Present moments strung together, melt into the magic of the power I AM.
Making space for presence as our days seem to get busier and busier is a challenge for many of us. The doing becomes the priority and the being tends to get lost in the details. It can even become an annoyance, a frustrating waste of time, to have to stop and take a deep breath, or some other such technique that brings us back to the present moment.
I’ve even set timers to remind myself to stop – just for the time it takes to breathe deeply 5 times, or even once. And then when the time comes, I am often so engrossed in what I am doing that even though I’ll take the deep breath, I’m not really present, I’m still thinking about what I am in the middle of doing.
I understand the value of stepping back and sinking into Presence for just a moment – simply from my experiences of when I have done so. Life works so much better!
Following on from the blog I wrote about the world I see being a projection of me, I found myself becoming a lot more observant of my surroundings and the little vignettes (a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment). I began photographing some of them as a way of capturing their essence.
Finding my vignette and then being aware was helpful: a wind chime tinkling in the wind; the heater that caused this cold space to fill with warmth; the waving of the tree in the wind as it stood there so stalwartly – never complaining about heat or cold, rain or sun – pure stoicism.
Maybe it was the line of the roof of a building, the rainbow sparking off a crystal, the softness of my dog’s fur as he snuggled up, the power of color and shape bouncing out into the room through a painting on the wall, the shape of the curtains framing the window. and on and on.
I remembered about anchoring – an NLP technique I had learned long ago. I decided to really anchor these visual moments into my physical being, to breathe deeply into them in along with the appreciation and pleasure.
Looking back over the observed vignettes I had photographed helped to create the net of conscious connection that lives in the background of all our days. They were like stars in the dark, lighting my way, especially when I was getting lost in the doing
While vision is a physical sense, it sure can be a powerful pointer to the true essence of Presence – a picture is worth a thousand words.
Indra’s Net came to mind.
Mark Nepo in Drinking From the River of Light – the Life of Expression writes about Indra’s Net – a Buddhist myth about a “net which encircles the earth. At every knot in the net is a jewel in which you can see all the other jewels and the entire net reflected“.
Mark sees this as a “metaphor for our part in a living Universe – each soul being a jewel, which when clear, reveals all the other souls in existence along with the net of being that connects us“.
I could imagine the world covered with such a net, in the way those nets of lights cover bushes at Christmas. It’s a great visualization to imagine billions of points of lights in billions of different forms and energies, covering the earth, connected by the one life force we are, encompassing all duality. This means covering and connecting all the ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ etc., all woven together in the lights of love.
Indra’s Net is a wonderful story to use as you consider your world expanding out from those moments of Presence. You can see your family, close friends as jeweled points of connection connected by the invisible thread of love. Then further afield to your community, your city/town, your country and the world – infinite threads of humanity connecting, weaving – each connection a brilliant jewel of light – some clearer than others.
And of course the threads that connect all nature and living things.
Jewels of Present Moments
My vignette moments became the jewels at the junctions of the net of Presence awareness I was weaving during my day. Sometimes I took a quick pic on my phone, sometimes I simply focused long enough to breathe it in and anchor it. I especially made an effort not to think in those moments – to simply observe and breathe in the energy I was seeing – and hearing – and feeling. Just the experience, nothing more. The minute we start naming we are into the mind again.
Awareness of the net fills my heart and I feel its expansion as it pulsates in and out, giving and receiving and connecting. I find I vibrate from a higher level of consciousness which is less judgmental, less frustrated and fearful – my world is expanded from the smallness of mind occupied by busyness to the largess of the peace of Presence.
What a difference a day makes – that is strung together with strands of such awareness. It no longer devolves into a fatigued evening of crashing at the end of the day, in need of rejuvenation. Instead there is a peace. The magic moments seem to build one upon the other – and often lead me into different actions and experiences altogether. Life has a feeling of being lived, instead of drifting into that hole of ‘where have the days of my life disappeared’.
Little moments, netted together by Presence Awareness, can change any experience from numbed out stress to exquisite joy, no matter the circumstances, or at the very least, peace of mind and a connection to a bigger reason for being.
