Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the week of September 22, 2008

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


Entering Presence

We enter presence through awakening, returning, sustaining, and deepening.[1]

Awakening: the flash of recalling our Self. This freely given moment of grace opens us to presence. Although its unpredictable arising cannot be manipulated directly, it may occur many times in a day. The flash of awakening marks a potential transition from autopilot living without presence into being our Self in presence. The realization of that potential depends on how we respond in this crucial moment of choice.

The typical and most likely response is to ignore the moment. Usually that happens because we do not even recognize the flash of awakening for what it is. With practice in presence, we grow to appreciate these moments of grace. Even so, even with knowing that the moment presents the possibility of returning to presence, we may nevertheless, through laziness or reluctance, fail to choose. However it happens, ignoring the flash of awakening leaves us in the non-presence of automatic, associative thoughts and reactive emotions.

We live under the illusion, though, that we are always awake. But the flash of awakening enables us to see our state of non-presence that preceded that moment. This seeing matters deeply because our incentive for inner work arises from breaking the illusion of constant presence, from understanding that we are not always aware here and now. Noticing that the flash of awakening ends a period of non-awareness, non-presence, can open our need to awaken. However, it also clashes with our false view of always being awake. That clash can be disturbing and we may fall into emotionally-driven self-recriminations and ruminations about our lack of presence. And that diverts us from the possibility of presence. Rightly received, the recognition that we have not been present can spur us toward presence and deepen our need to awaken. That crucial need drives our response to these moments.

The moment of awakening offers us a choice where there was none: whether to return to our Self, to presence, or not.

Returning to our Self. At this point, the flash of awakening has reminded us and we have responded by choosing to engage in presence. Now to actually return to our Self, we direct part of our attention inward, in the manner of our current spiritual practice. For this, preparation matters. We choose ahead of time how we will work when the opportunity arises. We choose for the day or for the week. We choose a method we have learned and practiced, so that we can quickly begin our engagement with the technique. Then in the moment that calls us to turn toward our inner work, we already know what to do. We avoid thinking about it or considering it, because that might quickly lead us back into automatic thoughts and waking sleep.

If our current inner work is presence through the body, then perhaps we engage with the sensation of our body. We awaken and immediately turn to sensing part or all of our body, according to our capacity, situation, and state. Or we turn to breath awareness, or prayer, or noticing our thoughts as thoughts and emotions as emotions, or any of the many useful and productive techniques that lead us toward spiritual presence. But we know ahead of time which one we will practice and we turn to that.

Sustaining presence. Once established, presence tends to evaporate suddenly and soon. Too many thoughts and sensory perceptions arise and distract us from being here and now. Our presence collapses without warning and we fall back into our habitual condition of non-presence, the half-aware, autopilot life with blinders. So the challenge, at this stage of having returned to our Self, lies in sustaining our Self in presence. How can we come to “here I am and here I remain,” moment-to-moment? The secret lies in being the one who has awakened, the one who has chosen to return, the one who intends to sustain presence.

We need the intention to stay present and we need to act on that intention. The most direct and effective such action is to inhabit our presence, our life. Becoming our self, we become the one who is here and aware. This inhabiting enables us to sustain presence for a time. At least temporarily, we avoid being driven along by our thoughts, although we may drive them in intentional thinking.

The ability to inhabit our life, our ableness-to-be, also depends on the availability of conscious energy, which is enhanced by whole body sensation. That fullness of sensation acts as a container, a vessel in the sea of consciousness that surrounds us. The will act of inhabiting our life, participating as its agent, not only depends on consciousness but also attracts it, bringing consciousness into our vessel, into our being.

Choosing moment-to-moment to sustain our Self, to be our Self, we sustain presence. We may even aspire to a stable equilibrium in which we stay present effortlessly. Yet that wonderful, effortless state requires inner sincerity, because it easily devolves out of presence and into an illusion of constant presence.

Deepening presence: In sustaining our Self, we begin to intuit that our Self is inextricably, intimately, and mysteriously linked to the Self of all Selves. In our better moments we go beyond even sustaining presence to deepen it. We allow our presence to reach down to the root of our being. We open our heart and soul to the sacred. We encompass the sacred immensity of life and of the higher. We love it and we serve it. This mystery unfolds beyond our awareness, beyond our thinking, beyond our mind. Yet it is not alien. It is our true home. And there we return in warmth, in peace, and with joy.

And then, at some point, it all goes and we lose our presence. Later we reawaken and start again. This is the paradigm of the kind of spiritual practice that can accompany us in our daily life. We awaken, we practice, we fall back, and we reawaken. Again and again we repeat the practice in response to awakening. But each iteration is different and new. Each time it enlivens us, vivifying and enriching our life, inwardly as well as outwardly. Our inner work is to take the opportunities of awakening as they arise, and then sustain and deepen our presence.

For this week, practice entering presence.

[1] See for example: Beads of Dew from the Source of Life: Histories of the Khwajagan, The Masters of Wisdom, by Mawlana Ali ibn Husain Safi, translated by Muhtar Holland (Ft. Lauderdale: Al Baz, 2001) p. 22.


     

About Inner Frontier                                    Send us email 

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