Michael Brown - The Presence Process: A Journey into Present Moment Awareness

A Journey Into

Present Moment Awareness

Revised Edition

Vancouver, Canada

Copyright 2010 by Michael Brown

First printing 2010

Second printing 2010

Third printing 2011

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced and transmitted in any form and by any means without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations used in book reviews and critical articles.

Published in Canada by

NAMASTE PUBLISHING

P.O. Box 62084

Vancouver, British Columbia, V6J 4A3

www.namastepublishing.com

Distributed in the United States and Canada by

Publishers Group West

Cover Design by Ivan Rados Typesetting by Steve Amarillo / Urban Design

Printed and bound in Canada by FRIESENS

This book is written for you.

CONTENTS

My deepest appreciation to Constance Kellough, Kathy Cholod, David Robert Ord, Lucinda Beacham, and Nora Morin for taking such loving care of this book.

Thank you for making sure this revised edition shines.

This being human is a guest

house. Every morning

a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all:

Even if theyre a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture, still,

treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

Rumi

I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED RUMIS POEM. Later on, a wise friend counseled me, Acceptance is the doorway to transformation.

Again, the same message: welcome the guests inside you without judgment, without resistance, and they will change you, sweep you clean, from inside. The question was, How? Especially when they appeared dark, unfriendly, even mean-spirited.

Reading Michael Browns The Presence Process some years ago provided a clear and safe way. Michael often tells us, Dont kill the messenger. Receive the message. The messengers are the people and situations that upset us, seem to thwart and diminish us. The messages are the unintegrated, not-yet-resolved emotional memories and wounds from early childhood that are being played out through these current adult experiences. Like neglected children, they wont leave us alone but continue to out-picture in our daily life as the individuals, events, and circumstances that cause us pain and discomfort. Often they express through one of three core emotions: anger, fear, or sadness/grief. Our usual, habitual response is either mental or physical. We try to figure it out with the mind or distract ourselves through physical activity and avoidance. We may eat, run, overachieve, or simply get into our head to avoid engaging. Yet, the scared, wounded kid place in us continues to suffer, desperately wanting and needing attention and acceptance. To approach these wounds, often our oldest and most tender, requires a method thats both safe and effective. Fortunately, The Presence Process provides us with both.

Michael wisely begins by offering us two approaches to the book: to read/study, or else experience directly. I personally found it helpful to first get familiar with the method by reading Parts I and II, which provide a kind of overview and acclimatization to what is to come. All the developmental psychological history, the various techniques and methods to be used, the possible reactions and what to do are clearly spelled out and addressed in this instructional section, which helps get us ready for the actual journey. When we enter the experiential portion, the approach is again gentle, slow, and step by step. We have ten weeks to complete the process and each week is a gradual deepening and amplification. We have ample time to feel, question, and integrate. As with the bath immersion exercise of , we are invited to slowly and gradually lower ourselves ever more deeply into the warm healing waters of this powerful process.

I was delighted to hear that Michael had written a revised version of his original manuscript and was pleased when invited to write a preface to it. The question, of course, was how this version is different and what has been strengthened. I would say first off that the original has the look and feel of an instructional manual, with italicized Presence Activating Statements to practice and Next Week Assignments at the end of each chapter. The current version feels less formal, less teachy. The Presence Activating Statements have been changed to Conscious Responses without italics, and there are no formal assignments for the following week. I dont feel I am being instructed by a watchful prof, but rather kept company by a wise friend. The voice has more warmth and heart to it. I feel more seen and personally addressed by Michael.

Also, this text seems to flow more readily and communicate more clearly and effectively. Michael has added a section title to each of the weekly experientials not present in the original. These titles zero in on the core focus for each chapter. Also, at the start of each chapter, we are given the conscious response for the next seven days, the phrase we are to repeat like a mantra throughout the week to help us internalize the weeks focus. This focus is then broken down into several key ideas and expanded in the text to enhance our understanding, and we are given specific exercises or practices to bring these ideas alive in our body. Each chapter ends by identifying challenges that may emerge and how to work with them. In this way, each chapter elegantly and organically unfolds, skillfully integrating what has come before and gracefully leading to the next stage in the process, always clearly, always gently.

The key to working The Presence Process is to stop running from, or projecting onto others, the unresolved emotional charges from childhood that keep resurfacing in our current life situations. Instead, we learn to gently be with them, giving them our unconditional attention and support. As with angry, hurt, or frightened children, we dont scold or abandon our wounded child parts, and neither do we try to control or manipulate them. To do so would be to upset them further. Rather, we quietly keep them company with our benign presence and unconditional, loving support, until they in due course calm down. We dont need to say or do anything, but simply let them feel our resonating empathy.

Learning to identify and rest in Presence is the essence of this process. In this new version of The Presence Process , Michael puts particular emphasis on this. In the first six weeks of the experiential section, he shows us how to recognize our shadows, our unresolved emotional charges, and how to identify them with wounded child parts as well as how to welcome, hold, and reintegrate them through loving Presence. In the last four chapters, seven through ten, he shares more metalevel Presence skills. He starts by showing us more generally how to move out of our head and away from our mental stories, away from physical diversions and sublimations, and instead develop our felt-perception our inner body feeling, as Eckhart Tolle would say. It isnt through our mind or our emotional drama that we can sense into and be with our unresolved emotional resonances. We need to learn to develop felt-perception, vibratory heart knowing, so that we can sense into and resonate with the energetic charges that keep our scared inner kids so off balance. We must also learn to identify the stories and beliefs that hold these uncomfortable vibratory frequencies in place. We begin to recognize the generic nature of these stories. We learn to forgive ourselves and others by recognizing that we all suffer from the double bind of desperately seeking unconditional love from hopelessly conditional and unstable sources outside ourselves. Rather than judging ourselves for having these unmet needs, we learn to accept them as inevitable and offer them the one abiding source of unconditional love, the ever-available embrace of our own conditionless and abiding Inner Presence. Once we can begin to give this to ourselves, we can also start offering it to the scared, wounded child parts of others as well.