2009-09-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

Q: Having had a family reunion of sorts, sisters and niece and some of my children and grand children....it was very strange to say the least. Some of my children (all adults) had very negative reactions to me, mostly after I left and I am feeling like being done with them. I went inside and embraced the part of me they were reflecting (the addict, the liar, the gossiper) and would love there to be more harmony, and yet I feel like I have reached my limit with those behaviors. Even with my boyfriend there was no physical attraction there. I feel clear and empowered , and yet was hoping for this wonderful deep bonding with them. Emotionally I am good, feeling more and connecting to Spirit more...I appreciate any insights. I love all the children that have come through me very much and yet feel we are not resonating.. and am a bit shocked at the stories their minds are telling about me.

A: It is important you take these reflections to heart - in that they are offerings to you from all the family you encountered. The only valid aspect of the experience is your direct felt-experience of it. Understand that your family bring you this salad of felt-discomfort [dismiss all story] because you are the only one among them who has the training, capacity, integrity, and willingness to render them into the fire of alchemy. You are the family alchemist. The peace is already spoken for. However, right now, as our human journey enters the portal of our becoming, time is short. We are here now. We are at the door. Much is to be integrated in a short space of time before the door handle moves and the light of The Kingdom radiates through. We are now integrating more in a day than our grandparents did in an entire lifetime. Do not view this uncomfortable encounter with your family as a failure - but as a barometer of how successful you are at your work. They bring to you what only you have the capacity to integrate. They do not bring peace and harmony - because this is already given - they bring you the last bits of laundry that require washing before the adornment of our collective divine destiny. Feel it all with as much desire to change it as you would when watching a bird in a tree: We see the bird, but we do not try to pin it down or direct its movement with our attention. We watch it in a manner that allows it to fly free - without any interference - no entering fear about it. Your current encounter with your family is a set up to show you intimately what of the collective family imprint still requires bathing in the alchemical fire of unconditional love. Now you are clear about this residue. You feel it intimately within your own body. Be with it as if it is the current of love itself - awakening from the long sleep of time - and so shall it reveal itself to be. Within the intimacy of your own felt-experience you bless it with your unconditional felt-awareness. Nothing to do - everything to be.

Be patient. All is as it is required to be. You have not been brought this far to be let down - only to be raised up. By feeling all this discomfort within yourself you now have the experiential capacity to stand at the door and speak for your family with the love you feel for them in your heart. And so they are also taken through.

Can I get rid of 5 years of chronic pain in one week?

2009-09-05T00:31:00.000-07:00

Q: Hi, I have had chronic pain and discomfort for 5 years. The pain covers the entire side of my body and switches from side to side. It is only on one side at a time and is there all the time. The sensations are different on each side; left side a pressure and pulling type pain and discomfort and the right side a prickly burning type pain. I also get migraines which feel to cover the entire side of my body. I am on the part of the process where you have to sit and be aware of your pain and emotions. I read an answer you gave in Q & A and I just wanted to know if at the end of that week the symptoms you have should be gone? Or might that occur later on in the process? I am actually struggling with this part of the process.

A: Until you are connecting with the emotional signature underlying the pain - you are not yet at the level of integrating the causality. Accomplishing integration of 5 years of chronic pain in one week is unrealistic. I see no evidence in your email that you are even slightly aware of your authentic emotional condition. You are still fixated upon symptoms - which is a natural place to enter this work when in chronic pain. However, it is recommended you elevate your intent so as to rise above being physically and mentally transfixed. Being physically-transfixed is all about manipulating our physical circumstances to feel better. Being mentally-transfixed is all about tying our experience to schedules, agendas, plans, and time allotments. None of this relevant to emotional body integration. Symptom-mentality is destination-consciousness. This work is not for fast-food mentality - it is a journey into personal responsibility. When "personal responsibility" becomes the color of our intent - then we becoming increasingly vulnerable to integration of symptoms.

I know you have pain now, but, in spite of this, do your best to focus on "personal responsibility as a way of life" - rather than symptom eradication as a planned agenda. Comprehending the word "current" may assist you to realign your intent:

When we focus on symptoms we are a tin can regarding the can opener as our enemy. Our pain is the can opener - it is occurring within our experience to open us up to the possibilities of "being a conscious vibrational presence currently residing in the physical, mental, and emotional realm".

Once we connect with the causality of pain - which is the emotional felt-experience underlying it - and are able to be with this unconditionally - we are in training for accomplishing a profound level of personal responsibility. Once we truly accept this responsibility - regardless of the experience which is currently unfolding - acute symptomatic conditions no longer have foundation for manifestation.

We cannot fool the body. The body is a manifestation of what is current - and until our imprints are integrated - it is a manifestation of what is resisting what is current. Nor can we fake the resonance of authentic personal responsibility. In this light, symptoms are our honest teachers. They remain steadfast until the insight is fully received and consciously digested. The insight is not about the tin can getting rid of the can opener, or about the tin can perceiving the can opener as an enemy. In this light, pain is our friend. Because it only occurs in the moment, it keeps us in the present moment. Pain is always current.

Examine the word "current". It has a double meaning: It means "now" as much as it means "vibrational flow". When our awareness is current - our awareness is aligned vibrationally. This is what the pain comes to teach you - to consciously become current.

Showing up in what is current does not take a week. It is an art form. "Though ART in heaven." We were taught that, "Heaven is now at hand" - or, translated into updated vocabulary, "The Vibrational Realm is accessed through being current". Vibrational awareness is not accomplished because we grasp the necessity mentally. It, like any art form, takes consistent application. It takes learning and practicing the procedures which hook us into what is current until we become masterful. We only become masterful when we no longer require these deliberate procedures - when we are being current as a way of life.

We live upon a planet where our awareness of current is exponentially increasing toward a crescendo. Like a birthing. Unless we remain current within the focus of our awareness, we are likely experiencing this exponential increase in awareness of current as chaos, conflict, upset, a sense of dismantling of our safety measures, symptomatic pain, fear, anger, and grief. When consciously riding the current - by keeping our attention unconditionally aligned with our felt-perception of what is - we experience this unfolding journey as waves - as inflows of energy arising cyclically within our experience like tides rolling in - then moments of emptiness/nothingness which allow space for integration - which when integrated deliver deepening insights about what is - and then more waves rolling in again. And so it shall continue for the next few years. If we cannot contain what is current - we cannot hold onto our physical vehicle. Accordingly, The Final Judgement is not a religious thing at all - it is determined purely by our capacity for conscious, unconditional containment of what is.

You are experiencing these increasing waves as pain. Your pain is current calling you to become current. The current does not want you to fix or understand it - it seeks your unconditional embrace of it so it may deliver you from The Boredom into The Kingdom.

The more we develop our capacity for containment - for being unconditionally within the flow of current without turning the experience into a mental story - the more ease there is within the experience.

The can opener is a gift of current - it opens us up to what is current. When our intent is aligned accordingly - and when we choose not perfection - but full-participation - our major symptomatic indicators integrate. All pain is current being perceived through the perceptual matrix of our ancient emotional imprints. There is only current - and current is love.

Intend to love your pain without condition. Become current.

Is it okay if I cannot help moving about during the breathing practice?

2009-09-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

Q: While I am doing the breathing I often experience fear, anger, grief, or some mixture of these three. At times my hands clench, arms reach out or want to hide under my legs or behind my back, my legs start to clench together or stretch and writhe and kick out. A friend (who introduced me to the PP book) and who has done the PP twice through, told me that one isn't supposed to move during the breathing but rather contain all of the energy that is arising. The movement that I experience is spontaneous and is not initiated consciously on my part, but if I try to prevent it, I feel like I am manipulating my body with my mind. Is the movement okay and will it resolve itself as I continue to do this work? Is it meant to be done sitting perfectly still right from the start?

A: Good question. Your movement is valid. Allow it. The capacity to sit still while breathing comes as we integrate the emotional charges underlying the drive to move - whether this drive feels spontaneous or not. You will however discover, as you proceed, that by not moving - you fast enter into felt-contact with the emotional charge underlying your inability to sit still. But do not force stillness. Movement is release. Stillness promotes resolution. Often, some release work is required before approaching resolution is possible. So, be with your experience as it is, and allow it to unfold from movement into stillness. It will do so as required. Be patient.

Is my emotional signature only gone once I banish the physical symptoms?

2009-08-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

Q: The basic question is this: do I need to keep working with an issue until the physical discomfort is gone? The story: I woke up sick one morning and assumed it was emotional. Learned some fascinating things, feel much better emotionally, but still feel somewhat physically sick. Can I do enough presence work to banish the physical symptom right away, or is that too much to expect (and I'll use other healing methods)?

A: The fact you use the word "banish" means you still are missing the point of this work. This work is not about "banishing" aspects of our experience as if there is something wrong - it is about embracing all aspects of our experience as if they are all required. This is why I no longer use the word "heal" or "healing" in my vocabulary. I no longer seek to heal any aspect of my experience - however, it is my intent to integrate it all.

When doing emotional integration work it is recommended we take care of any manifesting symptom. This is obvious. We take care of our body-vehicle. However, it is important we do not try to force any physical, mental, or emotional outcome we assume necessary - because then we cannot be functioning "without condition" - which is required for authentic integration.

When an emotional signature is integrated - its physical manifestation has no foundation and thus is neutralized. However, we cannot be the judge of this, as emotional signatures are multi-dimensional. Often their symptomatic manifestations return so as all dimensions of the imprint achieve full integration. Until we have developed full felt-perception capacity, we cannot absolutely know that an imprint is completely integrated. To use our physical experience as a barometer of whether an emotional signature is integrated is therefore not reliable. To take this approach is to become result-orientated, destination-conscious, and conditional.

To focus only on "getting rid of the physical symptom" causes us to subtly enter a manipulative stance - and then before we know it - we are again controlling or sedating our physical experience [with the best of intentions of course] in an attempt to "heal ourselves". Most self-professed "healers" are actually practicing "manipulation" - especially if they are in any way invested in the removal of physical symptoms as a barometer of their efficiency.

Emotional integration work is not about healing - or about feeling better. It is about engaging with our life experience in a responsive manner - one which gradually trains us to become responsible for the causality of the quality of our experience regardless of whether we are in physical discomfort or not.

This requires getting better at feeling, not focusing on feeling better. While we remain fixated by the physical manifestation of our emotional charges - this level of ongoing responsibility is seldom attained.

If having physical discomfort is the only reason we behave responsibly - then our behavior is not responsible at all - it is actually reactionary. We are responsible for how we feel whether we are physically uncomfortable or not.

My suggestion is you stop trying to "heal yourself" and rather focus on becoming integrative.

I cannot get through the tiredness, what do I do?

2009-08-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

Q: I understand the essence of TPP to be: you feel your feelings fully, and also feel any resonance that comes up from earlier in your life; eventually, these feelings will integrate. As I wrote to you not so long ago, I have been experiencing periods of tiredness, even weakness, while doing TPP. The gist of your reply, as I understood it, was to feel the tiredness fully. I have tried to do that, and have gone through some definite shifts of consciousness, but still the tiredness and weakness persist -- so much so that I am having difficulty doing my jobs as well as doing my part for the family and the house. I talked this situation over the other day with a friend of mine who is an intuitive healer. She could see that my feelings were not getting released, so she recommended that I consciously release them. I did this (to the violet fire) and immediately felt better. But the tiredness came back the next day. Today I released again, and some of the tiredness went away, but I can feel that there's plenty more left. In your experience, can feelings ever be consciously released, or would you always recommend sitting with feelings and waiting until the periods of tiredness subside? Any other advice?

A: First of all, your tiredness is not tiredness, it is unconsciousness. It is deeply suppressed emotional content - which when surfacing - expresses itself in our waking state as tiredness. So, stop calling it tiredness, because this misrepresents what you are going through.

Everyone to some extent experiences this when processing unintegrated emotion - and as you are testimony to - some more than others. The only way out is through. Which means, keep doing your emotional integration work and calm down about it. It is going to take as long as it takes. Some of our emotional imprints are 1000's of years old, and we, in our impatient, fast-food-mentality, assume we can process them all in a couple of weeks. So, continue your work and be patient.

If you do wish to move more deeply at an accelerated pace - and sincerely feel this is what you require - then go to the link on the menu column of my website and click on "Personal Facilitation". Through this you can find a Transformational Breath Facilitator or one of their workshops where you can be facilitated through Breathwork into accelerated integration. They are an international organization and so will assist you to find someone nearby.

Secondly, there is a difference between release and resolution. Release assists us to feel better, while resolution requires we get better at feeling. Release is screaming into a pillow, while resolution is being with the feelings of anger without any outer projection of them. Release is a deliberate outer expression of suppressed emotional content, while resolution is the conscious containment of suppressed emotional content. Most of us begin with release-work - just to let off some steam and create some breathing room within our experience - and then we move on to resolution and the art of alchemy through containment.

You may still require release - so scream into a pillow once a day for about 15 minutes for about seven days - but do not get addicted to the high of it. It is only release, and although you may feel better afterwards - it will not assist you to get better at feeling.

In your entire question I saw no indication that you are yet aware of the emotional signature underlying your experience of unconsciousness. Tiredness is not an emotional signature. My sense is you are annoyed, which means you are angry. This is most likely because you are a mentally-transfixed individual new to emotional work. Intend to tap into and feel this anger as fully as possible. Underneath it is grief. What you require is a good sob for no reason at all - which will be hard for you as you will most likely currently also want to know how/when/where/what/who and why you are sobbing to allow it to happen. Be patient with yourself.

Also, make sure you have listened to the audios on the website of the breathing technique so that you are doing the consciously connected breathing correctly.

The more mentally-transfixed we are, the more likely we are to feel this unconsciousness as we attempt integration of emotional imprinting. Let go all the thinking about this work. This "violet fire" stuff you talk about, that your healer friend suggested, is called metaphysics - and all metaphysics is simply mental-physics. When it comes to emotional resolution [as opposed to release] it accomplishes nothing authentic, because the mental body is not the causal point of the human experience. It is a great tool to use for release - but nothing authentic comes about when using it in this manner. You can waste your time in the mental realm for 100's of years - or you can stop all the thinking, visualizing [pretending], and all other make-belief stuff the mental body loves and start feeling what is without condition.

The unconsciousness you feel is real. It has come to assist you with integration. Stop trying to get rid of it so as to arrive somewhere else. Be where you are now within your experience as fully as possible - this moment you are in, just as it is, is the portal to all else. While you still try to manipulate it to accomplish something you "want" - you remain stuck.

How do I integrate the experience of being gang raped and having been a heroin addict?

2009-08-25T22:54:00.000-07:00

Q: My question is this : how would you frame abuse? In particular I've been gang raped, held against my will etc in my life as a heroin addict. I've been clean and sober now for 18 years. Still struggle some with those issues. I'm starting to see that the people (almost all men) who did these things were confused about how to get their own needs met. However, it still leaves me with an exaggerated sense of fear. I've been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

A: Firstly, extract your attention from the event and the story you tell about this. It only keeps you in victim and victor mentality - which although may for a while feel empowering - accomplishes nothing causal. You extract your attention from these aspects of the experience through entering unconditional felt-perception of the residue.

When entering Present Moment Awareness, what becomes clear to us, is that if something happened - it was required. Asking why at this point of the game is futile.

Whatever happened within our past is the consequence of previous experiences we had - experiences often occurring well before the perceptual borders of our current life experience.

If you only believe in "one life" - like some religious people do - then you are stuck in a world of meaningless and chaotic activity - one in which there is a vicious God who does things for absolutely no reason at all. However, when we realize we live forever - and that this current experience is one of countless - we also realize that this life experience is full of incidents which make no sense if this current life experience is the only barometer from which we measure "consequence".

However, realizing this experientially is not necessary in order to impact the causality of our experience. The fear you feel now is the causality. Underneath it is anger, and underneath this is grief. Your only task is to be with this fear without condition through direct felt-perception. Drop the event, and story about the event, as having any relevance within your intent to integrate this experience. We cannot integrate through understanding, blame, or revenge.

Consuming heroin and for being gang raped was 100% required. You simply cannot yet perceive the causal activity which unfolded, possibly over many life experiences, to eventually manifest such an event. In another experience you may well have been a heroin pusher and a gang raper. At this point in the game we have all been everything - this is why judgment is futile and ridiculous. We have moved through the darkness as willingly as we have moved through the light.

Our only choice now is drama, or dharma. To access the dharma, we feel without condition the arising emotional states within our life experience right now. There is no requirement for mentally investigating the past - such activity is useless to us now. The past is forever present within the felt-resonance of our current experience. We therefore engage with it not mentally, but through direct, unconditional, felt-resonance.

Any other path leads us out of the moment and into a time-based mentality - which is madness. Feel your fear unconditionally - it will transform into anger - feel your anger unconditionally - it will transform into grief - feel your grief unconditionally - and then you shall know the meaning of the teaching: "Blessed are those who mourn - for they shall be comforted."

This is not turning out the way I want it to - what now?

2009-08-21T22:34:00.000-07:00

Q: I just completed the process for the second time. Although I had many insights, I am still missing a real sense of achievement/accomplishment/shift in my life.

A: Be with this feeling of "missing" - because if this is happening - it is required. You obviously have some agenda about what is supposed to happen, and being with this feeling of disappointment without condition will assist you to integrate the emotional charge related to this agenda. The intent of The Presence Process is to initiate an experience. Whatever experience it initiates is valid. The procedure then teaches you how to interact consciously, responsively, to the experience you are having. This conscious response integrates the charges within the emotional body. However, when you think you are supposed to have a specific experience, and keep perceptually aiming for that - you completely miss the experience you are having right now. So, be with the experience of feeling you have missed what you were expecting - and being with this unconditionally will assist you to integrate the charge driving you into false expectation.

Q: I have two questions to you: 1. I was not sure how to handle my noisy mind during the breathing sessions. Is it necessary to fix my attention on my breathing, or is this not important?

A: Reread the instructions in the book - they are clear. The mind within the context of The Presence Process constitutes all our physical, mental, and emotional experiences. The physical, mental, and emotional are the trinity which makes up the mind. What you are inquiring is whether your mental body should be controlled while breathing. No. All manipulation is futile. As recently suggested on the website - it is recommended we use the conscious response - "I AM HERE NOW" for all our breathing sessions. And yes, of course the focus is on keeping our breathing connected - the book is very clear about this. However, there is no instruction to control what the mental body is doing.

When we connect our breathing we accomplish causal impact. When we are still mentally transfixed, this causal impact arises into our awareness as increased mental activity. If we are physically transfixed, it arises into our awareness as physical sensation. When we have developed some level of felt-perception - it arises into our awareness as emotional states. This arising of either physical, mental, or emotional consequences is simply a sign there is now movement within the emotional body. To now try and stop this physical, mental, or emotional activity in any way is self-defeating. Be with the mental body activity you are experiencing while breathing without condition. If it gets too busy in there - to the point you cannot focus on connecting the breathing - which is our primary responsibility while doing the breathing practice - then use the conscious mental response - I AM HERE NOW.

Q: I feel my energies and determination running low at this point. Do you have any advice for a third go?

A: Yes, reread my first answer and apply it to this feeling too. Your experience is valid. No matter how it unfolds, it is valid. This means it is required. You do not have to understand why. You do not have to fix it or change it or perceptually aim yourself toward another experience you assume you ought to be having. Your only choice is response, or reaction. In my first answer to you I describe response. Reaction is behaving as if what is happening to you is not supposed to be happening, and then doing something to change your current experience into something you think should be happening. This is pointless and leads to drama. Reaction is manipulation. Response is embrace. So, my suggestion as you enter this procedure again - have no agenda, no assumption, no point of perceptual reference toward which to aim yourself. Just be with whatever happens and engage it as valid, and therefore required. By responding this way you receive and achieve whatever is required.

I have thyroid cancer, does The Presence Process help with this specifically?

2009-08-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

Q: Day 3 of the 1st week of the second time I’m doing the PP: I found out I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Shouldn’t be life-threatening, but will entail a lot of stuff – pain and discomfort, lost days of work that will not be compensated, etc. etc. I’m grateful that I’ve been doing this practice, and am clear that I am someone having this experience, and that it’s an opportunity to continue to integrate patterns and feelings and false belief stuff. I’m just wondering – is there anything in your writings that specifically addresses this kind of experience? I’m not seeing it… and that probably makes sense, in that it is just another experience that the practice can assist with. If there is anything, though, could you let me know? And if not, I’m not asking you to reply.

A: We do not address specific symptoms in this work because our attention is causality. However, it is important when manifesting symptoms to nurture oneself by lovingly attending to the body-vehicle. I am sure you can find lots of literature on the Internet about conscious treatment specifically for thyroid cancer. You ought read it and see what inspires you. But, in conjunction with this, take yourself to the moment of diagnosis - and the period unfolding shortly after that. What was your emotional response? Attached to this initial experience of realizing you have thyroid cancer there shall be an emotional signature. It may surface when you awake early in the morning and your mind wanders into the consequence of your condition. It is not even necessary to name this emotional signature - but simply to engage with it directly through felt-perception without any attachment to outcome.

By engaging with the felt-aspect of the emotional signature you relate to thyroid cancer without condition you are entering causality. By engaging with it every day for a few moments - and being present whenever it naturally arises within your awareness - this causal activity generates consequences. These consequences unfold as events, insights, chance meetings, realizations, etc. within your daily life experience - all deliberately designed to assist you to integrate the emotional charge related to this specific predicament. You don't know what these consequences will unfold as - so your task is to embrace your daily life experience - and all the unfolding events and encounters it contains - as being required - and therefore valid.

When approaching your thyroid cancer in this manner, you behave as if all of this is intended - is part of your current journey - and is designed to lead you into the next phase of your personal evolution. Then you are being truly integrative: You are taking care of the body-vehicle's symptoms - and you are tending to the causality of the surfacing condition. As such, you are being responsible for the quality of your experience.

Will The Presence Process help my angry son?

2009-08-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

Q: I have been through The Presence Process once and it has made my life more peaceful and clear. My 16 year old son has Asperger and is very angry and unhappy. Our life is very stressful living together. Will my continued work help heal my son? He is unwilling to make any changes at this point.

A: As long as you find where this anger of his is felt within yourself, and be with it without condition. If his behavior triggers you emotionally in any way - it is because it is reflecting your unresolved emotional charge. How were you feeling at 16?

It is not up to your son to make changes - it is up to you to integrate what he is reflecting. It only takes one in the family to integrate the family imprint. However, we do not enter any of this work in hopes it assists another. Then we cannot be unconditional toward own discomfort.

You are to enter this work as a responsibility to your own process - and when you are authentic about this intent - then it energetically impacts him. If you do it for him - you are using this work to manipulate him. That would anger anyone. Where are you feeling frustrated at the moment? Are you brushing these feelings aside - or attending to them?

Let him have his own experience - you rather be responsible for yours. Where are you feeling angry right now? Are you feeling this anger within your body-vehicle without condition?

Careful not to polish the mirror in an attempt to rid what its reflection reveals. Honor your son's experience by realizing that if he is angry right now - it is valid and therefore required. By responding to him [feeling what he triggers within you without condition], rather than reacting [telling him, or behaving as if he should be feeling something other than what he is], you reveal to him how best to integrate such experiences.

Telling others what to do in relation to this work is fatal. It simply manifests resistance. Revealing through example is the way - it takes longer - but its impact is causal.

Is this happening to anyone else?

2009-08-17T21:37:00.000-07:00

Q: I am in emotional pain (sometimes quite deep pain). As long as I can remember I have felt a ball of anxiety at the pit of my stomach to one degree or another (like a constant underlying nervous energy). I have recently begun taking 15-20min a day to be with my 10 things. I have noticed that I mainly feel them at the pit of my stomach, or in my chest area. They also seem to intermingle at times and they turn into one big lump of emotions making it hard to decipher one from the other. Also, during the day "negative" emotions (mainly anxiety or feelings of loneliness) will arise for no reason. My body immediately reacts to them and my mind will try and attach a bad or sad "story" to them. My question is this: Are my experiences common?? And is it important to try and untangle the emotions in order to digest them individually? Thank you.

A: Your experience is valid because you are having it - not because others may be having it too. Feel what arises, when it arises, without telling any stories about it, or having agendas about what is supposed to happen. This is all that is required. Whatever happens as a consequence of engaging with your own experience this way is also required. Validating your ongoing experience by engaging with it this way is all that is required.

What happens when emotion arises during the breathing practice?

2009-08-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

Q: While I am doing the breathing, especially in the evening before retiring, I experience waves of emotional material coming up. Sometimes it is mild and breathing settles back into regular rhythm rather quickly and sometimes the waves- tears,sobbing, writhing and holding myself ebb and flow for the entire 15 minutes. Should I be stopping to experience the full arising of the fear, anger and grief as they come- often all mixed together and then resume the breathing or do I do it all as one continuous process? I am on day 10 and things are really moving but I am unclear on how to work with the emotional content while I am doing the 15 minute breathing sessions.

A: Be with your experience as it is. Manipulating it in any way does not help. Be with the emotional content as it arises. If the surfacing emotion stops your ability to breathe - then be with this. The intent of the breathing practice is to bring this emotional content into your awareness so you may be with it without condition. So do not force the emotion aside so you may carry on breathing - this then defeats the intent.

Dreaming through The Presence Process...

2009-08-12T00:36:00.000-07:00

Q: I am now entering week five of the Presence Process and my dreams are becoming very vivid. At first I did not understand what the meaning of these dreams were, after reading The Art of Integration they have become very clear.
My Agreement with the Universe is this, whatever feelings arise in the dreams, I will accept and be with that feeling unconditionally.
I don’t always understand the symbolism, or persons in the dream, however the feelings are unmistakable.
Does this make sense to you?

A: "By gosh I thinks he's got it!"

Am I doing enough being?

2009-08-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

Q: I began practicing the "approaching vibrational" practice. Thank you for that. Do you still recommend doing the practice from your writing on "landing out of the mental plane" as well? Spending a few moments in the beginning and the end of the day cradling upsets? How much is enough stillness practice?

A: Listen to your heart - it knows exactly what you require and how much. The vibrational practice is "all inclusive" - as in practicing it triggers experiences which unfold throughout the day. These experiences are then consciously engaged with as we are taught in this work - by being with them without condition as they arise.

Once using Consciously Approaching The Vibrational you don't need a time of day and practice for being present: All through the day you meet your unfolding experience through felt-perception without placing any conditions on doing so - you be with them as they arise. When we meet our experience through being present through felt-perception we are entering stillness - even when in the traffic.

Remember also, "stillness" and "silence" are not the thing - being is. Being is the most magical commodity in all creation. Remember, whatever God is is not "a being" - it is being - as in a verb. Whenever we apply being - we are causal - and therefore opening ourselves to receiving whatever we require.

How do I recignize "the enlightened ego"?

2009-08-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

Q: I look forward to the updated Presence Process. I have a question for you regarding all this law of attraction material that is making the rounds. Also the return of material like Charles F Hanaal 12 keys. Which sounds similar to all the ego is to blame stuff except that it states mind created everything and thought is the ultimate creator. Lots of truth with a little twist seems to be a deliberate plan by the ego to maintain it's control. Reminds me of something that Aurobindo said is his book synthesis of yoga when he warns of the enlightening sense slipping into an even worse sense of 'enlightened' ego. Almost similar to what happened in Egypt a couple thousand years ago. Any recommendations for vigilance and discernment would be appreciated.

A: There is quite a simple gauge for discernment: Is emphasis being placed upon the teaching - or the teacher. The ego is only interested in the teacher.

For example - when it comes to Christianity - there are the teachings about Jesus - and there are the teachings of Jesus. Churchianity - the egos empire - focuses primarily on the teachings about Jesus. The events of his birth, rise, miracles, and crucifixion, are far more important than anything he uttered. Anything he uttered is used primarily as evidence to substantiate the telling of events. This is because of the projected self-importance of the priesthood.

If we do not have a capacity to comprehend the teaching - we then focus on the teacher.

Does being adopted affect my ability to do this work?

2009-08-05T22:14:00.000-07:00

Q: The impact of ones parents appears to be of great significances in relation to emotional imprinting, both in the womb and after. I am adopted and have never known my biological parents, and from what I am told there was much turmoil during my mothers pregnancy. I was adopted immediately after my birth, and have never been in the presence of my natural father. Do you believe there is any significances to these facts in relation to the emotional processing work that is undergone in the process? Thank you.

A: No - because in the final analysis, this work has nothing to do with your parents or who was or was not around you as a child. It only has to do with how you respond to the imprinting you carry within you right now. You don't require any mental memory of your childhood situation to integrate imprinting - you require response, through unconditional felt-perception, to what you are experiencing in this moment. There really is no past - it is always all here now. Stay with THIS-HERE-NOW, not that-there-then.

Can The Presence Process help applied to autoimune disorders?

2009-08-03T03:54:00.000-07:00

Q: Do you have any experience that the presence process can help applied to autoimmune disorders?(e.g. MMN-multifocal motorical neuropathy)

A: I have not yet seen a symptomatic discomfort which cannot be integrated. There are many we cannot "heal" - because we require them - but they can all be "integrated". This because all perceived symptomatic discomfort arises out of charged emotion - and integration of the charge emotion is the same procedure for all symptomatic discomfort.

There is a difference in intent between "healing" an "integration". This is something I intend clarifying in the new edition of The Presence Process.

Healing generally perceives what is unfolding as "not supposed to be" - as "something wrong" - something to be fixed. Integration perceives all as "required". If it happens, it is required.

Healing tries to fix and get rid of it - while integration seeks to embrace the experience into the whole. Our attempt to heal something is for the most part "a reaction to" - while integration is "a response to". Healers live in a broken world they have to fix - and they can build very lucrative professions out of being the chosen ones supposed to do all the fixing.

Integrationists know they live in a world broken only because their perception of it is impaired by uninetgrated charged emotional content imprinted into their energy body during childhood. Healers try to fix the world - integrationists only intend to impact the causality of their own faulty perceptions of it.

The Presence Process is for integrationists, not healers. This is why there are no Presence Process practitioners. No one will pay you to integrate your experience, but plenty will pay you to "try and heal theirs".

But pay no mind to me - if this condition is something you are faced with - only your experience is valuable in knowing whether it can be integrated.

What about belief systems?

2009-08-02T22:29:00.000-07:00

Q: What of belief systems. I seem to have an emotional belief system that says something like this" if my women is not in my life I will struggle immensely". The feeling is one of being extremely scared. I have had these feelings with women I did not care much about. Simply I seem to be afraid of my partner being in her wounds... I feel like I'm so afraid to let go of my relationship although I do not want to. She has told me that she does want to be in this relationship anymore... I do not believe her however I'm afraid...... It seems I have had this fear my whole life...... At times I sit with this feeling without condition and know I'm in my head addicted to thinking....

A: It is not the belief system which is relevant, only the emotional signature supporting it. The Presence Process is designed to assist us to get in touch with the signature. Sometimes this may take a while as our felt-perception is severely calloused from too much mental activity and physical reactivity. All belief systems founded upon, and therefore breeding fear, anger, and grief, are drama. They are groups of words springing out of uncomfortable energetic circumstances - words we arrange into something making sense to us. They are not the issue - the uncomfortable felt-resonance - the imprint - which is their harbor, is. We do not require "making sense", we require pre-sence - Presence. Feeling without condition is Presence in action.

What is the difference between feeling and emotion?

2009-08-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

Q: You use the term 'felt perception' frequently and I would like to be sure that I know what you mean by this. I'd be grateful if you could de-confuse me by clarifying the difference between 'felt perception' and 'emotion'.

A: Great question! An emotion is an energetic circumstance within our emotional body - or our "energy-in-motion body". An emotion is therefore "energy in motion" = e-motion.

When mentally-transfixed, we interact with these emotional circumstances mainly by mentally describing them, such as calling them names like "fear, anger, grief, happiness, excitement, depression, melancholy", etc.

We are also able to engage with them directly through "felt-perception" - through feeling them.

Sometimes they feel very dense - as something solid we can literally touch - like physical pain. Any symptom which appears as physical discomfort in the body-vehicle - like a severe throb - is simply energy in motion no longer freely in motion, and now in such resistance to movement that it appears as solid physical presence.

So, "an emotion" is one thing, and "feeling it" another. The confusion comes in when we use the word "feeling" and "emotion" interchangeably. "Feeling" is the perceptual capacity we use to engage directly with emotion . "Feeling" is a perceptual capacity emanating directly from within the heart.

In talking of the heart, we are not talking about the physical organ in our chest - although this organ is a metaphoric physical representation of our heart. The heart we talk of is The Sacred Heart, and it is way too mysterious to define, and way beyond the capacity of the mental body to understand. The Sacred Heart feels, and what it feels are states of energy in motion, different ranges of thought form, and physical sensation. It also feels vibrational resonances, such as peace and love.

When we are physically-transfixed by our human experience, we assume it is the body which feels - because we press upon our flesh and feel ourselves doing so. However, as our awareness moves closer to the point of causality of our entire human experience - the vibrational - we realize that all feeling capacity - all felt-perception - whether we perceive it interacting sensationally through the body-vehicle - or energetically by engaging directly with felt emotional states - is emanating from The Sacred Heart.

This is why feeling what is without condition - whether it be a throb within the body, a thought form within our mentality, or an emotional state within our energy-in-motion body - develops "felt-perception". The Sacred Heart has three main perceptual capacities: Feeling, hearing, and seeing. These hearing and seeing capacities have nothing to do with the ears and eyes we use to navigate our experiences while transfixed within the physical realm. Like the organ we have in our chest, our physical eyes and ears are simply metaphoric representations of the seeing and hearing capacities of The Sacred Heart, which awaken through the development of felt-perception.

Hearing our inner guidance and having in-sight about things are the first stages of developing our inner seeing and hearing. Once we fully develop these three capacities of The Sacred Heart, we are awakened fully into our vibrational self. Only the vibrational self has the capacity to enter the gates of what a teacher like Jesus called The Kingdom of Heaven - or what we also refer to as The Garden.

We all live in The Kingdom and in The Garden - however - we cannot perceive this because our Sacred Heart is functioning on idle. Developing felt-perception is part of the journey into developing the seeing and hearing capacity to realize [real eyes] what and where we really are.

The Presence Process, Alchemy Of The Heart, and the work of The Presence Portal navigate us through experiences deliberately designed to awaken into what The Sacred Heart is so we may consciously return into The Kingdom/The Garden - not through death or accumulating self-sufficiency skills - but through lifting the perceptual veil which allows us to believe it is possible to "be" anything or anywhere else.

This is what Jesus was trying to communicate when saying: "The Kingdom is now at hand". The Kingdom is this-here-now [as opposed to that-there-then], and we are already within it - but we have to die to the reality we manufactured out of our imprinted emotional charges to realize it.

This too is what is eluded to when people whom Jesus "healed" claimed: "I was blind but now I can see" - or - "I was deaf but now I can hear" - or "He was raised from the dead". These so-called miracles have nothing to do with our physical experience - they are about reentry into vibrational awareness through "being fully alive now" - not through dying and going somewhere.

When one realizes "sin" and "imprint" are the same word, and that "forgiveness" and "integration" are the same word - a whole new perceptual realm opens its doors - and a text such as The Bible is no longer dead words on paper. In this light, religion hides the doorway into The Kingdom just as environmental groups obscure the reentry into The Garden because of literal, physically-transfixed interpretation.

That is why people who try to save the planet "so we may return to The Garden", or who try to save us from our sins "so we can enter Heaven when we die", are hysterically funny. Church steeples are not "the finger of God", they are "giving God the finger".

2012 is an opening of the portal into the vibrational reality. A teacher like Jesus came to prepare us to enter as these doors open. A thankless job because hardly anyone heard what he and his crew communicated. All religion sends us away from the portal doorway [our own inner access to The Sacred Heart] by making us feel guilty about the very thing given to us to develop our capacity to enter - our imprint. It is only through feeling our imprint fully, without condition [judgment], that we develop the capacity to enter.

An altar in a church cannot alter an imprint within our heart. It is only through responding to imprinting through integrating [appearing meek] instead of reacting to our manifestation of these imprints in the world, that we develop the capacity to consciously contain vibrational awareness. That why we are told, "Blessed are those who mourn - for they shall be comforted". Blessed are those who feel their grief without condition, for they shall develop the felt-perception required to feel their way into what truly is, always has been, and shall forever be.

Well, it is Sunday here in South Africa. Guess we just had a sermon. My grandmother said I would end up a preacher! Fortunately I am a member of the same church Jesus attended - the Church Of The Body Temple. We do not only worship on a Sunday. We go to our altar consistently by feeling what is whenever energetic states arise to be felt. Our altar is The Sacred Heart - for only The Sacred Heart, through its capacity to feel, alters.

In this light, Jesus is the most profound teacher of conscious vibrational entry through the medium of life. When we enter our own experiences directly as they are given to us, through felt-perception [not understanding], and when we perceive them as valid - as required - as given to us as our Daily Bread - the Teaching of The Sacred Heart is personally revealed. And so it is groovy, and shall be groovy in The Kingdom/The Garden, always ... in all ways. Sermon over!

Would you like to join our TMS, Presence Process support group?

2009-07-31T18:25:00.000-07:00

Q: There is an online support group for The Presence Process at a website about a mind-body chronic pain condition called TMS. We've had almost 200 posts already, which you can read starting here. The wiki gets about 12,000 page views per month and I'm sure that people would be thrilled to hear from you. If you respond to this email, I'd be happy to prominently post any feedback from you, especially if it mentions TMS.

A: Mostly, a support group only supports ego, drama, the intent to "understand", and individuals who cannot contain their experience. Everything anyone requires of me personally related to this work is already freely available on the website. Talking about and discussing this work with each other does not in any way improve our capacity to do it - it actually does the opposite. Wherever we rely on "a support group" is where we do not grow and develop emotionally.

Our authentic "support group" are those we encounter in our daily lives, like our family and work colleagues. This is the group The Presence Process teaches us to work with. When we cannot be authentic within these natural day-to-day encounters - we form or engage in specialized groups as an escape from them. When it comes to this work in particular, support groups take what is intended to improve felt-perception and instead mentalize it.

I have already written an article called "Let's Not Form Another Group" to offer those requiring support groups the possibility of emancipating themselves from such a cul-de-sac. However, if people choose to entertain such things, this is a lesson obviously not yet learnt. But inevitably, it shall be.

Also, to become fixated on any physical symptom and to form a group around discussing this symptom is to completely miss the point of this work. It is the causal point of symptomatic discomfort which ought to be our point of focus if we are serious about integrating it - and the causal point of all symptomatic discomfort is the same. To focus on symptoms is to focus on "effects", not causality - which is "in effect you all" - ineffectual. It is to entertain drama. Chat groups formed around commonly shared symptoms is simply drama - they bow to the symptom as being more significant than its causal point. Talking about our symptoms is therefore the propagation of drama.

It is more efficient to move directly toward integrating the symptoms causality - which requires feeling the related emotional signature without condition. No support group has the capacity to feel on our behalf. Symptomatically-driven support groups aspire to "understanding the condition" - and our intent to use understanding as a means to integrate takes us away from "feeling what is without condition".

You are welcome to post this notice on your support group. It is designed to inspire discussion for those who enjoy drama - and liberation from such a mental cul-de-sac for those who seek authentic integration of their discomfort. By posting it you will discover who is who.

Will The Presence Process help me sell better?

2009-07-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

Q: I have a sales job, where I get payed by the sale. Direct marketing. One thing I have noticed is, women love men who are present with them. They respond differently somehow. Next to the 15 minute breathing I try to be conscious of my breathing the whole day, by breathing as deeply as possible. However, I'm into self-help and am using hypnosis tapes for my work - one is for charisma and the other is for leadership ( which allows me to exude confidence, give me real hardcore focus and allow me to have grace under fire, it makes me feel like a leader and gives me that body language, also the tapes gives me the possibility to positively influence people etc.. ). I need this for my job and to keep up my daily income. I need the money for college and rent. My question to you is, could you tell me if there are any side effects when using these hypnosis tapes? I'm willing to drop them if you say so, if it means that it will interfere with the process in any negative way. But it would make a lot of things harder for me.

A: Personally, I cannot enter sales work. I cannot even do book signing in a book store. So, you are talking to the wrong person. I do not believe in the manipulation of others for personal benefit. Dale Carnegie is a creep. This is why I developed the tool, "Navigating Our Experiences" - available free on the Writings page. It is based on navigating our experience - not on the manipulation of others. Your email is timely. I have a friend who adjusts their personality for whomever is in front of them depending on what it is they wish to portray, or what they wish to get out of the encounter. To me this is parasitic. It is "importing a manufactured self" for each occasion - or self-importing - or self-importance. It recently became clear to me [again!], that if I entertain those who behave in this manner, I too become this way.

There are three types of people responsible for propagating ongoing suffering in this world: Priests, politicians, and profiteers. What they all have in common is they manufacture appearances deliberately to manipulate others. They are all the same type of person simply wearing different faces. I am disgusted with myself whenever I behave in this way. This manufacture of personality deliberately to acquire from others is called "iniquity". My work has nothing to do with furthering ones skills at manipulating others. Using this work to impress women and to get people to buy what they may not require has a price tag - eventually we have to pay the piper. The universe is crushingly merciless with those who practice iniquity - as we are finding out right now, economically and otherwise.

When I toured and taught this work I did not even allow my books to be sold in the same room where I spoke. I did not speak to people so they would buy my book. This kind of behavior disgusts me - and I am disgusted with myself whenever I entertain it within myself. We have to be who we are when we are talking to our mother, our lover, the person at the gas station, and the stranger on the street. If we change our face because a face changes in front of us - we are inauthentic, have no integrity, and the closeness we assume we feel with anyone is bullshit.

So, I am not going to tell you what to do. This is what you have a heart for. It appears you have very strong beliefs about what you think you have to do to be supported by the universe. I suggest you read "Navigating Our Experiences" and contemplate the difference between "navigating our own experience" and "behaving in a way as to manipulate another's". The difference between the two is so vast that "a manipulator" and "a navigator" appear as different species. Manipulators inevitably enter self-destruction, whereas navigators evolve. Both take many with them - so we have to take care whom we entertain. We have to choose which group we occupy - not through our words - but through what is in our heart. Then, we live with the consequences. To be sure - we live with the consequences.

Will The Presence Process help me to find peace?

2009-07-30T02:21:00.000-07:00

Q: I am wondering is The Presence Process will help me find peace. It feels like the world is becoming more and more chaotic. I feel hopeless. How are we ever going to live in peace? Is this book going to help me?

A: One of our greatest misconceptions is the notion that if we seek peace, we have to “make it”. This assumes peace does not exist unless manufactured. This misunderstand arises from being mentally and physically transfixed. It stems from the belief we are to rearrange the physical and mental aspect of our experience to moderate its quality. We only have to observe how we behave when we claim we seek peace to realize our approach is a misconception. We even say, “Let’s make peace”. Because of our misconception about what peace is, when intending the experience of peace, we predictably take one of two approaches: Attempting to rearrange our circumstances physically, or mentally. Observing our world and community leaders demonstrates these two ineffectual [in effect you all] approaches.
Our leaders demand that, for there to be peace, people must be moved, removed, borders re-drawn, and population behaviors controlled. This is born out of a belief that peace is established through rearranging physical circumstance. This approach never accomplishes peace – and any apparent appearance of peace gained from rearranging physical circumstance is always short-lived because it is born of control and sedation. Peace may be expressed physically - however, its existence is not determined by physical circumstance.
Our leaders also insist on approaches such as “peace talks” – in which governments and peace organizations present treatise – make compromises with each other – and declare after long discussion and debate that peace is accomplished. This approach mistakenly believes peace is something mental. This approach has never also accomplished the realization of authentic peace – and any apparent appearance of peace gained from mental discussion and debate – from agreement between opposing parties - is always short-lived, because it is also born of control and sedation. Just as peace is not a physical circumstance, it is also not a mental agreement.
Peace is a vibration recognized through felt-perception. We don’t “do peace” or “think peace” – we feel peace. Peace is – it does not require manufacture. Peace is everywhere, whether we are aware of it or not. The entire planet is blanketed in peace. It is easy to experientially realize this: We may enter any war-torn environment – any experience of conflict - remove all human beings – and what becomes immediately self-evident is the resonance of peace. Peace is in the midst of all chaos and conflict. Nothing we do or think ads or takes away from this actuality.
In each moment of our individual experience we are immersed in the vibrational resonance called peace. However, due to our imprinted charged emotions and their emanations of fear, anger, and grief – and the mental stories told by these emotional states – and the physical activities born of believing these stories – we remain unaware of the peace already given to us all.
We are therefore not required to “make peace”, but to realize it – to real eyes it – to perceive it with the eyes of the heart. By sedating and controlling our current states of imprinted felt-discomfort, we simultaneously shut down the perceptual mechanism required to realize peace – our feeling capacity. We are all personally responsible for whether we experience peace or not. No other can feel on our behalf, and therefore no other has the capacity to grant us the experience we call peace. Peace is available to us right now through a choice to feel peaceful.
When we are unable to feel peaceful it because our experience of peace is obscured by our emotional, mental, and physical reactions to our discomfort. The road into realizing peace is therefore the intent to integrate imprinted emotional charge. We are all personally in charge of our capacity for peacefulness. Once we authentically feel the vibrational resonance called peace – this resonance automatically radiates into our mentality and physicality. Peace therefore begins with us, individually. Realizing peace individually is a prerequisite to realizing it collectively. Hence the saying, “Peace be with you”. In this light, The Presence Process and its intent to assist us in integrating our imprinted emotional charges is a tool for realizing peace. But, it begins with us. Peace has nothing to do with the other.

Can I use the breathing audio while I breathe?

2009-07-29T23:18:00.000-07:00

Q: I have a question, I'm about to enter Session One tomorrow. But I'm not sure whether I should be repeating the Present Activating statements while breathing? I read in the book that we should do it when we are not engaged in mental activity? I'm always thinking? Does that mean I should do it only during the connected breathing sessions?Also can I play the http://www.thepresenceportal.com/how_we_breathe.htm mp3 while doing the breathing sessions so I can use that as a pattern of breathing while doing it? Something like a guidance?

A: I am currently in the midst of rewriting The Presence Process, not that there is anything wrong with the current edition - however I am ready to put out a more efficient prototype.
One of the changes is I no longer call them Presence Activation Statements - now they are referred to as Conscious Responses. Another change is that there is a Conscious Response used all the way through the procedure only for the breathing sessions - if we wish to do mental repetition while breathing. It is: "I AM HERE NOW". I suggest you use this during your breathing practice.
As per your question, you may be thinking all the time, which is a complete waste of time as all thinking is a dysfunction of the mental body - but this does not mean you are required to be mentally active all the time. If someone is having a conversation with me - I am mentally active. If I am doing numerical calculations - I am mentally active. If I am giving a presentation - I am mentally active. Using a Conscious Response during moments like this is not recommended. It's called , "trying too hard".
However, most of our time is spent meandering in meaningless thought. During these moments it is useful to repeat whatever Conscious Response we have been given for that week.

As far as the audio is concerned: It is only 5 minutes long, deliberately. The breathing practice is 15 minutes long. You may use the audio for the first 5 minutes to set a pace. However, do not tape and repeat it to the length of 15 minutes so it runs throughout your breathing practice, otherwise you are turning it into a crutch. This work is not about leaning. And, after a while of using it to set the pace - hopefully you stop using it altogether and rely on your own inner resources to establish the momentum of your breathing practice.

I am in excruciating pain - any suggestions?

2009-07-29T23:10:00.000-07:00

Q: I am not sure if I have a question. I am in excruciating pain. I have never had pain that I could not tolerate before. I am completing week 7 tonight. It feels like all my past pain and hurts have accumulated in my right quadriceps. To find comfort I have to lay on my stomach. I feel embarrassment and shame for even writing this for crying out for help. I have been very mental having to understand everything. I know that that is not required. I am finding the process very transforming and it is perfect for me right now. I have moments when I sit with the pain and it goes away but also returns. The pain has been present for over a week but has intensified today. Very challenging to feel better at feeling when you are in severe pain. Any suggestions?

A: Yes, continue. You are obviously on the right track. You will get through to the other side as long as you continue - and stop all the thinking about it. You may benefit from reading the article called "Gifts" on the Writings page of the website. Also, make sure you are tuning into the emotional state surfacing along with the pain. It will be there in amidst the physical discomfort. It is this emotional signature which is causal. Makes sure you are giving it attention - being with it without condition. Often, when we do this work, we feel as if our pain is worsening - it is my experience that this is not necessarily the case. It is our awareness which is improving. Many of us have great discomfort being in the body because of built-up and unattended emotional charges. When we do this work we reenter the body and start to feel aspects of our experience not available to our awareness when adrift in the mental plane. The way out is through.

Is the warm water hot enough?

2009-07-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

Q: I am on my second experiential journey through The Presence Process, and am in Session 8. The first time around, I used warm water for the activation of the Sessions, and then, during the week that followed, took my regular hot baths. At that time I experienced the heat in my solar plexus that you described, in both the warm, and the hot baths. My question is, do you suggest to use warm water only so that someone won't get burned, and then blame it on you or The Presence Process, or is it actually the warm, and never hot water that facilitates the release of the negative emotional charge? Thank you for continuing your journey, and for taking the time to read this.

A: Yes. You have no idea how desperately desperate people behave! One has to protect such people from themselves and from ruining this procedure for others. In rebirthing one uses very warm water - almost uncomfortable to the skin. However, I have discovered one only requires water that is body temperature, or a degree or two over that. It is not just the heat of the water at work here - it is also the intensity of the accumulated intent acquired from having moved experientially from Session One to the water sessions in Seven, Eight, and Nine.
I get emails from people wanting to attend to the breathing practice four to six times a day, who have stayed on one of the Sessions for five weeks to "get it right". These are the people who require protection from themselves and who would scald themselves with the water just to feel something happening. So, warm water is all that is required.
In the end it is Presence which makes all possible, and these simple procedures are there to make us vulnerable to Presence. When we try to do it better, longer, harder, and hotter, we only do so because of lack of faith in Presence and the procedure as it is given us. Acting from this lack of faith does not improve anything.

Does The Presence Process require rumination?

2009-07-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

Q: I am one of those folks that doesn't have a 'skin' towards the outside world (empath?). I seem to feel all the suffering of everything around me and get quite overwhelmed with it all (even feeling paralyzed by it). I am always trying to make sense of ontology but seem to fall in the black hole of just generating endless questions with the philosophical approach. Therefore,long story short: Is The Presence Process likely to worsen my rumination,obsessing, and feeling overwhelmed 'or' is it more likely a sign that I have issues which this process might eventually help me with? On another note, I have a severe case of ocular hypertension and I think it might be related to my inner state.

A: The Presence Process has nothing to do with rumination. It is a practical approach to integration of the emotional charges imprinted during childhood which, while unresolved, drive our mental and physical experience in an uncomfortable way. It also teaches containment - something you appear to require. Your level of felt-perception is obviously well-developed - now your learning is about responding to this capacity. I suggest, if you would like to know what The Presence Process is about before engaging it, that you first read Alchemy Of The Heart. This book is short, simple, and provides a thorough overview of the work initiated by The Presence Process procedure. Rumination is not part of it. Thinking, understanding, and analysis are not part of it.

I would like to form a group around The Presence Process...

2009-07-25T23:37:00.000-07:00

Q: Would it be inappropriate to have a class using your book so that an interested group could go through it together? Do you feel that would violate the principles of the book or would that upset you? I thought it would be a good idea to go through the book with a group, but someone raised the issue that it was contrary to the book's ideas. Please let me know...

A: Read "Let's Not Form Another Group" on the Writings page of the website.

Q: Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly. It's been a while since I read the book, but I remember now the thoughts on support groups. While this was not what I was thinking, I can see your point. I was just thinking that it's good material to get out there and I assumed no one would show up unless they were ready. I certainly want to respect your thoughts.

A: Don't take my word for it - form a group if you must - and then let all the egos that show up do their little dance of self-importance. Once you are sick of it - you'll move on. Remember, for this work in particular there is no group more authentic and efficient than the human beings surrounding us in each moment. Those who form "specialized spiritual groups" around this work only do so out of couched self-importance and unconscious projection of their unintegrated emotional charge upon others. And, they then attract those who behave the same. It is fun at first - but only at first. Then it gets really messy.
People also form groups around this work because they do not yet have the courage to get real within their authentic group - within their families, with their companions and with the people in their work place - so they form a "special group" as a cover-up. But that is all it is - re-covery - not discovery. If this "specialized support group thing" is a lesson you require to learning - you have my full support. I did this myself, and welcomed the teaching which comes with it.

Every religion is a group formed by people who don't have the capacity to face God just as God is - as being everything and everyone appearing to us in each moment. There is only one group - all of us.

I am reaching out because I cannot stand this shame anymore...

2009-07-25T23:09:00.000-07:00

Q: I am writing this email wondering what to say and how to verbalize what I am experiencing. I am currently on I am safe in this body and I am experiencing the depths of agony. It is so intense I feel like I am depressed and my mind says this is how you have always felt. I have been praying to turn over these thoughts however the experience of shame that I feel is what I have felt my entire life. Although the the physical and mental are not the primary cause it feels like in some way that I might need some neurotransmitter help.. These are the kind of thoughts that I intuit come from the emotional charge.. I have been willingly consistent with this process. I simply want to function without shame.. I have been sitting with this and my stomach is on fire.. I am not sure what my question is??? I am just reaching out...

A: This is a good time to get down on your knees and beg forgiveness from whatever God is for you. But not to get rid of "thoughts" - for these are effects of a deeper wound. Ask for assistance, for having this "feeling" taken from you, because after all the thinking and figuring out, and understanding, you still do not know what to "do about it".
Know that this -praying for help in having this feeling of shame taken from you - means you are going to first be required to feel it all fully, so you know what you are asking to be forgiven for from a point of felt-perception.

Unless we truly know how our shamefulness has impacted others - how it has hurt them - how they have felt because of it - unless we feel all this hurt - then our prayers for forgiveness are just empty words from the head. But when we feel the consequences of our actions - our prayer becomes a beckoning for help from our heart. Then we are getting real.

Know that the hurt you have caused to others - for which you now have "fire in your stomach" - which is now "indigestible" - which you can "no longer stomach" - know that this hurt is to be given up consciously through feeling it consciously. Stay on your knees until you mean it, until you know there is no where else to go but inward to the source, and until you realize the arrogance which brought you into the shame. When you pray this hard, feeling your condition this deeply, offering it up this humbly, which requires facing the arrogance squarely, then only is it taken - not a second before. Then the pretence is washed away and Presence restored.

So, this is not about reaching out...this is about reaching inward...with the heart. Let the heart give you the words for your prayer - not your head. If you truly allow yourself to feel your shame fully - the right neurotransmitters are automatically fired up - and the response of unconditional love is inevitable. If it is truly shame you feel - and if you are willing to feel the extent of it - then get down on your knees and get real.

I have done TPP three times, can I take action to quit smoking now?

2009-07-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

Q: I am finishing up my third time with the presence process and this journey has been so beneficial in many different aspects of my life. Per the journal [available as a free download on the website], I have been setting goals, and one of those being to stop smoking. I know in The Presence Process it states that these addictions/behaviors will simply go away as your negative emotional charge is reduced and integrated/replaced with positive emotional charges. I have seen this happen with many of my actions, but the smoking is one that has alluded me. I know it also states not to try to make these types of changes while on the journey, but now that I have done it and am accustomed to the feelings that arise so do you think this urge/addiction to control will just subside or should I actively attempt to quit through other methods along with the process? Any thoughts you might have would be greatly appreciated and have a great weekend.

A: You are now equipped to respond to the deliberately stimulated surfacing of emotional charges. Therefore, take action - take charge. Your action in this regard is no longer reaction - but response. Smoking and alcohol are the most challenging parasitic invasions upon humanity. So be patient, but be firm. Pray for help. Stop identifying with the experience of "[your name]the smoker" - and start identifying with "[you name] the vibrational Presence". Daily application of Consciously Approaching The Vibrational is useful in this regard. The hardest thing about quiting an addiction is our identification with the addictive experience. When we say, "I am a smoker", we are reinforcing a lie which keeps us lying to ourselves and living in this lie. Rather say, "I am Presence having an experience of smoking cigarettes". You are not your experience - identifying with it traps you in a self-defeating lie. Onward then - be the Presence you really are and the manufactured experience of "[your name] the smoker" goes up in smoke.

My beer-drinking gets in the way of my breathing - what do you suggest?

2009-07-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

Q: I keep trying to do the process, but my beer drinking gets in the way. I drink beer most days (very admittedly for sedation purposes) and thus am not able to do the breathing at night as suggested. I keep trying to stop drinking and do it right, but as you have pointed out, that is monkeying with effects, not the cause, and is unsustainable. Do you think it would be beneficial to still do the program but do second breath session in afternoon? If not, how else then to eliminate cause, so I can do the program. Feel like I am chasing my tail. Thank you soooo much for being available and for the wonderful things on your website. The breathing audio has allowed me to do the breathing session with so much less distress. Before I kept thinking "I can't keep this up, I can't keep this up", but with the audio I am doing it.

A: I suggest you do your second breathing practice of the day in the afternoon - as you have already intuited - before having your first beer. As you have quite rightly stated - your beer drinking is not the issue. Do not even be concerned about it. Continue to apply yourself to The Presence Process in spite of it. Continue to attend to the breathing practice twice a day. Most importantly, when faced with uncomfortable emotional states during your pre-drinking hours - be with them without condition. If upsets arise while drinking - then beer with them without condition.

I have absolutely no doubt I will at some point receive an email from you telling me you have not had a beer for days - if not for weeks. You are definitely a candidate for repeating The Presence Process once completing it. So, take three weeks off when you are finished this round, and during that time off apply the practice for Consciously Approaching The Vibrational. Then re-enter and continue. Well done for keeping at it.

Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Am I missing something?

2009-07-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

Q: Funny about this latest question. In regards to the felt-perception, feelings, vibrational, etc. It's been bothering me for a while and keeps coming up so I am writing to you. Most of this is due to the "Approaching the Vibrational" which I've been "doing". In Part I, you don't mention staying with the eye center. I have so much trouble with that in Part II and III, that I try to do it in Part I also. I know these are guidelines but is there a reason you did not put it as part of Part l? Also, it's really hard to stay in the eye center, my naturally lazy eye always seems to look down. Any input for me there? The real confusion for me has always been differentiating the feelings,emotions, felt perceptions, vibrational and pulsing. They all seem to actually be (once I drop the stories)in the physical sensations in the body. All these, including the "feeling the vibrational" seem to be internal physical pulsating movements. I can't hear or see them but attempt to with the closed eyes at the center and it all seems to be the internal physical body pulsating. I really don't know the difference between an emotion and a feeling. Are you using these word interchangeably? Am I missing something? I do enjoy this physical stuff wouldn't want to be missing the point.

A: Yes, you are correct - you are completely missing the point. From your email it is obvious you are diligent, trying very hard, and holding this work as being very, very, very important to you. It is for this reason I recommend you immediately stop doing the practice for Consciously Approaching The Vibrational, that you stop doing any emotional integration work, and that you stop reading anything I write - whether on this Q & A - on the website - or any of the books I have written. In fact - please throw my books away.

Your eagerness, your "trying", and your diligence to this work, are completely annihilating your capacity to approach it in a manner in which accomplishes any valid progress. Such enthusiasm transforms what is intended to be "a state of being" into "an important doing" - and as such - neutralizes any of the possible benefits. I suggest you immediately cease conscious involvement in any aspect of "Michael Brown's writings or practices" until it has all become completely irrelevant and inconsequential to you.

While you try so hard and continue to behave like "a diligent student", you cannot receive the basic instructions given for the vibrational or any other of the practices. It is obvious from your email you cannot hear me. You are not even listening - you are thinking. It is impossible to listen and think at the same time. You are completely mental about all of this. You are not only anal eyes-ing each word I write, but you are also anal eye-sing every moment of your unfolding experience. Accordingly, there is no prospect of you achieving anything from this work which may benefit you.

I suggest you throw away all your "spiritual books", and immediately stop doing anything you consider to be "spiritual". In fact, do an immediate spring-cleaning from your current life experience of anything you define as spiritual, metaphysical, mystical, religious, etc. This includes all pictures, crystals, CD's, DVD's - the lot. Pretend spirituality does not exist. Pretend this is your only life experience and that what you do in this world matters more than anything that may possibly happen "afterwards" or "elsewhere". From this point onward behave as if there is no "afterwards" or "elsewhere" and that Michael Brown is a stinking liar who has completely betrayed you. Have absolutely nothing to do with him. Actively dislike him for having led you astray and wasted your time.

I suggest you approach your life as if you are already fully evolved, and that there is nothing more to accomplish or understand or experience than what you have already. Only when you arrive at a point where you realize you have not thought about "the vibrational" or "emotional body cleansing" or "breathing" for weeks - then I suggest you - only at that point - you sit down - close your eyes - and be with your experience just as it is. Not to accomplish anything, not to understand anything, not to get anything right or to do it correctly, but simply because you happen to be here, sitting, like a tree in the ground, being where you are because you are where you are and for no other reason.

You have clearly lost your way and it is because you approach this work as if it is somehow more important and more significant than brushing your teeth, putting your hand in front of your mouth when you cough, saying "Bless you" when someone sneezes, or wiping your butt properly after a good bowl movement. It is not, nor am I, and nor is anything I write. Please now treat it all like crap and whip it away diligently.

Only when approached in the same manner of necessity and non-analysis as these above listed activities is any progress possible for you. You have clearly turned all of this into "an important doing", and accordingly isolated these activities from the rest of your life as somehow being of more importance. For this reason you have zero chance of reaping any useful benefits. Please immediately stop all such practices you have learnt from my writings and drop all insights received. Go build a kite, and fly it. This will serve you far more than reading another word I write or attending to another practice I have recommended.

As you suggest, you are indeed missing something - your life! Be free of this work - be free of me - it is causing you to "head" away from the "heart" of what is truly important - living.

Now go. Go fly a kite.

[Thank you for being the vehicle for the reply to your email which ended up on the Q & A. I am wondering if you were able to absorb it. I hope so. What I attempted to communicate to you is crucial: "Trying to understand" as a means to move forward is "Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil". It only serves to keep you thrown out of Eden-consciousness and at a distance from a direct experience with the vibrational. Your experience is your teaching - not your understanding of it - but your navigating each step by watching the consequences of what unfolds when acting upon anything. However, trying to understand what cannot be understood by us is not only arrogant [we all suffer from this], but it is to except the misguided invitation of an enemy [the mental body playing God]. When we do not insist on "understanding" as a means to approach what God is for us - there is no enemy in the way - because then there is no enemy. We were told right in the beginning - "Live joyfully in The Garden - but do not try to figure God out - for to do so is to step onto a pathway leading out of The Kingdom [mental projection] into the mental realm." I know I was harsh with you - but my intent was to stop you in your tracks - because you are "heading" in the wrong direction. Trust your experience as it reveals itself to you. It is given you intimately by the Vibrational. Read it and receive it by feeling it unconditionally. Feeling it unconditionally brings in-sight - as opposed to understanding. Insight delivers to us whole [holy] and complete awareness's that understanding only ever promises - but can never deliver. Insight through the felt-capacity of the heart is direct communication [communion] from and with God - understanding is to mistakenly bow to the mental body as being God. Contemplate this deeply so you may move forward with renewed strength - not because of my writings or recommended procedures - but because your experience is given you to be as your Teacher. Trying to understand my words is futile. Use them only to receive from your experience what is already given to you. The heart has all the required insight - the head has only understanding - and understanding is as the word reveals - we end up "standing under" something!]

Do I need more than The Presence Process while doing it?

2009-07-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

Q: Hi I wanted to ask your opinion about the process itself. As we know there will be a lot of emotion arising, and it could be quite hard. All those horrible memories coming up. Now a friend of mine suggested the sedona method in combination with the presence process. The Sedona Method can show you and your organization how to tap your natural ability to let go of any unwanted thought, feeling or belief in the moment. This will free you to have, be or do whatever is best for you now. The Sedona Method liberates you without you needing to feel more pain and without having to figure out why.

A: First of all, I know nothing about The Sedona Method - so no comment there. Secondly, the assumption that doing The Presence Process means you have to "relive all your horrible memories" is something you made up - a story - one which you will not found told in the text of the book. The only aspect of resurfacing memory necessary to experientially encounter is "the felt-resonance of the memory". The stories we associate with these felt-imprints are irrelevant and do not assist in integration - other than bringing our attention to the feeling. Also, if you are looking for "an easier way" - then you are way off track in your assumptions about what this work requires. Seeking "easy" is fear-based avoidance and resistance. Our task is to fully feel each surfacing felt-expression of memories requiring integration, without condition. We integrate them by feeling our way consciously through them - not by trying to find methods to get around, over, or under them. As we feel our way through them, we are simultaneously developing felt-perception. Once our felt-perception is sufficiently developed, we become experientially qualified to consciously approach the vibrational - which we initially accomplish by "feeling the vibrations". Feeling is the initial sight and hearing mechanism of the heart. The integration of our unresolved emotional content is therefore a journey which fuels our capacities to consciously enter and contain vibrational awareness. The Presence Process is self-sufficient and requires no additives in assisting us to make this approach. Everything required to support the procedure is on the website.

Why do you still have rough days?

2009-07-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

Q: During a talk of yours in Santa Barbara last year, you mentioned that the day of that talk you had had a really rough day. This has always confused me about freedom, enlightenment, etc. What does that mean for you to have a rough day? To me it means not accepting what is. My thought is that you shouldn't have rough days anymore. Please enlighten me.

A: I am not enlightened - I do not even believe in such a concept - so I am free to have any sort of day I please - even days of not accepting what is.

Does The Presence Process make my symptoms worse?

2009-07-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

Q: This is the third time I am going through the PP, and it's much more intense this time. My question is: I have had moderate to severe stomach discomfort and pain for several months now. It seems to worsen with stress and anxiety. I am concerned that the processing might worsen the physical condition, but I'm also doing the PP again to help bring underlying emotional issues to light. Is there a danger in those with stress ulcers or stress-aggravated physical conditions in undergoing the PP, or is it nevertheless beneficial to push through despite these aggravations?

A: The Presence Process cannot worsen what already is - it only brings a greater felt-experience of what already is into our awareness. This increase in awareness is often mistakenly perceived as 'worsening'. Many people are having stomach ailments at this time because we are all being faced with unresolved aspects of our past which we cannot stomach, and therefore cannot digest. The idea that we need to "push on through" shows how constipated we feel because of this.
The intent, as you correctly state, is to seek the awareness of the emotional signature flowing beneath these surfacing symptoms. To accomplish this we as ask ourselves: "What is it I cannot stomach and therefore experience as indigestible?" However, do not answer the question mentally - do not even seek an answer actively in any way. The answer arises as unexpected emotional states which are uncomfortable - often triggered by unexpected events or encounters with others. As these surface - we are to be with them without condition. This has a laxative effect: Our "being with them without condition" integrates them gradually and organically. This integration may also be perceived as "digestion".

Am I using the Presence Activation Statements correctly?

2009-07-17T04:31:00.000-07:00

Q: Do I repeat the presence activation statements constantly throughout the breathing exercises, or just periodically during that exercise?

A: Do what works best for you. In the new created edition of The Presence Process [still busy working on] I have recommended using the statement "I AM HERE NOW" for all breathing sessions - and then the other weekly given statements for daily mental repetition when not mentally engaged. You may wish to try this too as it works well in sync with the breathing - and it is very powerful when you receive the insights it contains.

Q: Do I say it in my mind in English, although this is not my native language? But I'm comfortable with it, since I lived during the last 6 years abroad with English as main language. But since I want to address the emotional body, and you were mentioning the seven year cycle, I feel very often the need to also translate the statement into my language. Is it better to keep it in one language or is it OK if my mind is serving it in different ones? And if I stay with one, do I stay with yours or with mine?

A: Do it both ways. But remember - your child self is not English, right? So, make sure it receives attention too, in its mother tongue. But again, do what works best for you - always use your experience as a barometer for what is most efficient.

Even though I have completed TPP, I still have this feeling of "waiting" or "hoping" - any insight?

2009-07-15T00:08:00.000-07:00

Q: Thank you for the Presence Process. I have experienced it once and it is such a powerful procedure. In addition to the emotional currents of fear, anger and grief, it helped me feel another, until now, unconscious current that I can only describe as a perpetual “waiting” or “hoping”. I don’t know if it is an emotion, because while emotions come and go, it seems to always be there, like a very faint sense of dissatisfaction. It feels like a “pull” that takes me away from the here and now. As you say in TPP, I realize that this “waiting” has been with me since I can remember, and I should know by now (I am 45) that it is pointless. I can even feel it underneath all the spiritual seeking. It’s just another thing to wait for, like many other things were before. One would think that in this shocking realization the waiting would vanish, but except a few moments of hopelessness when it seemed that I was finally “getting it”, there is still always the faintest hope there. I am reaching a point of despair, as I see every day slipping away as a repeat of the previous one, suspecting that there is nothing I can do about it. I cannot even seem to be able to stop trying to do something about it. Or hoping.Can you offer some words of wisdom?

A: This is a great question, and there are two things I'd like to say in response:

Firstly, in the eastern mystic traditions they don't call it "waiting" or "hoping" - they call it longing. I connect with the word "longing" too. I can only speak to you from within my own experience of it and of my own way of interacting with it.
While we are in this world it never goes away. It may become temporarily submerged in the noise of our outer experiences, but this feeling is as constant as the rising and setting of the sun.
For many years it drove me to distraction, because nothing quenches it. Now, I realize nothing in this world is supposed to. I realize it is a resonance which penetrates the fabric of this transient experience that is emitting a signal from something which is permanent. It is not coming from "elsewhere", although while we are in this world, it feels like it does. It is a signal being emitted from our home while we are "elsewhere".

This current experience of ours is, when compared to our home, is perceptually "elsewhere". No matter how much we forget our home, no matter how much we invest in a future here, no matter how much we identify with this world - the reality is we are all visitors. Even if we have been here for millions of life experiences, been Kings and Queens, street sweepers and ditch diggers, we are still visiting. This world is rightly called "the creation", because it was manufactured. It is an artificial environment - like a very hi-tech, 3-dimensional, full-participation, holographic video game. It is so real, it feels real. It is supposed to -otherwise we wouldn't play. It is so real we believe it to be all there is [that is why we call it 'our world'], and so we invest ourselves in it as if it is all that counts.

Yet, when we become quiet enough, or when we are impacted by great trauma, or even for no reason at all, we feel "a sense of longing" - a pang of homesickness that nothing here can and ever will satisfy. Somethings temporarily appear to satisfy this feeling - like a good orgasm - but this sense of satisfaction is only temporary. Nobody only has sex once.

Also, some appear to feel this longing, while others apparently never do. Personally, I think those who staff this creation have this longing switched off so they can do their jobs without becoming introspective. Those who are simply visiting, have the signal on at various intensities - depending on their intended duration of stay.

When we encounter this resonance within ourselves, it may also cause nostalgia and melancholy. Great poets and artists are those swirled up by it. When we react to it unconsciously, we build religions in its honor, bow down to beings who say that can one day deliver us into a place where it no longer emits its signal, and erect great temples as hopeful portals of reentry. Yet, most of this behavior is reactionary. Whenever we go down on our knees and pray to some god as a reaction to this world, instead of as a response to what God is for us, we are reacting to this feeling of longing. Cults are always built by one smart fellow taking advantage of this resonance of longing within others. If these cults become big enough, they get to call themselves "religions", and then have the power to call the other up-n-coming deceivers of people, cults. Yet, all religions, no matter how well entrenched or legitimized by government and business, are cults. And, they all prey upon this inherent feeling of dislocation and dissatisfaction, which is deliberately placed within us upon our entry here.

Becoming aware of this longing is therefore a point of liberation. When we take responsibility for it, instead of mistakenly believing some individual or organization can satisfy its thirst, we free ourselves of all this political, profiteering, and religious manipulation. We realize that all advertising and political speeches are preying upon our belief that our inner longing can be satisfied through some new efficient product, or some re-hashed political promise.

Once we tune into this feeling, our task is to respond to it, and responding to it has absolutely nothing to do with attempting to still its transmission. Instead, when we realize it is a signal from home, we cherish it. It reminds us of the transience of this world. This longing, when internalized, fuels our intent to reconnect with the authentic causality of our Presence. This reconnection intent sets us upon a pathway whose first stop is to integrate the causality of our mistakenly believing we are to make our home here, and our mistakenly placing our allegiance in those who prey upon our inbuilt discontent with this manufactured experience.

Initially, the causality of the quality of our human experience is our childhood emotional imprinting. This imprinting drives our wanting. However, as we commence integrating this point of emotional causality, we gradually reawaken into our authentic point of causality - the vibrational. This longing within us is a signal emanating from within the vibrational realm - our true home - a place which exists before and beyond any elaborately manufactured creation - such as this world is. And so, this is where the paradox arises: We cannot reenter vibrational awareness by trying to go somewhere to get somewhere.

Trying to get somewhere in the midst of a holographic illusion is futile - because no matter how much distance or progress we perceive ourselves making - we still have travelled nowhere in nothing. Becoming famous or glamorously successful in a video game reveals its pointlessness when the machine suddenly gets switched off. "Oh shit, what happened to my bank account?!"

To extract ourselves from this current experience of "elsewhere-ness" and return our awareness homeward requires arrival-mentality - instead of the escape-mentality which all cults prey on and pray for. What we authentically are is so magnificently powerful, and so real, that when we integrate it - when we bring it all into one point of focus - anything which is created [manufactured] is automatically dissolved, revealing in its wake everything which always is , and which cannot be tampered with or altered.

So, the portal for reentry into the vibrational is always available in the present in which we always reside. Our task therefore, is not to react to this feeling of longing by trying to go or get somewhere, but rather to respond to it by showing up fully exactly where we perceive ourselves to be right now. So, that is the first thing I wish to share with you: That this longing is your friend - your ONLY friend - so do not let anyone else attempt to satisfy it for you, or lead you to believe that while in this world, it can or should be removed or eliminated. It is the beacon of authenticity calling you home into yourself - reminding you this is not and never will be your home. However, do not let this realization stop you from being at home while you are here... Yup, the paradox!

The second thing I wish to share in a response to your question is this: We are supposed to be here now. If we are here, it is required. Only we may ever know why, and when we finally enter the awareness empowering us to realize why, this realization likely becomes insignificant and inconsequential.

Being here, without being driven by this longing into mistakenly assuming this worldly experience can satisfy it, is a skill. It is a skill which hinges upon one word, "enough". Right now, I want you to notice something undeniable: You are and have enough. Maybe not for yesterday, or for tomorrow, or for someone else - but within this precise moment - you are and have enough to be. However, you cannot perceive this "enough-ness" unless you are "in this moment".

In each moment we are given exactly what we require for each moment - we are given "enough". However, when we live driven by our wanting, as in this time-based continuum, in which the moment is simply a means to some other end - in which the moment is simply a stepping stone to the fulfilling of some plan we have for ourselves which we believe will bring absolute consistency amidst a world of constant change - then we cannot perceive that "in each moment we have and are enough". So, I recommend you contemplate this word, "enough". Bring yourself into the moment, right here, right now, and realize that right here, right now, for this here and now, you have and are enough.

When we are able to experientially realize what "being and having enough in the moment" implies - we stop trying to use this world to get, get, get. Instead, our time here becomes about opportunities to give. In my life this realization of "enough-ness" was the turning point which empowered me to become of service - to place my full attention upon tasks, like this answering of your email, for which I do not get paid - for which there is no boss to check in with. I get up each day and go to work, and just about everything I do each day is not on anyone's clock. And, I do not do this in hopes it will accomplish anything other than allow me to leave a legacy which polishes the only gem I treasure - my integrity. However, I am only able to approach my life this way - an approach I have now lived by for many years - because I realized what the meaning of "enough" is - and, because I also know this world is not my home.

I am a visitor here. I am like a guest in a very elaborate hotel. I am not here to tell the staff how to do their business or to get a fulltime job at the reception desk. Of course, I may moan and groan about the hotel's service - but that is my right as a guest. Not that anyone pays any attention to my gripes. So, being a guest, I am not going to rearrange the furniture in my room more than is required to complement my current required activity. Nor am I going to check out after my stay with the capacity or intent to carry any of the furniture out with me. It belongs to the hotel - and quite frankly - I have no desire to furnish my real home with this hotel furniture! None of what is here belongs to me or is mine to own. I am already enough without it.

However, nor am I going to run from the hotel because I realize it is not my home. Going home is inevitable and unfolds when required. I trust this implicitly. Making it happen is not my business. Do I miss home? Of course. Do I know exactly what it is I am missing? I haven't a cooking clue. Yet, within me there is a signal beacon emanating a melancholic resonance which keeps me from mistakenly identifying with the hotel and the staff as being something permanent. How do I know what I am supposed to do while here? Only the moment reveals what is required, because what is required happens - and so I respond to this in each moment as best as I am able.

It is a very strange, paradoxical, 3D, holographic, full-participation, completely hands-on creation to be immersed in. What a wonderful and simultaneously horrific experience! Many years ago I realized all my efforts to "get out of it", whether via substance use or religious fervor - simply led me further into amazement [what is meant to be a maze] and away from myself. Now, I know in the deepest recesses of my being that the only way out is in - is showing up in this experience as fully as I have the capacity to muster.

Of course, in each moment I fail hopelessly at this intent. But, my failing does not ever nullify the intent. So, yes, I too feel "the longing". But I do not try to satisfy it - I instead celebrate the beautiful agony of it. I allow it to remind me daily to spend some time pointing myself homeward - onward, inward, and upward. I approach the vibrational consciously each day. And even within this endeavor, I am no longer fanatical. I approach this task with as much significance and intensity as I do brushing my teeth. My approach to the vibrational is part of my daily routine [route in]. While here I am in approach - not to guarantee arrival [because I never really left] - but because I love my home with all my heart. Because this aspect of my experience is taken care of unconditionally - I am then free, while here, to participate as fully as I am capable. And, this participation arises from within a realization that, in each moment, I am, and have, enough.
Knowing this, I am less likely to be manipulated or to manipulate. Knowing each moment is full of "enough-ness" allows me to be with this experience without condition. And, so far, so good. And not. This is why my only prayer is, "Thank you", and why my only truth is, "If this is happening, this is required, and therefore valid, so let me respond as best as I am able." [Everything else is an elaborate story.] Then, I get on with it, and fall, and get up again, and fall again, and make sure that as I repeatedly dust myself off, I am also having a good laugh at the fact I can go through life thinking I actually know what's going on, when in fact I do not have a cooking clue.

After all, when the machine is switched off - which happens cyclically for repairs, upgrades, and maintenance - the whole spectacle reveals itself as not being that important - or that serious. So, we lost and gained a few lives. So what. There are billions upon billions of these games being played - and it is more than likely we are playing many of them simultaneoulsy. Being a homesick game-player is not a problem - it is a blessing. Onward, inward, and upward then. Game-on.

I have done The Presence Process twice but still experience "Hellish" experiences in the early hours of the morning...

2009-07-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

Q: I have completed the Presence Process for the 2nd time and, although I have moments, even days of feeling thankful and close to the presence around me and in me, I still wake around 2 am in intense fear of some unknown horror in the future. “Hellish” thoughts of death and illness and poverty, along with a feeling of being victimized by intense hatred last until around 4 am and then go like a thunder and lightning storm that passes by and leaves peace in its wake. I have assumed it has its cause in the fundamentalist religion I was raised in, but would like your input.

A: We live in a moment of great integration. We have imprinting that is multi-layered beyond our current mental comprehension. We live on a planet that has hosted millions upon millions of civilizations, which have all risen and fallen. We live in a solar system that goes through cycles of creation and devastation so vast, our poor mental body cannot begin to fathom. Some of us have been here through it all, just as some of us are temporary visitors. Now, we yet again move through the ending and beginning of another great cycle. Yet, in of itself, it is a blinking of an eye. As we do so, we are offered great opportunities to integrate. Integration is the key to evolutions doorway.

Those of us hypnotically paralysed by our past [all of us] believe we are here to earn a living, boost our bank accounts, become somebody of importance, bring world peace, and other such pointless but entertaining endeavors. Our destination-mentality, and hence, the mortality-consciousness this mentality propagates, causes us to repeatedly shoot ourselves in the foot - and then we moan about our limp. We grasp at whatever comes our way as a means to feel better, to get what we want, and to satisfy the charged emotions of our generational imprinting. We cannot discern between what we want and what is now required. While we function in this manner, we miss the bigger picture - an opportunity to integrate the fear, anger, and grief causing us to continually re-manufacture experiences in which we suffer.

The Presence Process is not like The Secret or any technology wielding concepts like The Law Of Attraction for personal gratification. It is not another metaphysically-drive slight of hand convincing us we can have exactly what our unintegrated emotional content drives us towards. It is not designed to deliver unto us a brand new car, great job, perfect partner, and to convince us that "an unlimited universe means we can keep raping this planet just to get our rocks off". This procedure is to initiate and support integration, to clean the vessel of our awareness so it has the opportunity and capacity to open to, arrive at, move through, and jettison beyond the current opening of the portal into vibrational consciousness. This portal is here, now. It is always "here", "now". Its just that because of our evolutionary development we only now have the capacity to perceive and hence realize it. The portal into vibrational consciousness is "this, here, now" - not "that, there, then". This portal is only accessible within this moment - within the present. To enter it we are required to be present.

As we continue to consciously approach the resonance of the present moment we are faced with all that is keeping our attention stretched out and fragmented in time-based mentality. We thus face the unintegrated experiences of our childhood, received from our parents, with our lovers, through our religions, politics, and many, many other levels of developmental experience we have moved through to arrive in this moment. There is horror in it all just as there is love in it all. We have all experienced massive apocalyptic cataclysm and been traumatized by being run over by sudden shifts for which we were not ready. We have seen everything and everyone we love seemingly destroyed, drowned, burned, and murdered in cold blood. This is the fabric of our past - not our future. This is what we are now called to integrate.

Yet, while we remain unintegrated, then as we approach the portal of this moment, these unintegrated memories are what guard the entry to the portal. They say, "While you believe in us more than the promise of what you truly are, then we stand between you and this realization. You must pass through us to know we are not real, or run from us back into the illusions which inspire more experiences just like us."

As we approach the portal of the present moment, we all project our apocalyptic mayhem upon its entrance. This is how we know we have arrived at the entrance of the portal - because we simultaneously arrive at an experience mirroring our unresolved horrors. It gazes upon us as a future possibility - yet, it is an echo of the past. Many shall be driven by their unintegrated horror into actions which are self-destructive, and hence lose their physical vehicle. Fewer shall realize the cinematic illusion of it all and keep moving forward in spite of the dire warnings of impending cataclysm. The only way to enter the heart - the portal through which we awaken beyond the horrors of the past - is to gaze directly into the eyes of this monster, and to be with it through felt-perception without condition. Feel it all. It cannot kill what cannot die - it can only destroy what has no substance.

So, in the early hours of the morning, when the doorway of the portal awakens you from your desire to "sleep it off" - get up - and approach the vibrational consciously. Sit quietly in the midst of the horror and know it is not the future, unless you act as if it is. It already happened. We already died many, many times. The only death required now is to die to this idea of dying. This planet is a way-station for dead people who have not yet processed their experience of living in time - who have not yet integrated their past so they may arrive consciously into the kingdom of the awakened. This moment upon planet earth is an accentuated opportunity for all seeking to catch the next train inward by integrating the horror, and to receive our divine inheritance as conscious co-creators of unlimited possibility.

So, instead of tossing and turning and blaming your fundamentalist religious past for you not being able to "sleep it off", rather arise and spend this time focused upon the vibrational certainty which is your birthright. The only way through is through. Onward, inward, and upward.

How to breathe for The Presence Process.

2009-07-07T22:19:00.000-07:00

Q: I have been doing connected breathing for about 3 weeks. During few sessions I went into very deep relaxation, in that state my inhales and exhales become very slow, very short and the gap between my exhale and inhale becomes very large. What am I suppose to do in this situation? Should I just let it be or should I do something about it.

A: When you enter deep relaxation breathing you are no longer breathing efficiently for the purpose of emotional integration - for The Presence Process intent. The intent for the breathing practice within The Presence Process is not necessarily the same as for rebirthing, breathwork, various yoga breathing, or meditative breathings. The intent of The Presence Process is emotional integration. This requires alert breathing, breathing loud enough to hear one's breath, and remaining within a brisk breathing pattern throughout the 15 minute practice. I intend communicating this in a clearer manner in the new edition of The Presence Process. For now I have placed on The Presence Portal three different audio examples, 5 minutes each, of how I recommend breathing be practiced for The Presence Process. http://www.thepresenceportal.com/how_we_breathe.htm This is not how we are taught to breathe through breathwork or rebirthing or yoga practice - which is deeper, more relaxed, etc. When we breathe in this way - as demonstrated by these audios - pausing between breaths is not an issue. These three 5 minute audios [beginner, intermediary, and pro] enable you to breathe in time with me for the first 5 minutes of your practice - and then to continue on your own.

NOTE: Sometimes these audios do not open in Windows. I do not know why, so please do not write and ask me what to do if you are having this problem. It is best to ask someone who is computer literate - which I am not.

What about The Presence Process for children?

2009-07-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

Q: Have you worked out, or come across, something like The Presence Process for children? We have an 8-year-old who is following in the pattern of his angry, lazy, and cocky older brother -- very hard to manage, even at this age. I've done whatever I could with BodyTalk, but....

A: It's your pattern. It is in you. Fiddling with the child is the parent cleaning the mirror to rid the pimples it is reflecting. I have often been asked by parents to write The Presence Process for children. Alchemy requires "We do unto ourselves as we would have others do". This means you require integrating your angry, lazy, cocky self. Until you do, your children roll play this suppressed aspect of your own emotional condition so you may perceive outwardly what you hide inwardly. If you do not take care of this through alchemy, your children become parents who hand it - like you have done - to their children. The Presence Process is not for, or about, messing with children. It is for adults to take responsibility for the imprinting shared with their children. I recommend inner child work before outer child interference.

What happens if I do not have a bath tub for the water sessions?

2009-07-05T02:42:00.000-07:00

Q: I was wondering, because i don't have a bath, do you think it is a good idea to use a warm shower as a substitute? I put today my solar plexus area under the shower and it felt like dying.

A: Yes. This is one of the changes I am making to the text of the new edition of The Presence Process. Increasingly, in this day and age, we do not have bath tubs - we only have access to showers. This says something about our willingness, as a species, to submerge ourselves in warm water - which is a metaphoric representation of allowing our awareness to fully enter the authentic condition of our emotional body. The recommendation is therefore to use the tools at our disposal. When we do not have a bath tub, behave as if this is required. Then, a 10 to 15 minute hot shower, before drying off and attending to our breathing practice, is efficient. We are still exposing ourselves to "wet heat" - and this still impacts the fabric of our experience within The Presence Process - as you have already realized.

What is it that actually heals?

2009-07-04T00:42:00.000-07:00

Q: In going through some recent journals I realize I've been digging IN to these CAUSAL places for many, many years. I have felt the pain of these childhood wounds, not as concepts but emotionally, deeply. I've gone to these places and felt them and written about them afterwards and they're still effecting my life now. What's the difference between those experiences and The Presence Process? What neutralizes these feelings - what makes them healed - known instead of understood? I'd appreciate some light.

A: What my experience reveals is that viewing anything as something needing healing - and thinking and writing about it in these terms - keeps us stuck. Especially when we engage with them in such a way as to keep the experiences in question somehow anchored in the mental realm - whether through understanding, analysis, or explanation. Yet, we cannot help ourselves - especially while we worship the mental body as God.

Apparently, the most challenging thing to communicate to another human being is "being without condition", "not-doing", "response", and "complete surrender to what is". Why? Because it cannot be understood. The mental body cannot grasp being. It does not have the capacity and while we allow it to be Godlike, we fail to be. We remain in a "I think therefore I am" state of insanity.

The radiance of being without condition is what integrates. It is the approach of "being with what is through felt-perception without any attempt to physically, mentally, or emotionally alter the experience". When we are authentically this way with ourselves, integration unfolds organically - not according to our mental schedule.

I really felt that after writing Revelation Of Being there would be no necessity for me to write another word, ever. Because this piece hits the nail on the head. Done. Apparently not. I really felt that after writing and sharing the practice, Consciously Approaching Vibrational Awareness, that there would be no reason for me to place another experiential approach to an awareness of being before anyone - because when one applies this practice consistently, EVERYTHING is given and received. Apparently this landed mostly on deaf ears too. We are apparently immune to receiving as we are adamant about getting and fiddling. Now I know why, at a satsang one find day, when questioned by a disciple about what the meaning of it all is, Buddha simply produced a flower, held it up for a few moments, then got up and walked off.

We are so mental. We are so lost. We keep trying to understand the difference between something that cannot be understood and something else that cannot be understood. My personal experience is the time it takes for us to integrate what Being Without Condition is, is the exact time it takes for us to accomplish discernment between "wants" and "requirements". Simple. Done.

We want so badly to heal, when only being with what is is required. There is a big difference between The Presence Process and keeping a journal. A journal does not deliver us deliberately along The Pathway Of Awareness to the causality of our disquiet. A journal keeps us stuck in the mental realm. A journal, for the most part, is our personalized Ode to Drama, not a vehicle for accessing Dharma. However, it can be.

I am so grateful there are those who have contacted me and said, "That article, Being Without Condition, that's it right there...I'm done!" And, I am so glad some write to me and say, "That practice for Conscious Approach to the Vibrational is home base!" Otherwise I would assume myself completely bloody nuts. Okay, no assumption required - I already know I am completely nuts. This is required. I am also grateful I am able - to a larger extent - be available to this work without condition. The miracle of "being available to this work without condition" means I get to discover 84356 ways to say: Feel whatever is happening without condition. Whatever is happening to you is valid. It is required. It is your teaching. You are not required to heal your lessons - only to learn from them - to gain insight - and even if you don't - this too is valid.

The paradox in all of this is hysterical. Now I know why some say that when authentically approaching an awareness of whatever God is - there is first the sound of laughter. God sends us our daily lessons and we try to heal them. It's hilarious!!! Laughter is the medicine we are after - especially when it is laughter turned inward upon the point of greatest hilariousness.

The simple answer to your question is: Once we stop trying to heal that which is sent to heal us - we heal.

I wonder if the the can perceives the can opener as something which has to be healed?

I have done TPP three times and am still not getting what I want!

2009-07-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

Q: I have done the process 3 times now, read all that is on your site and saw you in California. And, I still require something that I do not understand or get. My partner left me after a 16 month affair. She left many things at our home we built together, she will not pay the mortgage, she left her 15 year old cats and I care for them, she comes by 4-5 times a week, we do things together, she has just lost her job. She says she loves me, she says loving things to me, tells me not to ask her to come home , it is okay to tell her I love her , want her back but this seems not about her so much as I cannot figure out how to get me back?? Could you suggest what direction to go, please?

A: The only reason we can make a statement like "I'm stuck", or ask a question like this one, is because we are not yet able to discern between "a want" and "a requirement". Let me assist you with definition.

"A want" is something that is not happening. We want it to happen, but it doesn't. We get upset because it doesn't. We get upset or set up because our "wants" are arising out of an unintegrated emotional charge. Whatever we are wanting is whatever we believe will satisfy the insatiable hunger of our unintegrated emotional charge. Because this hunger is insatiable - because feeding an emotional charge only maintains it, as opposed to bringing it to resolution - whenever we receive our wants they only lead us to want something else.

"A requirement" happens. This is how we recognize a requirement. If it is happening, it is a requirement. We do not want requirements. We do not expect requirements. We do not appreciate requirements. While we remain emotionally unintegrated, our requirements appear as things that get in the way of us achieving our wants. Only the emotionally mature are able to live life through responding to requirements.

Attempting to feed and satisfy our wants leads to personal and collective drama and depression. Attempting to satisfy our wants leads to raping the earth, manipulating those we profess to love, and behaving as if we are separate from the rest of the universe. Our wants, and us trying to satisfy them, are the causal point of the current world economic recession. They are the causal point of war, whether through politics, priesthood, or profiteers. If we ignored our wants - priests, politicians, and profiteers would be the only ones in recession. "The American Dream" is a disguised way of saying, "This is a country in which everyone can have exactly whatever they want". And, so, as the rest of the world blindly follows "the American way" the consequential collective nightmare awakens. Imagine exchanging "The Pursuit of Happiness" for "The Realization of Joy", or "The American Dream" for "The American Vision" - what a shift in intent. This is the same sort of shift we require within ourselves - from frantically feeding our wanting, to calmly recognizing and embracing what is required of us.

Embracing what is required by responding to what is happening as if what is happening is valid leads to emotional growth and integration. It leads to individual and collective evolution. All requirements are overseen and delivered into our individual and collective experience by the universe. They are what are required for our evolution. If we insist on only navigating our experiences according to our wants - then invariably what is required is immense suffering - suffering intended to awaken us to the reality that chasing only our wants is self-destructive.

Our wants are not required.

Responding to requirement leads to personal and collective evolution - to harmony, integration, and our functioning as if we are part of everything. Through responding to what is required we move in flow with The Giver - through trying to feed our wants we move in flow with the dictates of a distorted energetic pattern within our emotional body.

Responding to requirement leads to presence and present moment awareness. The Presence Process is not about "getting our wants fulfilled" - it is about opening us to receiving what we require - to receive what is already being given to us in each moment of our unfolding experience.

You say you have read everything on the website? Really. Where you reading it as a means to find our how you can use this work to get what you want - to get you companion back? Such intent delivers us into frustration and neutralizes any benefit this work offers. It's a bit like reading The Presence Process and then trying to figure out how we can make money out of selling its presented insights.

Yes, as you write, you have completed The Presence Process three times. Yes, as you have written, there is something you are "not yet getting". Join the rest of the economic community trying to provoke recovery of the economy so they can continue to live as if they can have exactly what they want when they want it.

My recommendation is you shift from trying to get something [feeding your wants] into being open to receiving something [what is required]. Your life, as it is right now, is exactly what is required. How do I know this? Because it is happening. What you want of it is simply "a want". How do I know this? Because it is not happening.

It doesn't matter if you do The Presence Process 1000 X 1000 times - if you cannot yet receive your life experience as valid - and respond to it as if required - you remain what we call "stuck". You are like a child sitting in the middle of a playground whining about not having the sweeties you want, when all around you are swings, whirly-go-rounds, and other kids to play with. However, you cannot see any of this because all you can see is what your unintegrated emotional signature cries for.

The Presence Process is a guide toward "growing up". However, it cannot grow you up for you. You have to take the actions to grow you up for you. Growing up commences and accelerates the moment we discern between our "wants" and "requirements", and when we then respond accordingly.

The deeper response is to engage through felt-perception with the emotional signature which arises whenever you cannot get what you want. This is the causality of you not being able to receive what is required. Being with this emotional signature without condition empowers you to transition from trying to get what you want to willingly and gratefully receiving what you require.

I am sure your companion does not want to be in a relationship with a whining child who is obsessing over not having sweeties. Grow youself up. Embrace every aspect of your life exactly as it is unfolding now as a requirement for your growth. Respond to it accordingly. This responsive approach is what leads us into the rest of the playground. The kids on the swings don't like to hang out with whiners [wanters]. They wanna play on the playground with players. Now is the dawning of the age of "the players". All the whiners and wanters are being laid off.

I am sure if you grow up a little and respond, instead of reacting, to your life experience, your companion's behavior shall shift. She may return, or she may leave you altogether - either way, you won't perceive yourself as stuck anymore. Stop wanting her.

Peace, joy, and a day full of play comes from knowing a simple little secret: Want only what is required. If humanity does not real eyes the difference between "a want" and "a requirement" REALLY SOON - we can kiss our arses goodbye - individually and collectively. Making this discernment is what elevates a species.

Do I beam light into my discomfort?

2009-07-01T20:16:00.000-07:00

Q: I'm in need of some advice. I'm attempting to heal a physical pain. I've reread the procedure in session # four. I understand the act of sitting in silence and connecting our breathing and placing our loving attention on the pain and discomforting area. But my question is should I be doing something in conjunction with this, like sending healing light to this area? My understanding that during meditation the idea is to empty ones mind of thought, but should I be visualizing healing light descending on the pain area too? Please help me with my concern.

A: First of all, we cannot resolve physical pain by focusing on the physical aspect of the pain. Being with the physical pain without condition is a step in the right direction - however - all physical pain has causality. Its causality is unintegrated charged emotion. Our task is to become aware - not through naming - but through felt-resonance - of the charged emotion underlying the physical pain - and to be with this by feeling it without condition. This charged emotion is the felt-aspect of ourselves as a child still experiencing something which we are unable to integrate. Being with this emotional signature without condition integrates it organically at a pace which is required. The first task is therefore to access the emotional signature - the second task is to be with it without condition. The first task may take some "undoing procedure" - like breathing and wielding our thought processes in a particular manner - until we gain awareness of this causal felt-signature. The second task requires only being. Being without condition is not "doing" - it is not even "undoing" - it is being. While our fixation remains upon the physical aspect of our pain as if it is the causal point of it - we are inclined to want to "do stuff" like beaming light at it from our third eye - or stuff like that...

Because of our excursion through the mental plane of metaphysics [a necessary part of our evolution] we believe that unless we do things like sending rays of healing light from our third eye toward that which we seek to heal, nothing happens. Metaphysics is all about "doing something". This is why I refer to it as mental-physics.

The Presence Process invites us to "placing our loving attention upon the pain". What is loving attention? What is love? In metaphysics love is "something we do", and we have 101 ways of showing ourselves and others how loving we are through all the intricate ways we actively demonstrate love. Yet, the word "love" reveals itself in a word of similar spelling: evolve. To love is to allow evolution. When we love ourselves, we treat ourselves in such a manner that we are freely able to evolve. This means acknowledging that our experience - all of it - is valid - that it is our teaching - and we respond to it in this light. When we love another we allow them to have their own experience so they may fully evolve. We acknowledge their experience as being valid. You know I love you when I validate you by not interfering [entering fear] with you - when I behave in this light.

In The Presence Process we are asked "to love the hurt child within". We accomplish this by moving our awareness consciously along The Pathway of Awareness from the physical, through the mental, and into the hurt child aspect of our experience - the unintegrated emotional charge. We then "place our loving attention upon it". This means, once gaining awareness of this hurting aspect of ourselves - we allow it to be. We validate its experience. We approach it in the light that its experience, whether fear, anger, or grief, is 100% valid. Through allowing it to be - instead of unconsciously sedating and controlling it - it regains the capacity for momentum and reenters the unified flow of the cyclic nature of life as it is in the human realm. It becomes integrated.

Another way of saying "loving attention" is "being without condition". "Being without condition" and "loving unconditionally" are the same. When we are with any aspect of our experience without condition - we emanate a radiance whose vibrational capacity knows No Order Of Difficulty. "No Order Of Difficulty" in the context of The Presence Process means: "Whatever is required to accomplish resolution is made possible". The emphasis here is on the word "require", not "want".

Being without condition is a vibrational radiance which has the capacity to restore any aspect of our experience to authenticity. It provides exactly what is required. Being without condition is love and love is light. There is no light whose purity is more radiant than being without condition. This light is not the mentally generated metaphysical psi-fi light of "doing" we pretend to beam with our imagination from our third eye or heart center. This is the light of unconditional presence awareness which requires no pretence or imagining. What is requires no effort in manifesting. So, when we "place our loving attention" upon our child self - upon the causal felt-aspect of any unintegrated aspect of our experience - we are already bathing it in the purest radiance of light possible.

When we are able to integrate the programmed personality of "God" by integrating our religious imprinting - we real eyes that "being without condition" emanates a vibrational radiance whose Presence and capacity are an emanation of everything God is: Unconditional loving attention. It is not necessary to add to this with imagining. It already is.

"Something" is happening to me - what do I do?

2009-06-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

Q: I have to say that this is very hard and that I have already gone through most of my fears I had and whole lot of anger. My whole body shivered like a leaf in the wind when I am breathing, now not so much, is this expected?

A: It is your experience and therefore it is valid.

Q: Also when I am not angry I feel like a helpless little boy completely insecure will this pass?

A: Everything does, sooner or later?

Q: What do I do?

A: Nothing.

Q: I am really not making any resistance and it is almost like there is a current running through my body. I have times of feeling so much lighter but I am almost constantly in some sort of non-ease, and do not feel in any way stable or in control.

A: Be with this without condition. It is obviously required otherwise it wouldn't be happening.

Q: Also my whole body is almost pulsating from my insides to my heart and everything, I change emotions 3- 4 time a day do you have some tips for me to make it easier.

A: This work is not about feeling better - it is about getting better at feeling. So, feel what is happening to you right now.

Q: And maybe the most important question will I know that I have reached some sort of joy stability or ease.

A: I am sorry to be the one to break it to you - but if you are seeking "a destination" - there is seldom any joy. Joy is "a journey" consciousness. Joy arises when we stop seeking to get somewhere other than where we are right now, and when we stop trying to experience something other than what is happening to us right now.

Q: Please tell me what to do.

A: No. But I recommend validating your experience by approaching it as if every moment of it is valid. Because it is.

Have others had success in integrating sexual abuse through TPP?

2009-06-29T22:28:00.000-07:00

Q: Have sent email to you before about being hesitant on starting The Presence Process because of being abused sexually as a child, wondering what might be relived... Well, I started on it anyway... The first day of the second session, while walking into a coffee shop, a guy rams right into me and keeps on walking as I repeat ''I Acknowledge my reflection in the world'' Does the sexual abuse issue get worked on with this work? What have other victim's gone through?

A: Yes. And, it is not required to relive any childhood memory - only to consciously engage with the related charged emotion through unconditional felt-perception. Do not be concerned about "what others have accomplished". This is a mentally-driven avoidance and distraction tactic. Only your experience is your teacher. Only yours is valid for you. Only yours contains exactly what you require for causal integration of your discomfort. Only yours is customized for your personal evolution.

Until we embrace our experience as valid - all of it - as our teacher, as deliberately custom-designed for our evolution - progress is slow and and staggered. Embracing our experience as valid neutralizes the victim and victor mentality which eats us from inside out. The Presence Process is designed to assist accomplishing this. However, it is our unfolding experience, exactly as it is revealing itself to us in each moment - which contains all the ingredients, insights, and capacities for liberation from past trauma. Engaging with our experience from this "point of you" is what The Presence Process teaches.

This is what happens when I am breathing...

2009-06-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

Q: During tonight's CB I started feeling grief, deep sadness connected to not being able to make my voice do what I want it to....not having the power to change what was happening to me in my childhood...not being able to make it be what I want it to be. My breathing turned into a moan, not stuck in my throat but coming through my nose and resonating in my cheek bones - what I'm trying to feel in singing and what I can't do singing, which is humming. But, the moan is low and I felt the child sound wanting to come through me and that's what's stuck in me, the higher sound of the child's moans and cries. The bridge of my voice is where I'm stuck - moving into the higher sounds. I did make a jerking sound higher which felt more like the angry child...as if I were stamping my feet and making that sound. And when I make that higher sound, my larynx jumps up closing off the air so I'm not open emotionally, either. The rhythm of the inbreath and outbreath brings up these deep emotional feelings. Also, I'm alternating between moving into these deep places and numbing out, avoiding them. Any comment from you would be welcome.

A: Your experience is valid.

Why do I get a headache during the vibrational practice?

2009-06-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

Q: Why is it that when I put my attention on my eye center [during the vibrational practice offered on the website] I get an intense headache? Well this go away after I’ve done this technique consistently for a while?

A: Make sure you are not "doing something" - as in forcing your attention to be there. There is no trying or effort or tension when we rest at the eye center. Trying takes us away and causes tension. We be there - not do something to get there. When we close our eyes and are present - we are already at our eye center. No tension is involved at all. If you are getting an intense headache - it is most likely your attention has become "at tension". Make sure your physical eyes are relaxed when your awareness rests at the eye center. The physical eyes have nothing at all to do with the eye center and are to remain completely at ease. Being at the eye center is not about a physical location of the forehead as much as it is about remaining in presence awareness while having our eyes closed.

I am now going to contain myself...

2009-06-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

Q: This is not a question, and I will try my best not to let things slide into "cawfee tawk". Rather, this is a little feedback and a sharing of my intention. I've just finished my re-read of "The Presence Process" after my 3rd time through. Also, for the past couple of weeks or so, I've been practicing more containment (including not e-mailing you questions or comments). It was amazing how much more I could see just by practicing a little more containment. It dawned on me that it would be beneficial to go through the Presence Process without continually taking the lid off the pressure cooker. (I'm OK with having done that, because I don't believe I could have done better, but now I'm eager and also afraid to kick things up a notch.) So I am going to commence another journey through the Presence Process tomorrow (Monday), and practice containment throughout. For me, this includes no questions/e-mails to you. And my concept of the journey includes the re-read of the book, so that means around 3 months of zipping the lips. However, I do look forward to visits to "The Presence Portal". I find the Q&A blog quite helpful, and also wanted to let you know that I appreciate the revision of "Consciously Approaching Vibrational Awareness, which seems much more direct now, and that I enjoyed "Navigating Our Experiences", which I read recently for the first time, and which I've shared with another. Your response to this is most welcome, as today is a day of "Pre-Process Completion" for me.

A: Containment isn't something we mentally decide upon - it is an energetic capacity we develop gradually, organically, and because of our projection addiction - something we fail at hopelessly and continuously. Enjoy all your failures - they are stepping stones toward mastery.

I have done the procedures on the website, yet nothing helps...

2009-06-27T22:39:00.000-07:00

Q: I don’t understand the process or Alchemy. After listening to your audio's and following the alchemy work for 40 days, it’s been around 30 days, inconsistently. I don’t get that everything I do keeps getting worse, no matter what it is, everything keeps back firing, from small things to major things, I am at a point where I just want to end it, I can not see a way out of this constant misery, loneliness and pain, if I wasn’t so cowardly and afraid I would just end it. What is the point of this? I know my parents were dreadful, I know my childhood was terrible and full of abuse, why have I got to relive everything? And why it is everything I do or try just goes wrong, please don’t say, “read my work”, I already have many times.

A: Your "lack of consistency" is a clue that whatever you are up to is not assisting you to impact your predicament causally. Have you completed The Presence Process experientially? If so, and you are still not clear on what any of this is about, then this work is obviously not for you. Seek elsewhere.

Sometimes our predicament is such that we first require an active release modality before we are able to engage in resolution response. I recommend you contact Judith Kravitz judithkravitz@aol.com at The Transformational Breath Foundation http://www.transformationalbreathing.com/ and ask her to recommend a facilitator in this modality who lives close to you. Through facilitated Transformational Breathwork we are able to efficiently release our pent-up fear, anger, and grief in an accelerated manner empowering us to calm down sufficiently so that we are then able to approach resolution/containment work. It is obvious you are in a very uncomfortable state - and sometimes - while in this "point of you" - a more intense, personally-facilitated approach is beneficial.

Unless we enter this work experientially - there is no authentic progress. This is why I ask if you have actually gone through The Presence Process experientially? Listening to the audios and reading the writings on the website when not entering this work at its causal point - which is The Presence Process - is like standing on the sidelines of a game. We accomplish little on the sideline other than shouting and waving our arms around. Doing some of the given procedures on website, when we have not yet completed The Presence Process experientially, is like training for a game that we are not actually playing. It is frustrating. The game is The Presence Process - everything else on the website supports this causal point.

This is why a structured experiential vehicle like The Presence Process is available - so we have a tangible way of "getting into the game". Unless we get into the game we remain spectators - and this is extremely frustrating - even if we are diligently "working out" via applying the different procedures shared to support The Presence Process.

Sometimes we are afraid to even step onto the field and this makes us angry at the game. The game is what we make of it - but we have to enter it to know this. Your "understanding" about alchemy, or any of this, cannot help you if you have not taken the time to experientially explore the roots out of which this particular alchemy plant grows.

Applying "Navigating My Experience" morer efficiently.

2009-06-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

Q: I just finished practicing my vocal exercises for the first time with Navigating My Experience [available on writings page of website]. After re-reading your article and instructions, I went through the steps of emotional, mental, physical - feeling my anxiety of even starting because of how awful my voice has sounded and how hard physically it is to even make a sound. I stayed with that for a few minutes then asked myself how would I like to feel at the outcome - buoyant, light, loose, my voice open. I remembered a time when I felt like that singing in a jazz church vespers where my voice soared in the rafters. I began my warm up exercises, with a few bumps and then behold! My voice got it! The sound that came through me was totally different from all the hard work sound from before. My voice was light, lovely, more on pitch, open, emotionally alive but not shaky (filled with "drama"). Navigating My Experience is how I will be practicing from now on and looking for how to apply it in all of my life.

A: Yes, this procedure is efficient. Remember that "buoyant, light, loose, my voice open" are not feelings - they are a string of mental concepts. Make sure when you again ask yourself how you want to feel at the outcome, that you engage with your answer as pure, non-mentalized, 'felt-perception'. This relates to a conversation I was having the other day about therapists. The best thing a therapist does is ask: "So, how did that make you feel?" Then, they completely mess up by allowing the person they are facilitating to actually verbally reply to their question. Because the appropriate reply to such a question is not a string of verbalaized words delivering a series of concepts - it is a silence in which the inquired resonance of felt-perception is experienced. The therapist does not have to be informed of this for it to be valid. Feeling is the validation. The accurate answer is "a feeling", and feeling this feeling, not talking about it. So, trim the fat from your next navigational experience by not answering yourself with words, but with pure felt-sensations. A feeling is only a feeling when felt - not when discussed. Approach your navigational intent this way and perceive the enhanced capacity of this perceptual tool.

I feel angry since finishing the procedure - do I still use The Emotional Cleansing Procedure?

2009-06-24T04:56:00.000-07:00

Q: I finished the Presence Process on Monday 22nd June. Since then I have felt so angry inside. Strangely enough, this feeling didn't come up at all during the process. Can I still use the emotional cleaning process now I've finished? I have tried it once, but I almost feel panicky. It's a strange experience. I would like to thank you for writing this book. It has been the hardest thing physically and emotionally, but also the most awesome I have ever done!

A: You obviously went through the procedure with commitment to bring this anger into awareness. The Emotional Cleansing Procedure's main intent is to open the The Pathway Of Awareness from the physical, through the mental, and into the emotional, so we have access to deeply suppressed emotional patterns. You have obviously accomplished this task well. Continue applying the Emotional Cleaning Procedure if this is what you feel you require. However, if the anger is now right beneath the surface, you require no other procedure other than "being with it without condition". Feel it fully and allow it to be. This felt-aspect you name "anger" is the time-trapped presence of you as a child coming to you as an adult for resolution. Hold this child with your compassionate attention whenever it shows up [through feelings of anger] without judging or making any demands upon it. It's anger is valid. Your anger is valid. Anger is valid. However, containing and integrating it is what is called for now - not our old addictive patterns of projecting it. "Being in anger" is what you now require for this blocked energy to once again enter healthy motion. If this is your first time through the The Presence Process procedure, my recommendation is you leave the book alone for about three weeks. Then dive back in as if you had not read it before. Beneath this anger awaits grief.

If we stop at some point in the procedure, do we restart from the beginning?

2009-06-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

Q: My question is what if you take a break from the process for whatever reasons and then want to come back to it is it recommended to start from the beginning again or continue where we left off. I am asking because I have started it earlier and then took a 15 week break due to work related issues (not sure if it was my ego fasciliating this or nor although I guess there are good chances that yes). Anyway I have now started again from the beginning and just wanted to ask if you think that is a good idea. (I previously only got up to session 5.)

A: Many of us start this procedure and then stop around Session 5, 6, and 7. This is because this is the point at which we are approaching deep-seated emotional imprinting. Sometimes we are not ready, and under these circumstances, any excuse will do for walking away. In actuality, we are simply not ready to face certain aspects of our imprinted condition. However, what we have accomplished up to this point is significant and it is likely we return to the book at some point. My recommendation is that if we have taken a break for more than two weeks - we start from the beginning of the book.

Q: Also one more question: Is it normal that while breathing and trying to just concentrate on it to start thinking about other (past) things. I always thought this was meant to happen unconsciously, but I find myself quite consciously reliving past experiences or revisiting important questions.

A: Yes, it is perfectly normal. Our experience is always valid as we move through this procedure. Our story about "why" we are experiencing what we are experiencing may at times be suspect.

Do we need to center and ground our chakra system before we start the vibrational awareness technique?

2009-06-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

Q: Do we need to center and ground our chakra system before we start the vibrational awareness technique?

A: If this is something which feels necessary to you, then yes. The vibrational practice automatically has centering and grounding impact without us having to become mental about it. However, experiment and see what works for you. Let your experience always have the last say. Don't get too distracted by such metaphysical intricacies - or as I like to call it - mental-physics.

How do I apply the breathing practice to other areas of my life, like singing?

2009-06-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

Q: I'm trying to access how to practically apply your Continuously Connected Breathing to speaking (which is also difficult for me in a natural way), and to singing (since that's a place of stuck-ness for me now) besides the sitting twice a day for 15 minutes.

A: It is only necessary to apply it to the breathing practice twice a day for 15 minutes. This is enough for the intent of the procedure. Approach the procedure with diligence, and the rest of your life is impacted. Try not to overdo anything [usually as sign of desperation and destination-consciousness], or your efforts shall invariably become undone. Let the 15 minute breathing application bleed into the rest of your life like osmosis.

Is there a correct way of doing the process?

2009-06-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

Q: Do people ever question whether they are doing the process correctly?

A: Yes, all the time. However, the answer is always, "No". We cannot do this process "correctly" or properly. Aside from following the instructions as best we are able, there is no correct or proper way of doing it. There is only our way of doing it. And, the way we approach and move through it is no different from the way we approach and move through our life currently. However, by the time we complete it, we have perceived and integrated something inwardly about how we are living outwardly. This inner shift adjusts our way of outer living, which means the next time we move through TPP, the manner in which we apply our self to the task is also adjusted. And so it goes, and so it goes.

UPDATED/How do I consciously approach vibrational awareness?

2009-06-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

Q: How do I consciously approach vibrational awarenes?

A: I have now placed the step-by-step procedure for this practice on The Presence Portal's Writings and Current page. CONSCIOUSLY APPROACHING VIBRATIONAL AWARENESS Onward, inward, and upward then...

What about making a recorded audio to support us during our 15 minute breathing practice?

2009-06-20T23:43:00.000-07:00

Q: I would love to have an audio tool to share with our students to practice the Process with. To have each weekly activation statement, with 15 minutes of breathing built in and perhaps some good breathing music in the background. It would be amazing to have the developer of the process lead the sessions. I would love to have these available as soon as possible as I feel the Cd's will support folks stay focused and follow through.

A: You are welcome to go ahead and make such a CD for your students. I am however not in favor of such a tool as it actually goes against the intent of The Presence Process - which is to not rely on outer tools during the actual practice - but instead to gradually develop specific inner emotional muscles [capacities] through self-discipline and self-reliance. In all the resource materials I have compiled, I have deliberately stopped short of making such a tool as you have described. Gaining the emotional capacity to do the breathing practice without outer support is necessary for the next stage of the journey: our conscious approach and entry into vibrational awareness. When we rely on an outer tool during our breathing practice, we simultaneously deprive ourselves of the capacity to develop the muscles of intent and attention which are required to hold us fast upon the vibrational current which becomes evident once a certain amount of emotional processing is accomplished. It's like giving people credit cards when they have not yet learnt about managing resources based on what they have, not on what they want: It robs them of a capacity to manage their own financial state and ends in tragedy - the consequences of which we are now collectively confronted through unfolding world recession.

I prefer that people coming to this work are challenged by their lack of intent and attention, rather than artificially supported because of it. You may have a different point of view, which I respect, and so may require different tools for your students.

There is a great CD already available to support this work called A Walk Through The Presence Process - available form Namaste Publishing. It deliberately stops short of being an actual tool susceptible to outer reliance. It also demonstrates the breathing practice in an efficient way.

What is the difference between The Presence Process, Buddhism, and meditation?

2009-06-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

Q: In Buddhist breathing meditation there is the recommendation to focus the attention on the breathing; when the mind wanders, the meditator has to acknowledge it and return the attention to the breathing. In your Presence Process there is no recommendation like that. Why?

A: This is all about "intent". The short answer is: I am not a Buddhist and The Presence Process is not Buddhism. Your assumption that is should be, and should align itself with such a religion, is a common mistake made by people who approach this work bringing with them past religious convictions and unresolved religious imprinting. The Presence Process is useful in empowering us to integrate our religious imprinting by revealing the difference between "belief" and "knowing".

Q: Don't you believe this is an important issue?

A: No. Once we become familiar with emotional processing work we realize that "thought is not God". It is not a causal point of the human experience - the vibrational is - and until this vibrational awareness is consciously accomplished - the condition of our imprinted emotional body is.
Our thinking arises out of and is a reflection of our emotional condition - not a cause of it. Many religions still use thought as a means to storm the vibrational without integrating the causal foundation of why we currently have little or no vibrational awareness - our emotional imprinting. Buddha - judging by his appearance and the immense mental gymnastics spurned through his teachings - appeared to have done the same thing. This is why Buddhism is so mental - it has to be one of the most mental religions on the planet. It is obvious to anyone who confronts their own emotional content, and consequentially perceives its role on the the quality of their experience, that Buddha did not appear to completely integrate the emotional. His appearance of physical obesity is evidence of severe emotional suppression. The guy clearly had issues. He most likely did not resolve his immense guilt about being born wealthy amidst poverty. He reacted to this and this reaction is what we today call Buddhism. This is why the majority of Buddhists subsist in self-denial and poverty-mentality. This is simply religious imprinting. One can, through techniques of severe sedation and control [disguised as spiritual practice], enter vibrational awareness without acknowledging the emotional aspect of the journey. However, this leads to a religious philosophy which is overtly mental and requires vasts amount of physical intricacy, mental study, self-denial, and places "understanding" as a necessary step to make any real progress. The proof is that most celebrity Buddhists of the West become and are acknowledges as "great intellectuals". This is way too mental for the heart. This mentality is the invariable fall-out of all male-manifested and mental-body dominated approaches to vibrational awareness. Don't misunderstand me. I am very fond of Buddhism. Of all the manifestations of our unintegrated religious imprinting on this planet - it is one of the more palatable.

Q: Doesn't it matters if the mind wanders?

A: No - not when attending to the breathing practice in The Presence Process. This is because the only thing that really "matter" [materializes] are the projections inspired by our unintegrated emotional imprinting. What matters therefore is our imprinted emotional condition.
When we impact the causal point of the quality of our experience - which is a direct consequence of consciously connected breathing - one of the consequences is the stirring up of our deeply suppressed emotional content. Because we have little to zero felt-perception, this stirring up of the emotional makes itself known to us as increased mental activity. To now attempt to stop this mental activity is to engage with the effect - not the cause. This increased mental activity is a positive barometer that we are indeed impacting our suppressed emotional content. To then fiddle with these arising thought forms is in-effect-you-all.
It is useful to repeat an affirmation like, "I AM HERE NOW" while breathing - to assist our mental alignment with the breathing. However, the focus while breathing is on keeping the breaths connected. This is primary. Once we integrate our emotional signatures, the thinking arising out of them automatically dissolves.
In the revised edition of The Presence Process I am recommending that during all breathing sessions - from Session One to Ten - we repeat "I AM HERE NOW" - regardless of what session we are on. The specific Presence Activation Statement for each week's session is then only mentally repeated while moving about in our daily experience - not during the breathing practice.

Q: Another point: What is the difference between The Presence Process and the current forms of meditation?

A: The Presence Process is not meditation according to my personal perception of meditation. Meditation for me is any practice intended to reawaken and engage directly in vibrational awareness. A better word for meditation is "mediation". Whatever practice empowers us to mediate between our emotional, mental, and physical expressions, and our authentic vibrational essence, is meditation.
Engaging in vibrational awareness is not the primary intent of The Presence Process. The primary intent of The Presence Process is emotional integration. The techniques offered are designed to bring awareness to our imprinted emotional content in a manner empowering us to responsibly integrate them. Once we have made some headway in this part of the journey - we automatically become meditative. We then seek out disciplines whose intent is assisting us to consciously mediate between our outer expressions and our inner point of vibrational causality. Hence, we are naturally drawn to explore meditation. In this light, The Presence Process may be viewed as a preparatory step to meditation.

Isn't present moment awareness just another belief system?

2009-06-19T05:03:00.000-07:00

Q: Is becoming aware of the moment and following the practices to gain this awareness not just again another belief system?

A: This moment and what it contains - which is everything we require [not necessarily want] for this moment - is the only aspect of our experience in which something is actually unfolding. We are in its unfolding whether we choose to believe in it or not. When we live in the mentality of "yesterday and tomorrow" we remain, for the most part, unaware of the resonance of this moment. This eternally outwardly unfolding, and yet inwardly unaltered moment exists in spite of all our beliefs.

My definition of belief is: The concepts and thought forms I have received from others, or that I have made up myself through my thinking and analysis, which I blindly hold as being true. Beliefs seldom have any validity to them - they are only valid as a head-space - as a activator for impotent ritual - as a promise yet to be fulfilled.

Knowledge, on the other hand, is vibrational in-sight gained through direct, integrated, personal experience. Knowledge is birthed from having a direct integrated emotional, mental, and physical encounter. Belief is purely mental in content. Belief then manifests as activity which is empty of any impactful resonance because it does not arise out what we know - but out of what we hope or wish is true. Belief also tends to lean on the past and the future as its point of validation. "I am doing what I am doing now because I believe Jesus existed in the past and will come back in the future - because the Bible [or the priest] tells me so." Just because I believe something - even if I believe it with all my feeling, thinking, and doing - does not make it true. It is only true when I experience it directly.

The present moment as a vibrational terrain is beyond belief. To those who prefer to rely on belief systems - the validity of the present moment remains unbelievable. Also, whether any specific practice empowers us to enter present moment awareness cannot be validated by thinking or discussion - for then one is simply turning it into yet another belief. Only when we apply such a practice experientially - physically, mentally, and emotionally - do we real eyes whether it is valid or not. This application - which is the bridge we cross from believing into knowing - is what we call faith. When a practice empowers us with added present moment awareness - with added awareness of our own vibrational presence - it becomes something we know as true. It is no longer a belief.

So, one can sit on the sideline, amidst a mountain of belief systems, and discuss and debate these eternally. Or, one may experientially apply a present moment awareness practice and ascertain for oneself whether it is efficient or not. Initially, this step may require some belief. From this point of view, such practices are possibly empty beliefs. Because if they do not work - they are yet another belief.

However, the present moment as a "this, here, now" trinity of beingness exists - just as does the past and future as a "that, there, then" trinity of doingness. The one shows us what we forever are. The other shows us what is temporary and passing. It is our choice with which state we choose to identify and embrace as the point of causality for our current experience.

The bottom line is this: Your direct experience is the only barometer of validation useful in answering your question.

Do I have to see those who hurt me as "perfect"?

2009-06-18T22:30:00.000-07:00

Q: I am in week 6. I started seeing a therapist before the process, and now I don't know shall I continue. I started using the mirror and being there for myself, but I remember you said we shouldn't make any significant changes during the process. On one hand she's pushing my buttons, but on other she makes me feel good, and I really want to start containing it.

A: Firstly, this work is not about feeling good - it is about getting better at feeling. Having our buttons pushed is useful when we respond to the experience - as opposed to react. I am not going to tell you what to do.

Q: Is it really possible to sit with my uncle and father who verbally, physically and sexually abused me and say they are perfect? How could I know it's not because there is some fear left? Or needing to be loved. Do I need to understand it mentally to move on to the next step? Is it possible to do this work next to them and is it quicker then?

A: Who is asking you to say they are "perfect"? You do not need to sit with them to feel the consequence of your past encounters with them. These felt-consequences are within us wherever we are. By integrating our own emotional imprinting we realize through experience that all are driven unconsciously by childhood imprinting. This teaches us to discern between a person and their imprinting. We are not our imprinting. When we experientially realize this by integrating our imprinting and perceiving the profound consequences, we are able to forgive ourselves. When we are truly able to forgive ourselves through this realization - we are able to forgive everyone - because we are all in the same boat. This work has nothing to do with 'perfection' - it has to do with participation. This has to do with experiential awareness of what is, as opposed to what we tell ourselves based on our imprinted past. Integration requires we do not have to go and sit with anyone who reflects our imprinting [by bringing up an emotional charge in us]. We are only required to be with this emotional charge without condition - which is in us - not them.

Q: There is no such thing as a free will.

A: If you say so.

Q: There is nothing I can do to affect of my life, just accept it (and for past 3 years it kinda sucks).

A: If you say so.

Q: But then I get depressed at how there is nothing I should do, because what's the point, it's going to happen anyway.

A: It will benefit you to read the article, Revelation Of Being on the website. This assists us to discern the difference between doing, not-doing, action, responding, and reacting. Not-doing is not inactivity. The one has nothing to do with the other.

Q: Every time I look at my horoscope, it's all there. I live isolated in a foreign country (UK). I tried to look for work but am paralyzed with fear. So I sit at home, stuck. And, my money will run out in 2 months. Horoscope wise, shit will hit the fan in August. If you have anything you want to share (I read your 2009 letter about where's your water), please let me know.

A: Why do you think its called "a horror scope"? Read Revelation Of Being.

Blah, blah, blah. Now please correct me if I am wrong.

2009-06-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

Q: I had a similar question as the one posted yesterday about how to tell whether or not a negative and unconscious energetic pattern is caused by emotional imprinting, or parasites. I was a bit concerned that I view something as a "parasite" because I don't want to own it--don't want to take responsibility for it. But it hit me that I have to take responsibility for everything -parasite or no. So if I yell at someone, or whatever, it doesn't matter whether it is "me" or a parasitical entity - I allowed it all the same. Either way, integration is what matters. So even though parasites are real, destructive behavior is destructive behavior, whatever the cause. Being with what is without condition will allow us to integrate our emotional signatures, and see and rid ourselves of parasites, both. We do not have to understand, we just have to integrate. Kindly correct me if I'm off.

A: Okay - you asked for it. You see, you are doing exactly what I said people do. You want to discuss and debate - are writing for the sake of interaction - rather than having direct-experience be your validation. You appear to be having a discussion with yourself that you insist I listen to. What does your experience tell you? You do not have to reply to me on this either - rather tell yourself. Your experience, whatever it is, is valid - whether I agree with you or not. This work is not about agreeing with each other - it is about doing the work and allowing the consequences to be the barometer of what is valid or not. Dogs have ticks and fleas. Do they sit around with each other discussing whether ticks and fleas are real? No. They do their best to get rid of them by rolling in the dust, scratching, and nibbling with their teeth. Honestly, now you are writing to me just for the sake of being read. This is not a question - this is cwaffee-twalk.

How does one discern between the feelings of emotional imprinting and the feeling of a parasitic energetic entity?

2009-06-17T23:08:00.000-07:00

Q: How does one discern between the feelings of emotional imprinting and the feeling of a parasitic energetic entity? Both energetic experiences drive us to tell negative mental stories and to act “reactively”. Whereas emotional imprinting is best handled by being with it compassionately without condition, you’ve advised to deal with alien presences by using the ICU method and with “spinning”. The latter form of “not doing” seems to be something a bit different in intent from “being with the feeling without condition”.

A: It is my experience that we are more interested in understanding and discussing parasites than in actually delousing ourselves of them. This fascination serves and feeds the parasite and is more often than not being deliberately triggered by parasites. For example, discussions about 911 avoid paying any attention to the causal nature of such events - which is the continual vulnerability of humanity because of our unresolved, imprinted fear, anger, and grief. We still seek a physical causal point for these outer setups. How many papers have been written, websites created, talk shows hosted, or organizations formed to inspire others to resolve the collective emotional imprinting which leaves humanity vulnerable to this deliberately staged mass-milking by parasites? None that I have seen. Instead, all discussions about 911 breed fearful, angry, and heartbreaking resonance around this topic - which in turn continues to feed the energetic entities responsible for such events.

Parasites are no different than mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are not "good" or "bad" - they are mosquitoes - and it is their nature to pierce protective human skin and drink blood. They must feed to survive. Sometimes their feeding is simply annoying - causing little red bumps which we scratch. Sometimes their feeding is devastating, causing malaria which leads to a life of weakened organs or physical death. Sometimes they feed as individuals and sometimes in groups [swarms].

Parasites feeding on us humans prey on our imprinted emotional charges. They prod these unintegrated energetic states using well-calculated stories and perfectly reflected physical events. Whereas we make up stories as a means to move our awareness away from the discomfort of our emotional imprinting, parasites deliberately tell us stories to trigger this awareness within our field. We prefer to suppress our inner discomfort - they require us becoming aware of it so they may feed off the energetic emanations arising through our felt-encounters of the arising fear, anger, and grief. These parasites work in groups and as individuals. They are as complex within their organized activity as humanity is in its. They have leaders and followers. They skillfully herd us into family structures, political organizations, religious groups, all levels of social status, sporting sides - whatever it takes to maintain a 'them and us' mentality designed to trigger and inspire conflict.

Parasites treat us exactly how we treat livestock. Sometimes we farm, sometimes we go hunting - sometimes for food - sometimes for sport. As above, so below. As below, so above. If you seek to understand parasites - go to a dairy farm and see how we deliberately arrange cows so we can suck off them indefinitely. Just like us, parasites justify their parasitic behavior because they perceive no other possible paradigm in which to sustain themselves. They have lived this way for millions and millions of years. So have we. This well established parasitic paradigm is what we challenge when we declare, "I am choosing to take responsibility for the quality of my experience". Easier said than accomplished.

When we are preyed upon by parasites, we too become parasitic in nature. We are all parasites now in one form or another. Our daily drama - whether it be accident, injury, illness, or basic emotional outburst - is bait used to suck in emotional sustenance [energy] from others because we do not have the capacity to give it to ourselves. Some of the emails I get are from people not actually wanting to know the answer to a question [by exploring their own experience], but rather who are just trying to get some attention. They do not even know they are doing this. Even if my reply is just short of rude - they still say, "Thank you Michael". Why, because by replying I give them some attention - now they feel better instead of having gained the capacity to get better at feeling. Then, having juiced up, they think up another question so as to keep the food flowing. Most of the time I have the compassion to respond, and in the process, do my best to gradually bring their awareness to their parasitic intent. However, sometimes I wish I had a fly-swatter that reached across the globe so I could splatter a few mosquitoes. [I am only human after all.]

I have also discovered that the more I provide insight into parasitic behavior, the more detailed questions I receive on the subject. This is why I stopped the Actuality Fiction Series. Also, there is no real point alerting people to parasites if they have not yet at least committed to the task of taking responsibility for the quality of their experience. There is no point exploring this subject when all it accomplishes is making others fearful.

Yet, the bottom line remains obvious and simple: We are only susceptible to parasites because we are emotionally imprinted. Integrate the emotional imprint and the source of food is eliminated.

Yes, I have prescribed various techniques in The ICU writings and in BEING OUR COMPANION. Yet, these do not in of themselves remove parasites - they simply piss them off so as their cover is blown and our awareness of them awakened. This awareness is a necessary step, because we have lived with parasites since childhood. All families are herded by a group of parasites from generation to generation. A family is like a little dairy farm - the milk provided comes from the shared family imprinting. We have been preyed on by these entities for so long we now mistakenly identify their presence as being what we are. All self-hatred arises from identification with parasitic energy. So, the first step is to be able to discern their presence around us. I don't care what "the oneness folk" say: Parasites are real. Usually, those who deny such a reality do so because they themselves have found a way to feed through such denial. Every so-called spiritual teacher who likes the idea of having followers or students or disciples is a parasite in a pretty white disguise. They are the worst kind of parasite because they prey on others in the guise of somehow "feeding" them. All celebrity spirituality is parasitic.

Parasites are seamless in their presence. It is an acquired skill to perceive them. We can commence this ability by first observing the nature of our own parasitic behavior and our own parasitic thinking. Yet, to perceive the parasite itself requires developing felt-perception. They live in the human blind spot: the dismissed felt-aspect of our experience. We see them by feeling them. So, the various practices such as ICU are provided to assist us to perceive them. When we are able to perceive them, we simultaneoulsy commence disempowering them. We then piss them off by depriving them of a comfortable food source - and predictably they become rattled. Just like removing an addicts fix causes their behavior to become increasingly erratic.

However, when we seek to remove them completely from our field, we are to apply "being without condition". We are to identify their presence through felt-perception, then to "watch them" [as opposed to being unconsciously driven by them] with this felt-perception without any agenda other than to reveal to them they are clearly seen. The challenge is as they become annoyed by this deprivation, we then intimately feel their reaction [because they are nested within our field]. The challenge then becomes to not react to their reaction. Just like our priests, politicians, and profiteers - nothing causes parasites to increase their attempts at manipulation than sudden transparency [the trance becoming apparent]. However, when we stand our ground and refuse to be herded into reactivity, their hunger grows to a point they have to detach in search of another food source. When a chicken escapes from a cage the hungry farmer is only prepared to expend a certain amount of energy trying to catch it. The farmer eventually throws their hands in the air and goes off to slaughter another.

The biggest parasitic attack on humanity currently is called "swine flu". Millions have now been terrified and are now considering making themselves available to being injected with parasitic Nano Technology called vaccine. Once this vaccine is ingested we may then actually have "the great pandemic" we are all being scared through. The trick in all of this is personal responsibility, and a large dose of grace. Parasitic delousing is one of the most complex subjects and predicaments facing humanity. It is the blind spot out of which all humanities misery flows. Yet, the causal approach to delousing ourselves remains unchanged. We are to use whatever activity efficient to awaken to the unintegrated emotional imprints which these parasites skillfully prod to provoke the reactive behavior which emanates the energetic states of fear, anger, and grief upon which they feed. As we bring these unintegrated emotional states into our awareness and commence radiating the love-light of being without condition upon them, we regain an awareness of our authenticity and integrity, and gradually cease behaving as a food source for others. As we cleanse vampiric experience from within, we cleanse ourselves of behaving towards others outwardly in this manner. There is nothing easy about this. This is the nature of "the battle for the soul".

Some of the greatest parasites currently preying upon humanity are adored by us. They have convinced us they are our saviors and we have accepted the invitation to their banquet. Except, our unintegrated emotional states are what is on the menu.

I am glad you asked this question. Everything required to integrate this predicament and to empower ourselves by doing so is already available on The Presence Portal. Integrating the emotional imprinting which makes us energetically milked livestock is the journey we commence through The Presence Process. If we require more understanding on the subject than this - we are simply feeding into the parasitic tactic which leads us to believe liberation comes through "understanding, talking, discussing, etc". We have been discussing 911 for 8 years and no one has yet stood up and directed our attention toward the causal point of such deliberate parasitic setups.

Become aware of the unintegrated emotional signature being triggered by parasitic activity - be with the energetic pattern without condition. This is the only approach which is efficient. In other words, love the mosquitoes - love them to death.

A simple indicator of whether we are hosting parasites within our field is our incapacity to say "no" when we mean "no" and "yes" when we mean "yes". Our inability to energetically stand our ground and to communicate honestly with others is evidence of parasitic infestation and alliance. Yes, it is "an alliance". Allowing ourselves to continue being hosts to parasites is a way of validating our justifications for our continuing to behave this way towards other life forms. We humans are parasites. What we are gradually realizing is that the natural world is endowed with very efficient fly-swatters. Delouse or duck, if you have the will...

What Presence Activating Statement do I use in between experiential journeys through TPP?

2009-06-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

Q: I've completed the process ten days ago and feel pretty much just like the person asking "Should I do the procedure again?" in the q&a section of your portal. Mainly, I feel fear all the time I'm awake. I'm doing the best I can to be aware of it and not to sedate or suppress it. Although I finished the process, I kept doing breathing exercises and I feel a bit confused and lost during breathing: Since I lack the statements from exercises, I find myself playing mental ping-pong - saying "I appreciate myself, choose to experience the moment, restore balance" etc. all at the same moment, while trying to focus only on breathing. I feel I should do the process again right now, but at the same time intuition tells me no to dive in again immediately. Can you point me to how long should the pause between entering the process be? Can I use the ICU technique in this "I don't know where I am and what to do" fear driven moment?

A: This fear-driven moment you are currently moving through is the face of the emotional imprinting which you have been deliberately unearthing through The Presence Process procedure. Engage with it by feeling it without condition so it may organically unfold to a point of integration and resolution. This takes as long as it takes. This fearfulness is also evidence you attended well to the procedure. This fearfulness has been with you since childhood and now you have successfully excavated that imprinting so it is now available, moment to moment, right at the surface of your awareness. This empowers you to consciously participate in integrating it through being without condition. This conscious response is all you require to keep yourself vulnerable to integration.

My recommendation is you give yourself at least three weeks break from the book before re-entering it experientially. This space is grace and allows for digestion of your experience to commence. My recommendation is also that while moving through this intermediary stage, you use the following mental Presence Activation Statement, not only during your breathing practice - which you are to continue attending to twice a day for at least 15 minutes: "I AM HERE NOW." Use it in this manner: In-breath on "I", out-breath on "AM", in-breath on "HERE", out-breath on "NOW, in-breath on "I", and so on. Synchronize your breathing with this Presence Activating statement so both your breath and mental statement move in harmonious rhythm with each other. Then, as you go about during the day, when not mentally active, repeat this same Presence Activation Statement and connect your breathing as you do. This is one of the instructions and tools to be added to the revised edition of The Presence Process.

Also, after each 15 minute consciously connected breathing session, make sure you allow yourself some time and space to simply sit quietly, feel what is - whether it be bodily sensations of emotional states - and also to simply listen to what is - whether it be outer world sounds or inner world vibrational frequencies. This intentional 'feeling' and 'listening' are both means for developing the necessary 'felt-perception' required for us to become explorers of our vibrational authenticity.

You are welcome to use the ICU procedure from the website while not journeying through TPP procedure - and even while journeying through it. It definitely supports this work.

What does "space is grace" mean?

2009-06-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

Q: You say “space is grace” [on the recordings of the live teachings available on the website]. I am experiencing this statement on my loving relationship, but isn’t it (space) equal to I am afraid to let you into my day to day life? I am not ready to have you on all my planes, I am not ready to share this part of my life with you because I am afraid of letting you in (my heart)?

I would love to see into your eyes and feel the presence process live in you. Are you giving any conference in America soon?

A: You misinterpret the expression "space is grace" according to your personal unintegrated emotional signature. "Space is grace" refers to the space we allow each other so we may integrate the consequences of the experience of being close to each other. People driven into relationships via their unintegrated emotional signature do not wish to give the other all the space they require - for they fear that given space means the other is off somewhere doing things without them and maybe being exposed to others who may be more suitable, etc. With explorations into intimacy, the experience of "being together" becomes causal. When we chase and attempt to hold onto others because of our unintegrated needs and wants - and through this chasing and holding - pen them into what we call "a relationship with us" - we do not seek to give them space. Instead, we bind them, manipulate them, feed emotionally off them, become dependent upon them, and eventually addicted to them. This we mistakenly call "love". Under these circumstances our "doings together" are not causal - they are an effect of us not having taken care of the unintegrated emotional signature which drives us into these sticky circumstances in the first place. When we instead come together with another to "see deeper into ourselves" - to explore into-me-and-see [intimacy] alongside them - our 'being together' is causal. And, like all causal activity - we require time-out, space away, so we may digest the nutrition gained through our interaction with each other. This nutrition is digested alone. Accordingly, an exploration into intimacy with another expresses itself as a tidal experience - we flow into each others company - then we flow out. And, even this flowing in and out is not planned or scheduled, because it is a natural pulsating facilitated by our inner vibrational resonance. When we are mature enough to respond to this out-flowing - to this necessity for space between us - the consequential aloneness becomes the vessel into which grace of insight is poured. And so, space becomes grace.

As to your comment about seeking to look in my eyes - again - such a statement flows out of our lack of emotional development and from within our false religious/spiritual programming. When we believe we are able to see in another's eyes something which is not already available within our own - we are still lost to the truth of our own divine Inner Presence. When we seek and gain such an experience from another - we become addicted to finding it outside ourselves. Then, we are lost in great delusion. This is where many so-called "spiritual teachers" capitalize on the naivety of others. Such a relationship becomes parasitic, disempowering, and gradually robs us of the inner resources given specifically for our own progress. My recommendation is you create some space in which you sit before a mirror and gaze into your own eyes [as instructed in the mirror work writings on NAKED]. Such space becomes a vehicle for grace. Better still, sit quietly, close your physical eyes, and peer inwardly without condition. Be without condition within your own inner terrain, and be blessed by the grace of in-sight which comes with honoring such a divine space.

There are currently no teachings scheduled for anywhere any time in the future.

I am having vibrational experiences that are scaring me, what do I do?

2009-06-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

Q: Thank you for your first response in advising me to let my vibrational experiences and their consequences be my teaching. I am trying to do this, but I can't help but ask for guidance again as I am getting a little "freaked out" at the intense vibrational experiences I sometimes have while sleeping. Last night, this started happening to me before I went to bed and I felt that I would have a powerful experience once I slept, which is exactly what happened. The force of this experience is quite overwhelming. I am not so much afraid of it as I am confused although, when in the midst of the vibrations, I am a little frightened as it feels to be so much out of my control. If there is any insight you could give me.

A: What you are encountering is indeed vibrational experience. As you have also stated, this is "out of your control". We humans assume we can control everything, and when we discover we cannot, we become afraid, angry, and grief-struck. Out of our fear, anger, and grief we then construct stories. These stories are all our religions, spirituality, metaphysics, sciences, philosophies, and countless conceptualized "points of you". However, it is all very simple: We all contain within us something that is shared: Vibration. This vibration flows through us as does electric current through an electrical wire. However, through projection we are more enamored with the appliance this current fuels than with the current itself. If I am born in India I may call my approach to comprehending this inner current, Hinduism. If I am in Israel I may call it Judaism. If I am in Tibet I may call it Buddhism. If I am in Afghanistan I may call it Islam. If I am in America I may call it Christianity. If I am in Peru I may call it Shamanism. If I am a scientist I may choose to call my examination of it Quantum Physics. If I am a psychologist I may say my approach to comprehending it is Freudian or Jungian. Whatever I call it and however I approach it is determined by my religious and cultural imprinting. This imprinting keeps me feeling safe and secure - because it somehow convinces me "I am in control of it". However, none of what I call it is true. It is all story. The Presence Process is one tool useful in untelling these stories. We begin this untelling by resolving imprinting related to our childhood experiences. This leads us into becoming aware of imprinting related to our family relationships. This leads us into resolving imprinting related to how we approach intimacy with a lover. Eventually, we come face to face with the imprinting related to whatever story we have told to sedate and control our awareness of the vibrational. All of these levels of resolution strip away the energetic blockers we call grief, anger, and fear, which are imprinted within our energy field as we enter this experience. Once stripped away, we are left with a simple realization: We are vibration. This vibration enter what we regard as creation along a Pathway of Awareness. It initially becomes energy in motion which we encounter through felt-perception. This energy in motion is then translated into thought form, which we encounter through thinking. This form then manifests as solidified matter and tangible circumstances, which we encounter through our senses. All our emotional, mental, and physical encounters are therefore a graduated and accumulated expression of the vibrational. The only truth remaining unchanged within it all is the vibrational. What you are experiencing as you enter the relaxed and sometimes unguarded state of sleep is called 'you' or 'us'. Do not be afraid of yourself. Do not try to control or sedate this raw and primal encounter with what you/we are. Celebrate it. Do you know how many have told such intricate stories that it consequently takes them years and years of austere practice to have an encounter that you are describing? You are blessed in that you simply go to sleep to your waking story and naturally awaken to an encounter with what flows beneath all story. The fear you are feeling is the surfacing of your religious imprint related to your religious and cultural imprinting. As with all aspects of integrative processing, the ultimate approach to resolving this aspect of your imprinting is the same: Feel it without condition. In other words, "do nothing about it". Also, you may now intend to engage more consciously with the vibrational so as to diminish these seemingly unconscious encounters with it. I intend at some point to make such a practice available for those who seek to explore themselves in this manner. But for now, embrace your experience as valid, as grace, as a dose of the best medicine available.

What happens when my experience contradicts what you state in The Presence Process?

2009-06-14T19:07:00.000-07:00

Q: I’ve had the experience of having a thought which awoke feelings of distress, or fear, or anger. As per your approach, I’ve treated these thoughts as “messengers” and just sat and focused on the felt resonance underlying these thoughts. After working with TPP for a long time, I’ve been able to experience that my emotional lens does color my thoughts, as well as generate them. However, I used to read, and believe, that our feelings were a response to our thinking, as well as to our unconscious value judgments. This would seem to imply that though the experience was in the feeling, the causal point of the feeling was in the thinking. I’ve also had experiences like this. Are there times thoughts or external situations are the causal point of what we are feeling, as opposed to more primal emotional imprinting?

A: According to my experience, no. According to your experience, yes. So now, a big dilemma: Is my experience your teacher, or is yours your teacher? Do we have the courage to accept our experience as valid even when it apparently contradicts what another implicitly states as being true?

Do thought forms create bulimia? [Or anything?]

2009-06-13T22:13:00.000-07:00

Q: What do you know are the thought forms that create bulimia?

A: Thought forms do not create anything. This is a misconception which comes about when we live in the mental plane. All thought forms initially are vibrations which, when passing through the emotional realm [energies in motion realm] become colored by the imprinted energetic conditions therein. When imprinted energetically during childhood through felt-experiences involving food intake - these imprints birth thought-forms, such as those exhibited within the mental body of people with eating disorders. Changing our thinking about our eating behavior has only temporary impact on the condition when we do not first impact the energetic signature through unconditional felt-perception which underlies such thinking. In this light, a thought-form and how it is made up, or what it is telling itself, is irrelevant. Let's be honest now: If thought truly had the capacity to create, most men would be having oral sex with barbie blonds who have large breasts. Most women would be walking around with 20 carrot diamonds on their hands and a crew of helpers to carry all their shopping packages. Most children would live exclusively on a diet of sweets and never attend a day of school after the age of about 10. All politicians would become president. All priests would become the Pope. All profiteers would be billionaires. This is because these are the thought-forms most commonly entertained in our programmed society. The fact that this is not the reality for most is evidence thought is impotent in manifesting reality - no matter how much we repeat them. Thought may reinforce certain experiences, but in of itself, thought has never and will never create anything. All of our personal creations are accomplished via the vibrational, and the distinctive forms of these creations are determined by the imprinted condition of our emotional realm. The finer details of their outer manifestation are then ironed our by thought-form, and finally solidified into solid form through matter. Only a mental/physical world-view dominated by a controlling masculine and a sedating feminine believes "though creates" or "I think therefore I am". The reality is, "I am, whether I think about it or not". "We are, before and after thought." Do not bow to thought as if it is God. God is not 'a thought'. Whatever God is, is vibrational - beyond all mental concept - a direct inner experience which is most efficiently, initially, approached through felt-perception. Therefore, the most creative manner of resolving bulimia and other such eating disorders is to consciously feel, without condition, the imprinted energetic state supporting the thinking associated with bulimia. It is the vibration radiating through being without condition while experiencing these imprinted felt-resonances which resolves. Thinking about the thoughts is to enter analysis. When we analyze, we are using our anal eyes.

Do I have to attend to the breathing practice on an empty stomach?

2009-06-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

Q: I'm at Activating Our Process/Maintaining Our Momentum. Earlier in the book, I read to not do the Breathing Exercise on an empty stomach. Now I read, on p. 121to attend to the 15 minute breathing exercise, twice each day, as the FIRST THING WE DO AFTER WE ARE FULLY AWAKE and as the LAST THING WE DO BEFORE WE CLIMB INTO BED AT NIGHT. Does that mean eat right before?

A: Thank you for asking this question. This one of those recommendations I intend clarifying in the revised edition of TPP. I would say in hindsight that the opposite stands: Not to attempt any practice like what is offered in TPP on a full stomach - like right after a large meal. These types of exercises are most efficiently approached through a life of moderation. I breathe first thing in the morning. However, I also first get up, have a large glass of water, a quiet cup of coffee, play with my cats, read and answer a few emails to get myself mentally awake, and then attend to my breathing. So, it is not really "first thing in the morning". However, it is before I interact with humans and venture out of my front door into the activities of the world. I also breathe last thing at night. However, sometimes I may attend to the practice earlier in the evening, especially if I have had a strenuous day - because I know that when feeling worn, if I do it just before bed, I am only going to dissolve into nap city. This is where we are encourage to allow our experience to be our teacher. The recommendations in the book - in any of my writings - are simply guidelines - not rules. I recommend you try breathing under various different circumstances to discover what is most efficient for your experience. We are each a unique expressions of the vibrational, and so it is up to us to explore ourselves experientially to discover how we function most efficiently. We are our own laboratory in which we are to experiment. What works for me may not work for you, and vice verse. This is why it is crucial to integrate what is meant by: Allow your experience to become your teacher. Take action and observe the consequences. Then, learn from the consequences what is efficient action to take. Once we enter this approach to our human experience, we are freeing ourselves of all outer rules and heading fast into trusting our inner realizations to be the most efficient truths in fueling our momentum. This approach - of implicitly trusting what the consequences of our own activity reveal - is the pathway leading directly into authenticity, integrity, and intimacy. This is the pathway of self-mastery.

What happens when I am suddenly faced with a shift reflecting my imprinting?

2009-06-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

Q: The inevitable has happened - the man I was going on a 3 week camper van trip with has told me he will not go now. He told me that I think too much, am too stressed out, am not centered, that I should leave this flat and suffer so as to connect with what is real (to get perspective). It is all true and painful. TPP is the only helper. I am responsible for my peace of mind. My child feels it all through her body but I am here with her now and I am taking care of her so she has a voice, is heard and is safe. I still can't answer the questions on physical/mental clarity. I can't meditate and calm my mind at all lately, the 5 minutes is the max and thoughts keep arising.

A: Now be with this unconditionally. Now the work offers the possibility of authenticity.

Should I do more breathing practices daily because...

2009-06-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

Q: Michael, just prior to starting the process my business slowed, and since starting it, has been non-existent. I know you warn of this possibility in your book and re-assured us it will turn around. My question is what would be the consequence of increasing the amount of time in breathing process or adding another session each day.

A: What about considering the fact we are experiencing a world-wide recession - or translated - the dismantling of the outer structures of our collective economic imprinting manifest as financial manipulation of others to get what we want? Stay with the procedure as it is - or else you are simply doing the same thing: Manipulating your current experience to try and get what you want, as opposed to patiently opening yourself to effortlessly receive what is required.

I am unable to restart the process.

2009-06-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

Q: I completed The Presence Process about 9 months ago and have wanted to go through it gain but each attempt ends in the second week. I don't know if this is the same as being 'stuck' but I feel this immense weight of boredom. As if to accentuate this I have several physical problems which mean I cannot even talk the long walks I once so enjoyed.This feeling reminds me of my teens(I am in mid life), and I feel very guilty that when there is so much suffering I am wallowing in this. Also people can be very irritating to me, I feel bombarded by their lack of containment, maybe because I am starting to see my own? Thank you for the process and all your writings, although it sure feels like boot camp sometimes!

A: Just as I cannot be with these feelings unconditionally on your behalf, I too cannot breathe or turn the pages of the book for you. This is what "growing up" is about.

What do I do about feeling stuck and wanting it all to end?

2009-06-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

Q: I am gazing with my self, but in the last few weeks my capacity of respond has almost disappear, I have return to feeling so trapped in my actual life all I can think is, "I want it to end". Should I start on my second time of TPP, and stop gazing?

A: Gazing is not a replacement for The Presence Process. So, it is not a case of doing one or the other. What about silence and stillness - have you given these qualities a chance while you move through your current experience? Realize that 'feeling trapped' and 'wanting to end it' is the medicine which is being administered for your healing. Feel these feelings as if you acute awareness of them is a gifts from God. Feel them without condition. What you are going through now is the felt-aspect of what is to be resolved within your emotional body. It is the surfacing of the emotional signature you have worked so hard to dislodge from in your awareness through doing the procedure. The only way out is through. Also, be aware that many in this world, whether they are processing consciously or not, are at present having feelings of 'being stuck' and 'wanting it to end'. This is a common experience for humanity right now. We have come to the edge of an ending paradigm whose ways no longer serve us. It feels like dying for us as it comes to completion. We who have developed some level of felt-perception feel this. Others who have not primarily are trapped in telling stories and reacting to these. We feel stuck because we cannot yet grasp the way of being beyond the shift we are in. This is why it is so important to return to the piece of writing called "Revelation Of Being", which is freely available on The Presence Portal Writings page. Do not lose hope, much Grace is pouring upon us, and what we are now all going through comes to pass. But the operative word now is 'through'. We must go through the death of what is no longer serving our journey - and as we do we feel as if a part of us is dying. This is because we still identify with that aspect of outer identity which we relied upon up to now to navigate through this tired and worn-out paradigm. While we rely on its frantic doings to take us from here onward, we also feel stuck. This is because that dying aspect of our experience does not have the capacity to take the next step. It is not within our 'doings' we move beyond this current circumstance of our human journey - it is within the radiance of our beingness - of being with without condition no matter what - that the shift takes place. Sink into silence and stillness as much as possible. This is key now. Yes, and I encourage you to enter the procedure again when you feel ready.

Seeking someone to do the procedure with.

2009-06-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

Q: I read the book, and I want to enter this process experientially. As you have stated, it would be better if we could have someone else on this process as witness. So, as I live in Belgium; would you know contacts in Belgium with whom I could contact to share in this process?

A: Do not seek someone out so you may begin the procedure, as it is not necessary. The rule of thumb is this: If no one is around you to journey alongside - then this is not what is required for you. If you feel the need to search someone out before you can begin - then it is more beneficial for you to dive in immediately and attend to this alone, and rather to use the procedure to assist you to resolve this neediness [fear]. I do not say 'it is better' to have someone - this is not my language as far as I recall - it is your misinterpretation of the text. It may be useful to be around others doing it - but 'it is better to do it alone!' Do not be afraid of entering this work. All the confirmation you require as you take this journey is available on The Presence Portal website. And, this is essentially the only significant role having someone else around you doing this procedure serves: To confirm that what you are happening to you is valid by your perceiving similar occurrences also unfolding within their experience. Your experience of The Presence Process, no matter how it unfolds for you, is valid. Dive in now and do not allow this issue to become a delay tactic. That being said, as per your request, I place your email address here so that if anyone in Belgium would like to contact you, they may: pierre.twagirayezu@skynet.be

Am I doing the breathing properly?

2009-06-09T06:14:00.000-07:00

Q: Would you be able to put up on YouTube a short video showing how the breathing exercises supposed to be carried out? Cause I've started the Process 3 days ago and I'm still not sure if I'm doing it correctly. If you can't put up the video, can you, please, explain to me again the pauses between inhale and exhale? I believe I'm not pausing at all, but if I listen intently, I notice there is a tiny fraction-of-a-second pause in between. And no matter how much I try to close that gap, it's still there. Maybe it's how it supposed to be. It'd be good to be able to see someone experienced doing it.

A: My intent is to place a new audio on the website demonstrating this breathing technique, because many people make the mistake of assuming that 'not pausing' means 'absolutely no gaps of time at all between the in-breath and the out-breath'. This continual query arises out of language use misunderstanding, and not lack of comprehension of the mechanics of the breathing. No pausing means 'no elongated gaps in which one remains completely in a breathless between the in-breath and out-breath'. This is going to be a short hiatus as we change over from in-breath to out-breath. This brief gap is natural and should not be eliminated, or else one is now again controlling the breathing. However, do not pause within this change-over - breath in and breath out normally, naturally, like any breathing creature does. Just breathe without stopping or remaining breathless for an elongated period between the in-breath and out-breath. I am not sure how I am able to explain it more clearly than this? I am sure the audio will help.

Are you going to talk about entity possession in the revised edition of TPP?

2009-06-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

Q: Regarding The ICU Part I & II [article on the Writings page of the website] and vampiric entities...will you be incorporating this in the revised edition of TPP?

A: No. This level of the work and the explanations around it disturb those who have not yet developed the capacity to take responsibility for the quality of their life experience. The ICU Part I & II is freely available for all on the website, and those ready for it find it.

Q: Again, regarding vampiric entities...would you say these constitute what Eckhart Tolle calls "the pain body"? (Assuming you have read some of his work.)

A: I was exposed to some of Eckhart's teachings in about 2004, so am familiar with this terminology. I would say yes. 'The pain body' appears to me to be directly related to the subject matter discussed in the ICU writings. It is my opinion that Eckhart's take on it is marvellous, as he is able to introduce others to entity possession in a very neutral, non-threatening way. Being a Leo I tend to go for the jugular, to be a little less gentle about it. Even Eckhart says something like, "the pain body needs to feed". This language hints at the reality that this energetic experience - whether it is 'alive' as we consider living things to be from a human world point of view - has a life of its own and must sustain itself in order to continue its experience. Our work is not to fight it or get rid of it, but to transform it into an ally by receiving the teaching inherent within such an encounter.

Is my doing this procedure harming another?

2009-06-09T05:24:00.000-07:00

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.

Why am I having such a hard time with The Presence Process?

2009-06-08T07:10:00.000-07:00

Q: I've been through your book once (too fast probably) and now I'm beginning again. Almost as soon as I started the book, all kinds of intense "opportunities" began to happen. They have kept on coming with more experiences and more intense experiences than I have ever had before in 12 years of meditation and 16 years of sobriety. What's bothering me is that I'm doing things like having fender benders, I wrecked my knee in a bike accident. All kinds of upheaval and growth in my marriage and some stuff that seems like I'm totally checked out! But believe me I feel awake. I'm not missing a thing!!Ok any comments would help right now. I'm doing al-anon a lot which helps but I feel totally kind of blasted out.

A: No matter how I stress that this procedure is real - that the impacts of placing one's attention [even just through reading text] upon our unintegrated emotional predicament impacts our life experience, still, we do not listen. Maybe this is because we have no point of reference in this world for what the word 'real' really implies... We hurry through the book thinking it is yet another quick-fix, despite all the guidance and recommendation to behave responsibly as we approach this work. This is not a game. This is not another New Age toy for metaphysical entertainment. This procedure is something real which has a real impact. It does not serve us to allow our neediness to cause us to crash about unconsciously in our life. Your unfolding experience when picking up this book, no matter how it unfolds, is your teaching. Where else are you dashing through life as a means to an end? Ask yourself this allow yourself to be shown. Where else are you unconsciously crashing into experiences because of needy [knee-die]desperation? Ask yourself this and allow yourself to be shown. When we follow the instructions of The Presence Process as are clearly given in the book [as in "do not hurry through this text" - "allow time for integration", etc.], our experience is much smoother than if we barge through it, ignoring the clear guidance not to do so, and trying to get everything resolved in the time it takes to speed-read the book. Just about everyone I have spoken to who becomes overwhelmed after entering the procedure - or even from just reading the text - have one thing in common: An intent to resolve everything as soon as possible. Such intent denies us of gentleness, manageable rhythm, and is a testament to our lack of responsibility for our overall experience. Yet, the consequence of such behavior and intent is in itself "our teaching". Our experience as we move through The Presence Process is a microcosm directly reflecting the macrocosm of our entire life experience. Initially, none of us go through The Presence Process differently than the way we are currently approaching our overall life experience. An impatient person does not go through this procedure patiently. Accordingly, the manner in which we make our journey through The Presence Process becomes in itself a teaching - a clear mirror showing us exactly how we are living our day-to-day lives. Learn from these lessons and the unconsciousness gradually dissolves. Ignore these lessons and we continue banging our head against the wall. This is pure physics! It does not serve us when we allow desperation to drive our healing - because then the outcome is desperate. How could it be any other way?
Now, stop, take a breath, and continue as if you are on a journey that has no end. How differently would you approach this procedure if you knew you would be applying what it reveals for the rest of your life? Because you will. It changes us forever. Would you still hurry if you took the word 'forever' seriously? This does not mean the procedure caused these incidence you speak of. The procedure is neutral. Blaming the procedure for accidents within our life is like blaming guns for crime. We always receive exactly what we require to slap us into wakefulness - especially if it is a slap which most serves us. The universe is extremely generous and graciously abundant in this matter. I used to barge through everything too, using every experience as "a means to an end". But there is no end - so where do we think we are rushing to? Relax. Take care of what is right in front of your right now with as much care and gentleness as possible. This is all we require mastering. The rest takes care of itself.

Should I force myself to stop addictive behavior?

2009-06-07T23:03:00.000-07:00

Q: I will do the process again, sooner rather than later, though I will give the time “off” a chance. Someone I know said the second time through she stopped eating “comfort foods” and it made the experience much more intense. Food is my addiction, and I didn’t see much movement in that area in these past 10 weeks. I know you tell people not to give up addictions when they go through, but is that true the second time, or might there be benefit in doing this?

A: This is a good question and points to one of the adjustments to be made in the revised text of The Presence Process. When we move through TPP for the first time, it does not serve us to try and forcibly stop all our addictive behavior. This is because extremist behavior causes the deeply unconscious imprinting underlying these behaviors to surface all at once, when we are not yet ready to consciously facilitate ourselves through such an experience. Such 'forcing' invariably leads to sudden eruptions of fear, anger, and grief - in doses that may be overwhelming, and so drive us into resistance. Then, we may turn away from TPP - the very thing designed to assist us. However, as we enter it for the second and third time [I now recommend moving through it at least three times] we are already perceptually trained to recognize what processing is, and how to facilitate ourselves through the surfacing of our emotional imprinting. For this reason, we are now equipped to deliberately place some space between us and our addictions so that we intentionally initiate an awareness of what underlies them. Then, it pays to resist the urge to splurge. However, no matter what level of the work we are in, it is important we retain 'gentleness' as a key frequency. No authentic healing comes from unnecessarily imposed suffering. This means it is up to us to find the balance - to avoid overly extreme changes inevitably knocking us into overwhelming reactivity. There is no hurry. There is no salvation in anything we eat or do not eat - there is only salvation in realizing what is eating away at us. And, we are to be gentle in glimpsing at this, so we allow ourselves the time and space to digest these imprints.

What is this high-pitched sound I hear when attending to my breathing?

2009-06-07T00:26:00.000-07:00

Q: I have started experiencing tinnitus (a very high pitched whistling) over the last year. This seems to become more noticeable and pronounced with consciously connected breathing. Should I use this sound as a focus for compassionate awareness, or just continue to focus on whatever feelings I'm experiencing at the time?

A: From personal experience I can tell you that tinnitus is not 'something wrong' - as in an apparent symptom of some defective ear ailment. The word itself is another manifestation of the medical profession using fancy Latin-type vocabulary to try and behave as if they know what they are talking about when in actuality, they have absolutely no clue. [As when I was informed that the manifestation of my suppressed emotional content as neurological pain was called 'Horton's Cephalgia'.] The sound you hear is actually the first of many inner sounds available to those who effectively turn their intention inward and tune into the first whisperings of vibrational realm. It is a gift not a curse. Instead of rewriting the entire explanation for this, I simply reprint an excerpt of a well-written article written by Kiara Windrider, available in full at http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Vipassana_Meditation/id/1937

"THE SOUND CURRENT PRACTICES

The practice of the sound current, also known as the divine sound, is a foundational practice of linking directly with the soul and I AM Presence. It comes from the Himalayan masters of ancient India, and is a foundation for the practice of Nada yoga, Sahaj yoga, Babaji's kriya yoga, as well as Sikh practices like Shabda yoga. When electricity runs through a power line it produces a humming sound. Likewise, when higher spiritual energies run through the circuitry of the human body, there is an interface between the two energy fields that we can hear within our heads as a current of sound. All creation is a manifestation of sound, the eternal OM. This same sound can be heard and felt within our own bodies. You might first experience this as a very subtle tone, so subtle it is almost subliminal. Later, or in deeper states of meditation, it could become so loud it drowns out everything else in its vibrancy.The sound current could be experienced differently, depending on the degree of one's inner attunement. You might hear it as a buzzing, or a ringing, or the sound of waves along the shore. It could be a clear ringing tone or the roar of thunder. However it is first experienced, as you bring your attention to that sound it becomes stronger and more coherent, until it eventually merges into the music of the spheres, the primordial sound. The sound current is a very sweet sensation of subtle sound. In the beginning it might help to cover the ears, or go someplace where you can be absolutely quiet. As you become more accomplished with this practice, you hear this tone constantly, and it serves as a continuous link with the soul. After some practice you might notice that this pitch changes as your brain wave rhythms change. It also changes when you are in the presence of higher vibrational beings like the ascended masters. You can begin to distinguish the energies of the different masters by the difference in tone. Likewise, when you are out in nature, taking the time to soak in the vibrancy of sounds and colors around, you begin to notice changes in the sound current as you connect with various elemental energies and nature spirits. As you match frequency with another being through the sound current, you might find that there is a deeper level of communication that begins to happen."

Why do I fall asleep during my breathing?

2009-06-07T00:21:00.000-07:00

Q: On most breathing sessions before bed I find I must have "gone unconscious" (or just fallen asleep!) as the elapsed time is always longer than I expected. Do I need to do anything to try and stop this happening, or will it just resolve with time and persistence?

A: This is caused by waves of unconsciousness surfacing for processing. Most who enter The Presence Process fall asleep during the breathing practice at one time or another. Sometimes this may continue for days or weeks at a time. If this occurs, get up, splash your face with cold water, and continue. [If the falling into unconsciousness is sever - and you feel brave enough - breathe while standing up on one leg. You will only fall over once, after that it is unlikely your awareness will allow you to drift off so quickly. I am of course joking, but also not.] The only way through this unconsciousness is through it. As we are successful in processing deeper emotional signatures this 'falling asleep' experience eventually passes. Persevere.

Should I do the procedure again?

2009-06-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

Q: I have at last gone through the Presence Process experientially. However, despite having activated completion I still feel in the midst of the Process. I read through the consequences and felt "I'm not there yet!" Whenever I look inside I feel a deep well of grief and fear which has not (yet) been drained by constantly placing my "compassionate attention" on it. It's as if this grief and fear has been lurking just under the surface all my life, and now I cannot avoid or ignore it. But it does tend to block any feelings of joy. My current life situation is also unresolved. Shortly after starting the Process I had to take my seriously disabled wife to hospital as her condition had deteriorated, and two month's later she is still in hospital, recovering from a second dose of pneumonia, and will now need significant long-term care when (if?) I eventually get her back home. This whole situation has been very effective as a messenger for many imprints spanning all aspects of life, death, health, finance, etc.!! As a way forward I started to re-read the Presence Process book today, and for the first time began to appreciate that I had made some progress towards glimpses of present moment awareness! Would it help to dive straight back into the Presence Process for a second journey through? I have also found it difficult transferring my feelings to an imaginary inner child in order to "Do whatever it takes .....". I have yet to experience any tears. I always try imagining holding my arms out and saying "you can come to me and I will give you unconditional love and approval, no matter what, until what is troubling you passes on." Not being particularly strong on visualising, I'm not sure what else I can do to facilitate this?

A: Yes, dive back in. I am currently busy re-editing the book for a published revised edition. It is five years now since I wrote this book and I too have learnt much about this procedure in this time. What is clear now is that for most of us it takes about three time through the procedure to be able to be with what is without feeling that something is wrong. The experiences you are going through now are what are required for you to resolve these deeply emotional conditions you speak of. As you go through the procedure again you shall go deeper and become more competent in wielding these perceptual tools. What is most important is that you trust your unfolding experience - no matter how it appears to you - as being valid. Nothing is wrong - you have initiated deep processing and now must continue to facilitate yourself as responsibly as possible. By entering the procedure again you accomplish this.

Also, not accepting our unfolding emotional experiences when we move through this procedure, and as a consequence of having done so, as valid, and instead behaving as if things should be unfolding differently, is the same as not accepting the condition of our inner child . This realization is key. Only when we are authentically interacting with our outer life experiences and the emotional states they trigger within us as if they are valid are we simultaneously being unconditional with our inner child self. To say that we are opening our arms unconditionally to the hurting inner child [the unintegrated emotional body], and in the same breath to behave as if our life experience should be unfolding differently and we should not be experiencing so much emotional turmoil, is a contradiction. Your emotional state right now is valid - whether it is fearful, angry, of full of grief. Being with it without condition - as best as you can right now - is the same as being with your inner child without condition.