Introduction
As a Shafayat in the Sufi Healing Order, I have been using presence in a healing capacity for the past 5 years. I am now using this practice with a form of hands-on healing that Himayat Inayati has taught me. I see regular clients for spiritual healing in a clinic in Portland Oregon.
Presence can be a powerful tool for self-healing. Himayat says "in as much as you can be present to yourself, you can be present to another." I ask that you allow me to guide you through a process that has helped me greatly in my own healing work. I am teaching from my experience and will present some theory but the theory will only make sense if we do the practice first.
Each of these lessons will build on itself, therefore, please practice the lessons in order.
This is the first class on Presence. I am not going to start with theory because I feel the class will be more effective without theory for the time being. Instead, with your permission I will start with a practice after which I will give some theory.
Practice of Neutral Presence
Time needed: 3 to 5 minutes per.
Best done: sitting or remaining still (can be done in the car)
Do this. Focus on your breath. Follow your breath but do not alter it. Notice that your breath will go through some distinct physical changes. It does this because you are becoming present to the breath by simply observing it. It does not change because you are making it change - it does so because you are being conscious of the breath with a neutral presence.
Do something else where you do not watch the breath then do this practice one or two more times.
Questions
We have all experienced a wounding presence and we have wounded others albeit unintentionally much of the time. A wounding presence is a presence that judges and diminishes. As children we grew up and reacted to a wounding presence and how we reacted is important in the understanding of healing. I would like the reader to keep in mind that even with the most wonderful and accepting of parents or trusted adults we have all experienced a wounding presence in our very early years of development and on into adulthood.
I work in a day treatment setting with children ages 5 to 8. In societal terms these children are often "a danger to themselves and others." and come to our center with labels such as "emotionally disturbed" and "reactive attachment disorder," or "post-traumatic stress disorder." As the educator on campus my job description tells me I am to teach certain subjects. In truth, my job is to create an atmosphere of safety, acceptance, love, and compassion so that they may decide to emerge from a traumatized, closed state to something closer to their essential selves - more open, more spacious - corresponding to their natural tone. These last few adjectives are words Himayat has used to describe the healing process and I will define them further as we move on together.
The children I work with are accustomed to being around a wounding presence. Most children, when faced with a wounding presence that diminishes and judges will become uncomfortable and, if given a choice, will leave and find a neutral or healing presence to hang around. Unfortunately, the children I work with had few choices and the source of the wounding presence was often one or both guardians.
So children come to our center dazed, angry, feeling powerless, feeling vengeful, feeling fearful, and tend to be either very withdrawn or, more likely, very aggressive. We tend to get a much higher number of aggressive children since withdrawn children will sit nicely in their chairs in most classrooms while children with externalized behaviors will not. For many weeks our children will work to try to replicate the conditions in which they experienced a wounding presence. They do this partly because chaotic and wounding conditions are familiar and because they are trying disparately to discover meaning around them. There is also much at this age that is on the unconscious level. I love the children and my job, because I am absolutely clear my work and their work involves healing and when I am involved in healing, I am being healed.
Though the children above represent an extreme example of a very wounded state, it is important to realize that we all have wounds for which we have developed a relatively functional structure for our survival. We know this because we are all still alive. But now that we are embarked on the path of self-realization this reactive survival structure often stands in the way of our transformation.
Himayat teaches about the "original wound" being the sense of abandonment. This we acquired at birth. We all feel the sense of separation from the divine - however much of an illusion that is in truth - we feel it in actuality. Along the way we acquire other wounds. As an example, I remember the intense feelings of love towards my parents and how I would often share things with them things that were meaningful because they were beautiful. I found worms very beautiful but when I would go to pick them up my mother would warn me "Don't pick up that dirty old thing." What a shock! Was I to understand that, in my inner sense, the worm was beautiful or (from my mother's tone) a "dirty old thing". I loved the worm and felt the truth of my inner sense, but I loved my mother too. I had to make a choice and some part of my essential self became hidden while my attachment to my mother was being forged as part of some innate understanding that I needed her to survive. I then understood that worms were dirty even though I still felt they were somehow beautiful. This conflict developed a kind of split between my essential self and my self in the world - or reactive self. Based on many experiences such as these most of which were not nearly so conscious I have developed an entire reactive structure to my personality in which I am not able to experience my essential self to the fullest.
There are many examples of experiencing these reactive pieces, but none so self evident as what is termed "a felt deficiency". A felt deficiency can be experienced by completing this sentence: "Everything would be fine in my life if only ___________________." I have not met a person who could not fill in that blank. Personally, I have lots of endings for that sentence.
I could describe the overall affect of feeling such a deficiency as the feeling of a lack of space - even of being trapped. Himayat give an example of feeling like a cat trapped in a bag then says it is even worse than a cat trapped in a bag because you are the bag. Himayat also teaches "That which does not allow space in yourself, does not allow space in others." Therefore whether we have the intention or not, our felt deficiencies manifest themselves in a wounding presence when we are unconscious or when we decide to wound.
As human beings we tend to objectify our felt deficiencies. Though felt deficiencies result in a lack of felt internal space we should not confuse this with a feeling of emptiness. Emptiness is what we feel when we are experiencing a felt deficiency. We try to fill emptiness with something objective. When we feel empty we head for the refrigerator, or buy something, or have more sex or blame someone else. However, no matter how much we try, it is not possible to fill our emptiness with things. First we have to change our orientation internally before we can allow for change to take place.
It is difficult to make changes even when we want to make changes because there are mechanisms at work to maintain the status quo. We identify with the personality - it is our most valued possession. Giving up our felt deficiencies sounds like a wonderful thing until we realize how much a part of our personality these deficiencies are. We may think we can simply get rid of that part of our personality we don't like. But the personality is a survival tool and it is very good at it's job. We experience a threat to the integrity of our personality as a life and death struggle and we are correct in that perception. "Die before death" is more than an expression when we are in that struggle! We feel that we will die and it is true that some part of us will die. If we persist in being conscious of deep issues that form the foundation of our personality, we experience fear; then if we persist in our examination we feel terror; then if we persist even more we just pass out. How many people have gone to counseling and experienced the state of "blanking out" when an very deep conflicting issue was presented? This would be an example. The basic truth is that when we are faced with death we react by entering into or sympathetic nervous system (see FW Presence #1) where you can forget about doing much internal work.
It would be a sad thing - and purposeless if I led you all to this place and said that there is no way to change at this point. Naturally we all want to change. How can we go about making these changes? We know that we can alter our consciousness for example by doing dhikr or wazai'if. We can take retreats. After either of these we enter into a consciousness where we feel our essential self. This is called a "state" if it is temporary as in a few hours or days. If it lasts longer, as in months, it is termed a "station". But a "transformation" is a permanent change. At least one mechanism for permanent change that I am becoming aware of is "healing presence". This will be the subject of the next installment.
I leave you with the thoughts of Ibn Arabi " God in eternity through a sigh of compassion has contemplated your being and invested you in Divine perfection. But you are imprisoned in time and space and so have not realized that investiture. Can you awaken to that which is beyond time and space and receive your inheritance?"
My thanks to Himayat for his teaching on this subject and to Ariana (also a graduate of the Path of Transformation and Healing) for her work in helping me to edit this.
There are three kinds of presence taught by Himayat in "The Path of Transformation and Healing," We have discussed a neutral presence which is awareness and did a breathing exercise while being aware of the breath so we are aware that awareness alone can be very useful. We also discussed a wounding presence which is a presence that judges and diminishes. The third kind of presence is a healing presence. A healing presence goes beyond awareness. It is healing because it allows our essential qualities to blossom. To understand a healing presence it is necessary to review what is an essential quality.
When a baby has been fed and it is laying in it's parent's arms, relaxed with it's little head lolling back it is content, it feels full. Not only full of milk but full of life - it is fully present and it is in it's essential state. It feels complete. People look at the baby and one of the first things you can observe is that they soften, they relax, they light up, they feel a glow. In fact it would take a pretty tough person not to soften. Why the softening? We soften because we are in the presence of an essential state. This is one way to understand and experience an essential state.
We may experience it ourselves when we make love and are lying there afterwards feeling full and complete. I often experience an essential state when I am working at my school. I have known for some time that when I am present to my students I feel complete, full and satisfied. So there is nothing mysterious about essential states. In fact the only thing mysterious to me about them is what is going on that I am not in them more or when I am in an essential state, why I would leave.
Being present in the sense of a "healing presence" is a very conscious way to enter into an essential state because a healing presence allows for the unfoldment of the essential condition which is in us seeking to be. Our essential states are there - we don't have to make them. Trying hard to attain them takes us back to the cat in the bag analogy. Effort will not help. In fact Himayat says "You would be surprised how little you can do" to reach an essential state. Becoming present is not about doing - it is about allowing. However the small things that you can do - help a lot.
Before we do a practice with presence it may be helpful to orient ourselves to the essential states that make up presence.
Himayat teaches that a healing presence contains at least three essential states as follows:
When one is present one practices awareness and imbues mental concentration with love, compassion and innocence. If you are present to someone the effects can be quiet profound. Himayat uses the following story to illustrate the effects of being present to someone. I like it because I am not unfamiliar with the effects of presence with children.
Himayat says: "If we brought such a presence to a little child (a child of about 3 or 4) that little child would show you his or her secrets" They would show you what they do, stand on their head, read a book" i.e. their treasures. "And if you stay present in a healing presence the child will come closer to you and that child will crawl into your lap and become intimate with you.....and, if that child could, they would climb into your eyes to get to the source of that presence. It is spontaneously feeling it's essential self and it enjoys feeling it's essential self and it comes closer to you because it feels it's essential self ever more clearly and ever more fully as you hold it within your healing presence."
The other component to presence is mental concentration. To me this means focusing but not in the sense focusing is often practiced. When we focus in the usual manner we are trying to accomplish something and that act of trying will keep us from being present. An example would be helpful. Not long ago I saw some fractal painting (I think it is called this) which I believe is art done with a computer that is done in such a way as to contain an image within an pattern. The picture was of a tropical beach and 80% of the picture consisted of waves. In the waves were several dolphins and a sunken ship but one could not see this with a passing glance. One had to keep one's concentration while looking, without looking for anything in particular. If you looked for shapes you couldn't find them. If you kept open looking to infinity yet not allowing the page to blur you could start to see something then .... all of a sudden the dolphins would leap out! It was amazing to me to see what was there but hidden. My eyes didn't change, the waves didn't change, but my perception and focus shifted. This is the kind of concentration I refer to - only the changes may be very subtle rather than dramatic as in this example.
Another way of saying this is that presence is concentration imbued with the quality of "I wonder what will happen next?" In other words, lack of preconception or openness. It is a quality of innocence. This combined with love and compassion makes for a healing presence.
Many things can happen while we are present. But rather than preconfigure your experience I would like you to comment and write back to me. You can be aware that it is common to have somatic (physical sensations) emotions, and mental images. I have found it very useful to track my physical sensations and my emotions because they lead me deeper. Mental images can be almost too entertaining for their own sake for me to find them useful but maybe that's just me. Simpler images such as colors are useful sometimes. For this first time it is best not to "try" for a particular effect but rather to embrace the nature of presence which is to "allow."
Healing Presence Exercise - Left Breast
One useful exercise is to be present to a particular place in your body and see what happens. Let's do that now. To help us focus go back to the practice of watching your breath and follow your breath. Stay with your breath as it goes through those stages of softening........lengthening.......becoming more refined............and then gaining in intensity. Remember you are there to watch your breath &endash; you don't have to make it do any of these things -it will do them on it's own. You only have to watch.
As your breath intensifies, tell your breath to find a place in your left breast that feels yielding, that is sensitive. Once you have a location then focus on that location and be present to it. Be aware with qualities of love, innocence and compassion to that location. Accept what comes. Identify the "felt shifts" - small changes - and be present to them if any emerge. You don't have to do anything with them. Simply be present and observe. If you lose focus then come back to the breath, watch the breath and tell the breath to locate the left breast and continue on. Do this for about 5 to 10 minutes and report back if you wish.
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February 18, 2004
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