Presence and Persistence

I woke up with a start in the middle of the night to an alarming dream. In the dream, I was driving down the highway, when I was alerted to brake at an obstruction in the road. When I pressed the brakes, however, there was little let-up in the speed and I was suddenly inundated with flashing red lights. The vehicle was spinning out of control down the road, while I was praying to God for help. Before I awoke back into my body, I said something to the effect of “Lord hear my prayer”, while my entire body was ignited into an all-consuming pain. This excruciating pain carried over for about half a second as I woke, panting and trembling with fear.

My first inclination is in hoping this isn’t a precognitive dream. If so, the least I can do is to take precautions to prevent this from happening. I think noticing it isn’t enough, but it’s the first step. To continue drawing out this magical thinking, perhaps what is needed is a closer look of what occurred in the dream in order to prevent this alternate reality from becoming the current one. Perhaps then, by taking a different course in my life via the indications from the vision, I can steer the course of events toward a better outcome. All the while, I am aware of the reinforcement of a magical thinking bias reinforced as a possible outcome should this thought experiment succeed. This benevolent deception is a small price-tag to pay in exchange for salvaging my life. In retrospect, it would probably be better to dismiss the magical occurrence altogether. Pascal’s Wager first, Occam’s Razor later.

Okay, then — the psychological meaning of the dream seems fairly obvious to me at the onset. As I have written about earlier, slowing down is one of the most overt areas of growth I can apply to my life right now. I have been getting explicit messages to that effect for years, but I have until now failed to take this seriously. In unpacking my unconscious biases, it’s become obvious to me the necessity for taking time for myself, and slowing down to notice what’s around me. This strongly applies to the mundane level of Chronos — with work, recreation and personal relationships — and perhaps as strongly applies to the Deep Now — Kairos. So I am working with Chronos.

There is much to learn from Chronos. In slowing down, one is able to absorb more of what’s happening around them, one is able to listen better — not just to others, but to oneself and one’s own messages from the body as well. In doing such, one is able to become more flexible and adaptable in life. This flexibility of approach is an important skill. Our current Western society doesn’t put a premium on the “rest and digest” principle. We are a nation of stressed out, strung out and overworked individuals. This imbalance has caused technology such as mindfulness to become highly fetishized by our culture. This is one expression of the need for slowing down.

Another saying comes to mind — “patience is patient with patience”. The skill of presence is a process that takes practice and a new focus. Creating a new expectation around cultivating presence through intention-setting is another adjunct to success in this area.

Presence runs through first-person, second-person and third-person relating. It allows us to navigate all these territories with more skill, awareness and nuance. It helps us to become a better live-player.

Since presence has now been identified as a necessary skill I need to work on — it might be useful to examine some of the holding patterns that have set me back.

What forces are causing me to stay out of presence. Relating this to my inner-subjective experience, I can sense this has much to do with embedded trauma in my nervous system. There is a sense of fear imminent in “pressing the brakes” down and taking notice of what is actually there. Part of the escape from the present is likely an attempt to outpace my immediate somatic experience, which is the fear of becoming aware of any emotional pain that resides there. This attempt to put my attention outside of myself inevitably places my focus of attention outside of the present, and into a more disembodied realm. This aspect of avoidance comes down to fear — the mind-killer. Fear of my past experience, the story I created around that, the memories of pain and separation. To turn around and trace fear’s path to a receding point in me until nothing remains but myself is the very act of consuming fear and conquering it. As I mentioned in a previous entry, however, this probably requires an appropriate set and setting in order to fully integrate with one’s deepest fears. If one consumes darkness before one is prepared for it, then the darkness will consume you. Sometimes the fog saves you from the hungry tiger it shields. I proposed that the courage to be is the essential thing required to avoid being metabolized by the darkness. I added that one of the probable functions of “set and setting” — of creating sacred space and ceremony — is essentially to generate the conditions for the courage to Be. Courage, I mused, is a gift that comes from fellowship and belonging. One cannot possess courage in a vacuum — it doesn’t exist as a singularity. Anyone who has experienced Real courage knows this comes from a deep knowing of being for and with each other. This is one of the essential gifts of community and fellowship.

So courage and presence go hand-in-hand.

But it’s not enough to simply reduce lack of presence to a psycho-somatic lens. It also likely has roots in neurological holding patterns that have been nurtured in me and reinforced by dopaminergic hijack. It’s not necessary to expand on this, as it is fairly obvious how our culture incentives dopamine upregulation to keep us hooked onto a cycle or perpetual addiction and distraction. But it is useful to know this is a part of the issue, since my concern doesn’t rely totally on the grit of psychoanalytic reductionism.

It is useful to be aware of these various dimensions of the problem. The answer lies not in any one of them alone — not in examining my adverse childhood events, or anything else — but in being aware of possible causes and moving forward with this information by carving new pathways of change. This comes with new habit patterns as much as it does with psychosomatic integration. Looking ahead, I feel confident that I will create the expectations I need in order to be more present in my life.