What is Presence?
Presence is the key to self-love. It means taking yourself out of autopilot and bringing all your awareness, your consciousness, into every moment of every day. We use our five senses, however, when we bring vulnerability (our ability to be in our heart, as our authentic self, with no masks or armor), and presence into our lives, we have a superpower that is not connected to the brain. We can “read” the other person. We can sense through our heart if someone is distracted, sad, anxious, depressed, or if they are being honest. This we can do with our heart, but not with our head.
There are several tools that we bring when we are in presence: power, compassion, vulnerability, strength, and courage.
When you recognize your power, you know you are capable of healing yourself. It allows you to choose not to be the victim and change your choices to ones which serve you and the direction of your heart. It means taking time to pause before you speak and check inside for the little voice, and in that moment to be reminded of old behaviors, so we can respond and move in a new direction, one that is in alignment with the individual you want to be. The beautiful thing is that power allows you to seize control not by manipulating, but by self-agency. You take responsibility for your words, actions and choices and become your own champion. Our power allows us to be present to our inner voice, our intuition, and chose words and actions which say, “I love and honor myself.”
Compassion nurtures forgiveness. Compassion means we recognize our vulnerability. We open ourselves to truth with tenderness. It means releasing judgment and allowing ourselves to remember when we feel guilt or shame, what we needed emotionally at that time. Our emotions seek fulfillment and unexpressed emotions push us to do things of which we are not proud. These emotions could have included a need to be loved, to be seen or to be heard. Compassion allows us to understand that our unacceptable actions are calls from our inner child for love, acknowledgment, support, and safety.
Strength is being able to stand witness to these parts without retreating. Strength is vulnerability in action, revealing our truest self, ugly and beautiful, all our parts with authenticity and honesty. It means allowing ourselves to shine our light brightly without reservation.
Courage is being able to sustain all these moving parts, and the events and triggers in our lives, and not giving up when confusion, pain, or helplessness creeps in, even when we fail, or feel inadequate.
All these traits are self-love in action. This is our spiritual work, our devotional practice.
This is a quote from Tom Morris, one of the world’s top public philosophers and pioneering business thinkers in an interview for DailyStoic.com:
For success in any challenge, the great practical philosophers have taught me that we need what I call the 7 C’s of Success:
- A conception of what we want.
- A strong confidence that we can attain it.
- A focused concentration on what it takes to reach our goal.
- A stubborn consistency in pursuing our vison.
- An emotional commitment to the importance of what we’re doing.
- A good character to guide us and keep us on a proper course.
- A capacity to enjoy the process along the way.
You can find all seven of these ideas in the writings of Seneca or Marcus Aurelius.