Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the week of December 3, 2007

Left-click for MP3 audio stream, right-click to download


Energies of Presence

(Part 3 of 9 in the Inner Work Series The Stages of Presence)

If we are to be receptive to the impulse of awakening, we need some material to respond with. Our ability to be present depends, to a large degree, on the quality and quantity of inner energies available for it. The two energies primarily involved in presence are the sensitive and the conscious. Over the first we have some direct control. The sensitive energy enables us to be in our body, serving as the intermediary between our body and our self (our will residing in consciousness). Our intentional work with the sensitive energy will begin in stage 4 of presence: Creating Partial Presence.

Over the conscious energy we have no direct control: we approach it indirectly. To do so, we create a suitable container for consciousness and open to it. Our work with the conscious energy will begin in stage 5 of presence: Opening to Wholeness. For both the sensitive and the conscious, our practices train us to perceive and recognize the energy, to conserve it, to access it, and to feed our being with it.

For this stage, we concern ourselves with not wasting energies. By staying relaxed, even as we engage in all the busyness of life, we conserve our energies. We notice how our unnecessary tensions and unconscious fidgeting drain our energies, and we allow them to drop away. We notice how our destructive habits such as overeating, smoking, and excessive talking drain our energies, and we allow those habits to decrease. We notice how our destructive emotions such as worry, anger, contempt, jealousy, envy, regret, resentment, and boredom drain our energies, and we allow them to subside. In all such cases of energy leaking from our being, we can stop the leakage by accepting and relaxing, inwardly and outwardly.

Relaxing allows the natural springs of energy from deep within the spirit to pool in our being. The first step in creating a suitable container for presence and consciousness is to stop, or at least diminish, the leaks. For this week, notice ways that you waste your inner energies and work to waste less.


     

About Inner Frontier                                    Send us email 

Copyright © 2001-2024 Joseph Naft. All rights reserved.