The Presence Process Questions - Has Anyone Here Done It?

I've got a great story I'll share with ya' sometime about when I did that in a men's Bible study where some of them believed in the prosperity gospel. You'd think I threw a grenade in the middle of the circle. lol

 

I'm on week 5 of the Presence Process. I'll give an update.

1. I started with the intent to stop striving. Something in me is always trying to prove myself worthy of love, I think. Consciously, I know one doesn't need worthiness for love. One simply is loved by God and naturally loves one's self. But I've been blocking that unconditional love from God and myself for nearly my entire life. I've shifted to a deeper intent, as of yesterday. I've set the intent to truly love myself, not worrying about what others think of me, because in that alone, the striving will stop. Subconsciously, I'm trying to get love from others to fill the void where my, and God's, unconditional love is supposed to be. While I understood this all mechanically before, I'm finally starting to get it in my heart now.

2. I used to escape a lot into different activities and into my thoughts. 2-3 weeks ago, I noticed a major shift. I'm not nearly as concerned with my coping mechanisms of escape now. And I'm not nearly as preoccupied with thoughts and doings. I'm far more engaged with my 3-yr-old son now, and we have a lot more fun and spend more time together. Before, some emotional charges were always present, causing stress around my son, so it made it hard for me to really have fun with him and want to engage with him.

3. I do a little more housework now, more naturally, than before, and it's not nearly as much of a burden. I'm not nearly as active in it as I would like to be yet, but it's definitely better. That takes some stress off my wife, which is always a good thing.

4. I don't react to my emotions like anger, fear, or grief nearly as strongly as I used to. I often don't react to them at all, now. I can spot them when they come up, then respond in a more calm, collective way. I'm not stuffing those emotions with actions/distractions nearly as much now, either.

5. A few nights ago, while doing the 15-minute breathing session, I had a pain come up in my shoulder. Immediately, I asked myself, "How does this make me feel on the level of felt-resonance?" Instantly, an emotion rose up inside of me, and the pain went away. I was able to experience the emotion and cry. Then it passed. Crying is a sign of the emotional charge starting its integration. Integration of all emotional charges is the goal. When all are integrated, health issues and emotional dramas cease.

6. I'm more likely to engage with people now. I like to engage and talk with people, but before, I could easily not do that because I was preoccupied by thoughts or whatever else. So that's shifted in a good way, now.

7. I'm on the week where the conscious response is "I am innocent." Thus, I notice my mind wanting to escape into thought or action a little more this week. Makes sense, because my main issue is not thinking I'm good enough (innocent). But I'm not escaping nearly as much as before I started the process.

The Presence Process says that we won't truly feel like we're making progress or understand what's happening to us while we're still in process. It's when we finish the 10 weeks that we end up having a sense of completeness to that phase of our emotional maturing. Then we start to better understand what went on inside of us during the process. Then we can take a break for a few weeks and do the process again if we feel we need to. I plan to continue the process consistently for as long as it takes, taking the recommended 3-week break in between each 10-week session. I'm not sure how many times I'll need to do it, but that's no problem. Most people say they do it about three times then feel as if they're done. Some more, some less. I highly recommend this process so far. I think it's the holy grail of healing and joy. Anyone could benefit from this process.

 

One-on-One Session (on thepresenceportal.com)

Just so everyone's aware, on the website, there's a one-on-one session on the audio link where Michael takes you through a 15-minute process that you do daily. He's teaching you how to sit and be with your emotional charges unconditionally. He says after the 40-day session, you'll have conditioned yourself to be unconditionally with your emotions so much that you'll be responding to them all the time rather than reacting to them. I don't think it replaces the Presence Process by any means, but it's a good start into awareness and unconditionally loving yourself and integrating emotional charges.

 

God gives us pain so we trust Him more, believe in Him more, and become closer to Him.

 

I think this is the answer when people ask "Why me?" "Why did this terrible thing happen to me?"
"If God loves me, why did He give me this pain or have me lose my house in a tornado?"

 

That is exactly right. We go through difficult things so that we learn that our outer circumstances are not the source or our joy, peace, and contentment. Those are things we have on the inside at all times, and yet we're trying to acquire them on the outside, because we don't know any better.

When we lose our health (comfort/security), our house(comfort/security), money (comfort/security), a loved one (self-worth/comfort), or whatever, we see just how unstable we are emotionally. That helps us become humble if we don't do something to stuff the emotions that rise up as a result. It's normal to feel fear, grief, and anger. But when we start down the path of awareness, we learn how to integrate those emotions so they no longer control our actions. Once those emotions are integrated, we're able to feel that peace, joy, and contentment at all times, regardless of what emotions arise within us. Excellent health and well-being accompany that state of being.

Very few people exist in that state of being. Jesus said that most people find the wide path to destruction, but that we should enter the kingdom through the narrow gate that few find. He wasn't talking about heaven and hell. He was talking about experiencing the kingdom of heaven right now in this life. We enter through the pathway of awareness. In awareness, we're connected with our true selves, which are innocent, loving, kind, creative, joyful, etc. That all is very natural for that state. Pain is a great motivator to get us on the path through the narrow gate through awareness.

 

Panda,

Correction on addiction. You were right. The first time through the Presence Process, you aren't to stop an addiction. The second time through, the book says to start to pull back on the addiction little by little. Apparently, the second time through is when you start getting to the emotions that cause addictions and integrating them. It says the first time through resolves the physical, the second time through resolves the mental, and the third time through resolves the emotional, if I remember correctly. I just read it a few hours ago. Maybe he meant "fully resolves," because the emotional stuff is integrating each time one does it. You must have done well to be able to get everything done in just two 10-week sessions. That's great! I suspect I'll be doing several of these 10-week sessions with just a three-week break in between. Then again, maybe it won't take a ton for me. Who knows.

 

Update:

I had an interesting occurrence a few days ago. I was driving on a trip and felt anger come up because of something that happened. I forget the event, but I immediately caught myself feeling the anger and consciously did my best to watch the anger rather than do something to distract from it. I felt it in the center of my head, somewhere behind the sinus cavity, radiating out ward in all directions.

As I sat there unconditionally with the anger, what I'd read earlier that morning in the Presence Process sort of struck me: this anger is an emotion, and emotions are fuel for doing whatever we're doing at any given time. Then I noticed that feeling this anger in my head wasn't so bad, really. The anger started to actually feel good! It was so weird. I suddenly saw the absurdity of me having pushed it away for all these years. It was almost like it converted into joy and laughter, but I understood it, more accurately, to have been suppressed along with joy. So when I allowed it to be, rather than pushing it away, some joy that was suppressed along with it came out. That realization struck me as hilarious--that I'd been pushing this wonderful thing, my fuel, away this whole time. I couldn't believe I'd been afraid of feeling it since I was a baby. At the same time, for quite a while, I laughed and cried happy tears. It was a huge speed bump to roll over in my emotional development. I'm no longer afraid of feeling anger, and in fact, I see that it can bring lots of fuel and joy with it if contained and handled responsible. Very cool experience. I never thought anger could bring genuine relief and laughter/joy.

 

I got Brother Lawrence's book The Practice of the Presence of God and have read about half of it so far.
It's perhaps the ultimate goal of the Presence Process, living in the present with God, and I try but I am
far from achieving it. Brother Lawrence was a living saint and lived in a monestary... no mortgage payments, no food bills,
no credit card debt, no expenses whatever. Who wouldn't be calm and at peace!

I

 

Walt,

That's what I hear people say, but keep in mind that that comes from the belief that our circumstances control our happiness/joy/peace. But that's not true. True peace and joy come from inside. We're all children of God, and inherently we have His peace, joy, love, creativity, etc. But we all have "stuck" emotions, because we suppress them at a young age when the painful ones come up inside. The problem is that when we suppress our ability to feel one emotion, we suppress our ability to feel all emotions. Now we have a dilemma, because we're not longer able to feel our natural joy and peace the way we used to. The more we suppress growing up, the more we lose the feeling of joy and peace. So our life becomes about seeking that peace and joy, and avoiding the painful emotions. We get confused and think that our circumstances decide whether we feel joy and peace or not. Yet little do we know, what we feel when things are going well is not true peace or joy. It's a counterfeit. All it is is feeling better than we normally feel when we're stressed. But we're still not truly happy. It's only when we bring up those stuck emotional charges and integrate them by feeling them unconditionally that we end up conditioning ourselves to feel again. Once we can feel again, after these emotions start integrating, our authentic joy and peace start to be felt by us. But we must feel those old painful emotions that are stuck instead of pushing them away and avoiding them. They must integrate if we're to feel joy and peace again, and connect with God.

In Brother Lawrence's case, people think he had it good, but that's not true at all. For one, if we lived in a monastery, we'd go crazy trying to do what monks do, most likely. The monks could be kicked out if they couldn't handle it, and they were definitely put through the wringer frequently at first to test their integrity. The monks in his monastery either had to beg for money or get a job. So Brother Lawrence was placed in the kitchens. He said he didn't like the job, but he did it anyway. The guy over the monastery (I can't remember his title) is who wrote the book about him. He says Brother Lawrence never got in a hurry, but did the work of two men. Also, he had a wounded leg from being shot during the war. He limped because of this. He was frequently sent out to the docks to get wine casks. He said, because of Brother Lawrence's leg, he had to roll himself over the barrels to get the wine, but he never complained about it. I know people who live in a cheap apartment, work a low-paying job, and they pay their bills just fine, but they don't have a bum leg. Brother Lawrence wasn't much different than that. He just dedicated all of his free time to what was required of the monks and to putting his focus on God's presence.

Brother Lawrence says he went through 10 years of emotional turmoil, and that the last 4 years of that 10 years was excruciating. But around the 10 year mark, God lifted it all and he was continually in God's presence from then on out. In other words, Brother Lawrence let God bring up his painful emotions, and he learned to be with them unconditionally, not trying to change them. Just letting them be, accepting them without pushing them away or avoiding them or distracting from them. For him, having no process like the Presence Process and no idea how all of this works, it took him 10 years. And at the 10 year mark, God integrated the last really painful emotions. And that's when he was fully connected to God at all times. When he would get sick (was in pain), God would increase His incredible peace and joy so much so that Brother Lawrence would frequently ask God to let him suffer something for Him. We avoid pain and painful situations, even when people need help sometimes. Imagine living life with no fear of pain. Imagine that pain is a motivator for you! You would have nothing keeping you from helping others in painful situations. You'd have absolutely no fear.

The Bible says that if a man fears, his heart has not yet been made perfect in love. ("Perfect" is better translated as mature. Mature in thought and action, and having a feeling of wholeness, completeness). How does one mature their heart? They learn to feel everything unconditionally until it all integrates. That's how maturity happens. And once someone does that, they've broken down the emotional wall that keeps them from connection with God. All of us are a bunch of kids in adult bodies and we don't realize it. That's why we have trouble connecting with God. That's why Jesus tells us to be like little children. We need to go back to the child-like immature emotions and love them unconditionally until they integrate and mature. When the child part of us is happy and free because of our unconditional love, we regain our ability to experience and live in our joy, creativity, and peace again. The bread God feeds us is emotions. Processing them is most important.

The verse that says "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" is horribly translated. Fear of God is written as ownership in the Ancient Hebrew, just like "hand of God" or "face of God," etc. It's God's fear, not ours. But fear does not mean fear. Horrible translation. That word we've translated as "fear" there actually means something different to the Ancient Hebrews. You know when you get really scared, you feel it in your stomach? That's because there are so many nerves in the stomach. We call it the second brain or the emotional brain. We feel all kinds of emotions in the stomach. We feel butterflies for a certain type of love. We feel fear there. We feel awe there. We feel emotions in our stomach primarily. That word for "fear" there is actually emotions, or emotional stirrings of the stomach. So, the verse should say "The emotions of God are the beginning of wisdom." The only way to connect with God's emotions so that He may speak to us there through intuition is for us to face our own emotions and integrate them. That's what Brother Lawrence did, whether he understood that or not, and that, along with intentionally putting his focus on God and trusting Him to help him through it all, is what caused him to eventually be in God's presence at all times. That's exactly what the Presence Process is teaching a person to do. Anyone can do the Presence Process. It's very simple. There's even a one-on-one session a person can learn to do on ThePresencePortal.com that helps us learn how to integrate emotions. It's really great. I think a person should still go through the Presence Process a few times, though.

I hope this helps and makes sense. The Presence Process, in my opinion, is a much quicker way to clear up the emotional issues than what Brother Lawrence navigated blind for 10 years without a process. We're lucky to have this method now.

 

Sorry about that post being so long. I may try to cut it down later and summarize better.

I left out something. Paul, in the New Testament, says that he's learned the secret to contentment whether he's in poverty or in plenty. Anyone can attain this kind of relationship with God. God will facilitate it if we truly want it. It may take a while, but He will do it if we make that our intent.

I'm a good example of this. I had that oneness with Him, at least to a degree, when I was 16. I lost it due to old emotional patterns I didn't know how to deal with. And after searching for that oneness again all this time, He's finally shown me how to get back to that place with Him. It took nearly 18 years and a lot of tough times (I'm 34 now). So, no matter what our circumstances, He can work it out for us, in time. We have to be diligent and patient, which isn't easy for us at all. I know it's not easy for me, that's for sure. lol

 

Brian, thanks for these two posts. I'm sure it will help me and a lot of others working on their Presence Process.
I'll go to the portal you suggested.
I'm still only halfway through reading the Brother Lawrence book. You're right, he didn't have an easy life.

 

I think what comforts me is that other people have done the Presence Process and achieved a peace in their life they didn't have before. They aren't monks. They're just normal people like me.

It helps that I once had that awesome peace and feeling of oneness with God, because I know I can have it again if I get all these emotional issues resolved and get back into the present moment. And it helps that the multiples who went through the process I used to use to help them achieved good health, joy, peace, and closeness with God (the Presence Process is essentially doing what that method did for them, just in a different way. In other words, I know it's possible, and so I work for it confidently rather than blindly. I like that I can finally stop trying to figure everything out.

Also, it helps that the Presence Process kind of brings together all I've learned over the years into a comprehendable, functional picture. Everything makes sense now, where as before, I was missing a couple of puzzle pieces to fully pull together my understanding of life and healing.

 

Brian, I'm still working on the Presence Process and look forward to all the puzzle pieces fitting together.

You've really been helpful in this.

 

I think what comforts me is that other people have done the Presence Process and achieved a peace in their life they didn't have before. They aren't monks. They're just normal people like me.

It helps that I once had that awesome peace and feeling of oneness with God, because I know I can have it again if I get all these emotional issues resolved and get back into the present moment. And it helps that the multiples who went through the process I used to use to help them achieved good health, joy, peace, and closeness with God (the Presence Process is essentially doing what that method did for them, just in a different way. In other words, I know it's possible, and so I work for it confidently rather than blindly. I like that I can finally stop trying to figure everything out.

Also, it helps that the Presence Process kind of brings together all I've learned over the years into a comprehendable, functional picture. Everything makes sense now, where as before, I was missing a couple of puzzle pieces to fully pull together my understanding of life and healing.

 

Update:

I'm on week 7 right now. The first day of weeks 7-10, you submerge yourself in a hot bath for 15 minutes, then do the breathing session afterward. The heat in the bath deepens the emotional feel, if I understand it correctly, during the breathing sessions. You can do the 15 minute submersion as often as you want before a breathing session, but only one is required at the beginning of the week.

I did a second one today, and plan to do more. I haven't enjoyed my breathing sessions until today, probably because I have to breathe through my mouth rather than my nose, which makes it a little more challenging. There are probably other reasons, too. What' interesting is that I just read in the book a few days ago that eventually you get to a point where you enjoy the breathing so much that you imagine you could do it forever. I actually got to that point today. I didn't want to stop when the session was over, so I went longer. It felt good. I could feel my body better, and it was just a good experience all around. Whatever the bath submersion did, it worked well. I plan to do more of the submersion sessions before my breathing sessions.

Also, I stopped taking an antihistamine at night before bed a couple of nights ago, and I knew that would mess up my sleep. Sure enough, I didn't sleep very well at all last night. I expected to be dragging today, but I wasn't. That bath session and breathing session did something and I feel good today despite my lack of sleep.

Panda, I didn't experience the uneasiness and other sensations while in the bath that you mentioned. It was very relaxing for me. I guess it's different for everyone. Or, with my luck, next time it'll be awful, like you said. lol Awful means I'm making good progress, though, so I'm happy with awful.

 

JohnBurgundy,

I just read across the part of the Presence Process that says we're encouraged to breath deeply and fully, but that it's not necessary since consciously-connected breathing is what anchors us with Presence. I was worried about my breathing at first, but I stopped worrying about it and just accepted that each session would be different and it didn't matter that much. I figured Presence would work that out for me.

 

Man, I wish I'd known about the Presence Process when I read the Brother Lawrence book. I'd be so much farther along now if that were the case. However, I had to go through what I went through to get here, and it was all required, so what do I know? lol Guess I'm just thinking with a mind bent on efficiency and impatience. The 2 years of journaling what I felt God was telling me was a big help, as well as the pain I went through when I hit rock bottom in Recovery. God taught me a lot in that pain. I'm hoping for more pain so I can be humbled some more and get closer to Him--if it's required, I mean.

The Practice of the Presence of God doesn't really give a method for attaining to what Brother Lawrence experienced. It only gives what he did, and it didn't seem to work for me when I tried it. I read the Brother Lawrence book a good 7 times so I'd know it well. Even made a funny character in my first book series modeled after Brother Lawrence. Now that I have a method to follow to attain what Brother Lawrence achieved, I'm really excited.

 

I've only read the first half of Lawrence's book and need to read the rest of it.

I had a great friend who told me long ago that "Walt, you're like a modern monk."

I sometimes wish I had chosen that life. I visited the Trappist monastery in
Gethsemenie, Kentucky when I was in the army and felt its wonders.
Their homemade cheese was delicious, too.

 

Monasteries are pretty cool. Monks seem like really gentle people, too. I don't think the monastic life gets a person closer to God, though, because it's usually an attempt to escape the world and its influences. Notice that none of the other monks in the book found peace or got close to God like Brother Lawrence did, which is why they're all so confounded by his experience.

A person has to seek God on their own, no matter what their situation or location. No men's group or religion or religious practice or location can accomplish that for us. I don't go to men's groups to learn about God. I go to share what I've learned on my personal journey with Him. And I might pick up some interesting information while I'm in those groups, but my journey with God is my journey alone, despite my location. We each must be our own spiritual authority. The second we start trusting in religious practices or a group of men to teach us how to get to God, we've tried to get someone or something else to get us to God. But they can't experience Him for us. They might be able to show us some type of technique, but we'll still have to go through the emotions to get the connection with Him. Some people have to experience religion and groups to find out it doesn't get them to God or to learn a technique that works (I've only found 2 techniques that work, and only one--the Presence Process--can be done by people without Multiple Personality Disorder).

I think monasteries evoke peaceful feelings partly because we think of how nice it would be to have the stresses of our life lifted by living in a place with less stresses. That's not peace, though. That's disengaging from everyday circumstances that cause emotional charges to flare up inside of us for fear of feeling stress/fear/anger/overwhelmed/etc. But again, some people need to have that experience in a monastery to see it doesn't work. Brother Lawrence figured that out, luckily, and sought God directly and trusted God rather than his religion or other people. It's good to keep that in mind, because it reminds us that we're right where God wants us, because everything happening right now is always His will. Otherwise, it wouldn't be happening. We're just either aware of His will, or we're not and we're trying to change it as a result. lol Paul, in the New Testament, says if you get "saved/enlightened," don't change your job (circumstance), but rather stay where you are and serve God there.