A joyous unraveling
My favourite description of the Gift of Presence comes from someone who participated in it for 9 months. He described it as ‘a joyous unraveling.’ What is unraveling is all your ideas, beliefs, fixations and conditioning. What remains when all of that unravels is what was there from the very beginning—your true nature, your essence, your unconditioned being. Your true nature is who you are before you try to be anyone, before you say anything at all about yourself. It’s the deepest core of who you are.
-TOP-We work on three different levels
1. Your unconditioned being
We work on 3 different levels in the course. The Gift of Presence is designed to give you a direct experience of your true nature, so that you realize you don’t have to go anywhere else to find it. It’s right where you are, once you stop struggling and just let go. Having a direct taste of your unconditioned being can really turn things around for you, even if it’s very brief. You can call this the spiritual level.
2. Your conditioned being
We also work with your human experience, where all of your conditioning functions. Sometimes spiritual people think this is not necessary, but it actually helps a lot to do this kind of work. Learning these things creates a lot of space and clarity inside and outside you, and makes it much easier to access your true nature. You can call this the psychological level. Here are some of the areas you will explore:
- achieving completion in your life
- the nature of forgiveness
- letting go of excuses
- learning how to receive feedback
- dealing with success, failure and loss
- the power of authentic communication
- cultivating compassion, courage and playfulness
- learning how to take risks
- taking complete responsibility for your life
3) Where the two levels meet
The third level on which we work is where your true nature and your conditioned nature intersect. This is the place that holds the greatest power for transformation, as the freedom and wholeness of who you really are begins to flow into all of your conditioned patterns. You will be working with this level in depth throughout the course.
-TOP-The Foundations of the course
When you begin the Gift of Presence course, there are some key aspects that we focus on in the beginning, which are crucial to your whole experience. These aspects are the foundation of the whole way you will be with each other and with yourself.
-TOP-The Agreements
First come the agreements you commit to, in order to build a strong container for everything that will unfold during the course. You simply agree to be as present, truthful, kind, and curious as you know how; and to take complete responsibility for your experience. Does this mean that you never have a judging thought about anyone in the group? Of course not. You are dealing with reality here, not some fantasy. It means that you are committed to seeing the judgments as they arise, without holding on to them, or pushing them away. This is the essence of being fully present. Whatever arises, is allowed to be, exactly as it is, without any interference on your part. I often call this way of being ‘radical acceptance,’ because it is very different from the way we have been trained to be. This kind of acceptance gives you a lot of room to discover a great deal about the functioning of your own mind.
Clearing the field of your intention
The next step in the course is called ‘clearing the field of your intention.’ This is a powerful series of exercises that helps to bring completion into certain areas of your life. The more complete we are, the more space and clarity we have to be present, honest and open, to meet life as it is in each moment. You will also be inquiring into your deepest intention, what the most important thing is for you right now.
-TOP-Discovering your own way to practice
At this point you are ready to begin considering your relationship with practice. One of the main things this course will help you do is to design a flowing and fluid practice that is totally appropriate to your day-to-day existence. In this part of the course you will be considering what kind of practice would really work for you, as you are, not as you would like to be!
Gathering your allies, dealing with resistance
You will find out how to gather your allies, and deal with the resistance that always arises as soon as you commit to something like this.
Now you are ready to dive into the actual practice.
-TOP-A non-traditional approach
It’s very important to be clear from the beginning that The Gift of Presence is not a traditional approach to spiritual practice, awakening, and transformation. It is actually based on the non-dual traditions of Buddhism-Zen, Dzogchen and Mahamudra.
What does non-dual mean? It’s easier to explain if I describe the dualistic traditions first, which is how most of us have been conditioned. In all of the traditional approaches, spirit, God, liberation, or awakening is held as something that is separate from us. If we want to connect with it, we have to engage in a rigorous and demanding path of purification, struggle and attainment. We need to learn how to control our thoughts and our desires, how to achieve and maintain certain states and experiences. We are usually told that we would be lucky to reach our goal in one lifetime. It is amazing to me how many people are ready to believe this story, just because they are told it is true. I also believed and invested my whole life in it for a very long time, until I discovered for myself that it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working because it isn’t true. We cannot control our thoughts, or stop our mind and desires. It can be very discouraging to pursue these impossible goals!
-TOP-A practical approach
What works and what does not work is very important. This course is not theoretical-it is based on your own experience, your life as it unfolds as a result of your practice. Results are important. If your life doesn’t change when you engage in all this, then what is the point?
The non-dual understanding
The non-dual understanding is based on the fact that the nature of truth, reality or that which is unconditioned, is whole. It is not divided-you can’t cut it up into pieces. So our true nature, our essence, is not and has never been separate from us. It is not something we have to attain or struggle for. It’s something we can learn to relax into and recognize, as it is, in this very moment. All of the work we do in this course is based on this fundamental understanding-that your true nature is right here, waiting for you to recognize it’s presence.
-TOP-Skillful means
We use all kind of skillful means in this course—dialogue; spoken and written inquiry; meditation; breathwork; song; movement; and contemplation. On the surface it looks like you are doing a lot of different things, but there is one thread running through it al -l- your willingness to open to the luminous nature of who you are right now, and to explore and see through the nature of your conditioning.
The nature of your conditioning
It appears to your mind that there is a world outside of you which is constantly causing your inner experience. What you will discover in this course is that the truth is just the opposite. In fact there is no solid, separate world out there at all! The quantum physicists have all reached this point as well. The movie ‘What the Bleep do we Know’ has brought this understanding into the mainstream for the first time. The physicists are telling us that how we observe actually changes what we are observing. Another way of approaching this is to say that the mind constructs your experience, moment after moment.
-TOP-The power of inquiry
It’s a radical thing to contemplate-the fact that your mind constructs your reality. In order to really work with this, you have to be willing to begin questioning all that you have been taught. This is when the power to question, to inquire starts to really make a difference in your life. As someone who studied a lot of philosophy, I was aware from an early age that we are all philosophers. You and I have constructed our own beliefs about ourselves, the world and life itself. And these beliefs are actually running our lives.
Your Core Beliefs
Now we touch the deepest level of this work. Encountering your core beliefs, or your core story is challenging, and letting go of it is not easy. You constructed this story long ago, because it seemed necessary for your survival. One of my students said, “I wouldn’t know who I was without my core story!” This is literally true. And our core story is always about something missing, or something wrong.
Right down at the bottom of every human being is the same story, and it keeps us limited, small and unfulfilled.
-TOP-The Invitation
The whole Gift of Presence course is really an invitation-come into another way of knowing and experiencing yourself and the world. Who you really are is alive, mysterious, dynamic, and far beyond anything your mind can imagine. At any moment it is possible for you to see through all the beliefs you hold about yourself, and come face to face with your true nature-radiant, whole and free.
Personal coaching and mentoring
The Gift of Presence is also available long-distance, as an 8 week course that you can do with me over the phone and by email. We meet on the phone for one hour a week, which includes time for contemplation and meditation. The rest of the course happens by email, through the written material that I send you each week. This material includes a basic introdution to what we are focusing on and exploring for the week, and a series of exercises, inquiries and contemplations for you to engage in. The nature of the course is open, fluid and flexible, so that we can adapt it to whatever is most true, relevant and alive for you each week, each day and each moment. The fee for the 8 week course is $600.
