There is a cry in the world today. A cry to awaken, to know and to remember. A cry to come into our own Inner Presence. Who hears this cry?
Even filmmakers, through movies like Seven Pounds, Peaceful Warrior, What the Bleep and Avatar call us awake. So too does the tragedy in Haiti. Who will answer the call?
We all hear the call. Out of the terrible destruction, death and suffering in Haiti comes an awakening. Our sense of compassion and justice awakens and we are moved. But moved to do what? We know that all real power comes from within. The heart space of millions if not billions of people have awoken. It propels us to act. Not just to be people of good will but to be people who have the will to do good and act on it. Many are reaching out with hearts open. We send money, food, prayers. We respond to the call for connection. Our fellow humans are suffering, and we respond.
The power that calls us to act comes from within. When we feel with open hearts, we are opened to a whole new way of being. Unfortunately, it often takes disasters such as this to shift our consciousness. “Life is precious,” we now say, “Maybe I should be more forgiving and less argumentative and angry.”
And so we seek, but our yearning will not deliver us if we seek outside of ourselves. We must find it within. What we seek is Presence. Eckert Tolle in his landmark book The Power of Now was perhaps the first person to bring this concept mainstream. Presence is a state of “being”, not “doing”. Becoming present is a journey inward. The more you let go, the deeper you go. The more you forgive, the more the burdens you bear lighten. The more you accept, the more powerful you become.
But how do you obtain this Presence and become the Observer that Observes? Michael Brown in his groundbreaking book, The Presence Process, lays out a roadmap that “anyone on the planet could follow no matter what his or her life circumstance.” This roadmap is simple, profound, and life changing. It can reconnect you to the power of your Inner Presence, where you can again dance with joy and gratitude, living life rather than having life live you.
The Presence Process mirrors the life journey that we took to become adults of the human race.
As we grew up and matured into adults, we moved through a Pathway of Awareness, a journey of emotional, mental, and physical experiences. This journey of awareness begins as a baby. A baby first learns to cry (emotional), talk (mental), and then walk (physical).
This journey expands to 7 year cycles as well. 0-7 years is the emotional cycle. Our mind and body are not yet developed and everything is filtered through our emotional body. Everything depends on how we feel. Our emotions are the filter through which we view the world. From 8-14 years is the mental period. Our mind is developed enough that we now enter school. Our focus is the development of the mind. The mind now becomes the filter through which we view the world. The third period of awareness is from ages 15-21. At this time, we enter the physical. We focus on how to get around in the physical world, our bodies mature, girls menstruate, we are biologically able to procreate and we get jobs. By 2, we are firmly entrenched in our bodies and pronounced adults. We are free to pursue our life. We search for happiness, sometimes thriving, sometimes surviving. But we never seem to find that happiness amidst the hard work, money issues, surviving, illness, injury, and suffering. It never seems to work out the way we thought it would.
Somewhere along the way we lost our passion, our innate joy that we had as a child. We are told we have to work hard to get the things in life that will make us happy, a house, a car, a spouse, and children. And none of it goes according to the plan. There is pain, illness, and suffering. Forty to fifty percent of people married end up in divorce. Twenty five million Americans are depressed. Recent studies show that the decline in the happiness of Americans continues. We are the unhappiest we have ever been.
According to Michael Brown, the cause of our suffering is that we subconsciously live our lives in the past. The causal point is our childhood from the ages of 0-7. This is when we had no context to frame the experiences of our life. If we were not allowed to express our feelings of sadness and anger (and what child is allowed to fully express), then we suppressed them.
These energies remain with us and become belief systems; they are the filters through which we view life. They become our reactive behavior patterns. This is why we react angrily to certain triggering situations and afterwards wonder who that person was and where did that come from. This is known as living in the past. We allow our past suppressed emotions to control us. We become powerful unconscious creators. We need to return to the present and claim our power as conscious creators.
What has been done can be undone. Michael Brown has developed a brilliant program that takes us back through this Pathway of Awareness and unravels the energetic constrictions, blockages, and belief systems that will set us free. He does this through a program of breathing and awakening that can be done on your own. Each day, he provides you with a Presence Activating Statement that when coupled with 15 minutes of conscious connected breathing, powerfully awakens consciousness and brings you back to Present Moment Awareness.
The Pathway of Awareness brings you back to the time of your innocence and restores the joy of living in the moment. As a child, we lived in the present moment expressing only our joy. We were passionate and alive. This is what Jesus meant in Matthew 18:3 “unless you change and become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
We can undo what was done. We can regain the innocence of childhood and return to living in the present moment to regain the kingdom. In fact, they are the same. The Inner Presence that is you, is the Kingdom of Heaven within. The entire Universe is lovingly awaiting and supporting you in this journey. You can reclaim your power, live in the now, be your Inner Presence, and welcome the true essence of your being.
Dave Krajovic, MBA, CPA, NCTMB
