Discover How To Be Be Present in Your Own Life

25/03/2007

The first time my life coach told me that being present in my life was important, I felt startled. Was it possible ever to be absent from one’s own life? At the same instant, I also knew that of course it was possible, and that I had been absent from mine often enough. It’s one of those important insights that you recognize as soon as you hear it, although you’ve never thought it yourself.

Of course, this insight has been spreading fast, as it deserves to, so that it is entering the domain of popular psychology. So let’s look at this concept.

The deepest, authentic you goes away when she is betrayed, abused and intimidated. She may stay away for days or even years while the public-person-you runs your life. The real you will just be observing, waiting. By doing this she protects and retains her innocence. While you are doing non-threatening things, you may feel magical moments of presence when she emerges from her hiding-place and joins you. Maybe it’s when you are taking a solitary walk or listening to some music you’ve always loved, but you will feel a comforting wholeness while she joins you.

In order to feel more than moments of presence, you need to reassure her, to win her trust again. If you do violence to your values and dreams, she will slip away. If you are impatient, trying to force her to conform to some program you have thought up, she will elude you. She is wise with the accumulated wisdom of our collective unconscious. She cannot be fooled. She cannot be forced; but the wonderful result is that she cannot be violated. You may oppress her and frighten her away, but she will preserve herself perfectly and when you are kind enough to yourself to allow her her own space and time, she will emerge.

The blessed among us have even reached the stage where their authentic selves don’t just grant moments of presence, but are truly present, playing their full part, along with the public personas, in guiding our lives.

I am so grateful that I am learning not to bully her anymore. She wants what’s best for me. She is what’s best in me. Healed and integrated, she and I will live the best life I am capable of.

Submitted my Melanie Steyn, author and friend.