4 Stages of Practicing Presence

Practicing presence is more than a focus of attention

Practicing presence should not be confused with mindfulness. Mindfulness is a practice of bringing attention to immediacy and allowing awareness of the flow of content while the immediacy remains more in the foreground.

Presence is the ontological ground. To say presence is the ontological ground of everything or the ontological ground of existence would be misleading in a way, as this would subtly introduce a duality.

Practicing presence, then, is a practice of nurturing an “in-touchness” with “isness.” Presence makes all things possible: mindfulness, attention, thinking, feeling, the now… It would be truthful to say these are all varying degrees or different manifestations of presence.

The practice of presence can be assisted with a basic understanding of the soul as the medium of experience. The soul isn’t an identity or an entity. It is the existential field of presence. And while the soul does not have eyes, ears, or the other 3 or 4 senses – it knows or experiences through what might be called sensing or in-touchness – where being and knowing are one.

The discussion of the soul is a big exploration. What’s important for the practice of presence is that human touch is the best approximation of the soul’s capacity for knowing through immediacy, through ‘in-touchness.”

Stage 1: SLL

Sensing, Looking and listening is one of the basic practices of the Diamond Approach. I first learned this practice in the 1970s from Waking Up by transpersonal psychologist Charles Tart. Sensing, Looking and listening is a misnomer in a way as the practice matures into simply sensing, then being. But, we begin the practice of presence somewhere, so SLL is where we begin.

Almost

Sensing requires being in the body. We also need some stability and continuity for being in the body. This brings us to another fundamental practice of the Diamond Approach – the kath meditation.

Kath Meditation and practicing presence

This article is not a “how to” but more of an awareness of one possible process of practicing presence. To learn more about the kath meditation and SLL reach out to us via the link at the bottom of this article or reach out to any Diamond Approach teacher.

The beginning exercise for SLL brings attention and awareness to sensing. One senses the body via a process of scanning and awareness. Sensing is tactile and kinesthetic, and while looking and listening may seem separate from this, SLL brings sensing into looking and listening as well as increasing our receptivity. This practice brings our experience home to our organ of perception, of which the body is a co-emergent extension.

Stage 2: Just do It!

Once we learn the basics of the kath meditation and SLL, it’s all Nike – Just Do It!

The goal of beginning practice is to “come back to the practice,” not to grasp presence. Fighting the mind creates inner conflict that does not support “in-touchness” with presence.

Understanding that “coming back to the practice is the practice” is a relief – anyone can do this successfully! Where we come back from is getting distracted, wrapped up in thoughts and fantasy. In 20 minutes of practice, you might, at first, come back ten times.

As you become more proficient, you come back 100 times. With practice, you come back ten times a minute and keep splitting that hair of time until there is no gap.

From the perspective free of a grasping mind,
continually returning to your practice is success!

Stage 3: 360

As your practice matures, a more consistent in-touchness develops with the body. At first, this may be more in your belly (kath) or a more frequent awareness of your arms, legs, or feet on the ground or butt in the chair. Your body becomes more and more included in your experience.

Have you noticed that your eyes are in front? Perhaps we call this the front because the eyes are here.

This orientation to the front is a challenge as the soul and presence have no front or back, inside or outside.

Continuing the practice of presence, you will begin to notice you are sensing your back, the top of your head, and the wind between your legs. Your sensing becomes more spherical, but this 360-degree sensing is also inner.

You may begin to feel like a bubble of light – radiance (emanation) and inner awareness (illumination).

Stage 4: Unified Field

As 360-degree awareness develops, you may notice that what’s “outside” of you feels similar in nature to you, and what’s inside of you feels similar to what’s inside of “others.”

In fact, it all begins to feel like it is one field of experience, one sense of presence. At first, it may feel like presence permeates everything, then perception shifts to an in-touch intimacy of self-aware isness, which does not “contain” all things, but nothing is excluded.

These four stages of practicing presence are simply sensing our experience, which develops and nurtures our awareness of the soul and its ontological ground. It gets to the point where you can’t bite into a hamburger or a gluten-free, vegan brownie without awareness of presence.

This brings us to the fulcrum.

Practice is realization, and realization is practice.