The Presence Process - Share Experiences & Ask Questions

Well, basically, the dysfunctional emotion that's causing the pain is a hard part of the heart--energy that's stuck in a holding pattern causing the pain and health issues. Think of it as an immature kid, no more than 7 years old. He's only immature and hurting because he hasn't received unconditional acceptance (unconditional love). In other words, you weren't taught how to fully accept yourself as a child. No one has been, really. Now, you're learning to do so.

As you accept the pain unconditionally, that part of your heart feels loved and ends up integrating into the whole of the heart, and the pain it was causing goes away. I hope that helps decipher what's taking place. When it integrates, it feels awesome. That's how you know you've made genuine progress.

Blocking out the pain is not paying it any attention, which is how the pain started, actually. The dysfunctional emotions need that unconditional attention so they can feel safe enough to integrate.

 

Painfree - I take MB's approach to pain the same as his approach to emotions. He instructs us to view all emotions as neutral, neither good or bad. I don't recall any instruction to focus on any or our symptoms. Is there a particular passage in the book that you are stuck on? Where is it?

So here is a quick update. I'm at the start of week 2 and I have noted some resistance because I haven't been too diligent about my breathing sessions. I put them off and then forget. Today though I got upset that I had missed my morning one and last night no matter what I did I kept falling asleep. MB says not to create a big drama about missing sessions but to carry on regardless. I try not to beat myself up but this evening I felt really sad, like I had made a promise to a small child and had let them down which in effect I had, the small child being me.

At the start of week 1 I couldn't come up with an intention so I just threw the question out to Presence/the universe. What is my intention? I now think my intention will involve recognising when I have integrated an emotion. I felt all kinds of stuff during the last process but I can't remember an instance when I thought 'aha, xxx has now been integrated'. I'm not sure how that all works and am curious.

On the plus side when I am breathing I'm managing to fidget less and if I experience some discomfort or an itch, I'm usually able to breathe through it.

I left quite a few weeks in between each process because I was travelling and because of some other family drama due to take place last month. During that break I was definitely being triggered. In hindsight I really reacted instead of responding and boy did I play the victim. Going through the reading for Week 2 brought it all back.

Onward and onward.

 

Yb44,

Thanks for the update!

I wouldn't worry about knowing exactly what integrated. That's unclear to me when it happens most of the time. I just notice change afterward, like things don't trigger me anymore. When I set my intentions, I do so by whatever I believe is most important to resolve at the moment. Otherwise, I'd use the general approach.

The general approach is, set the intention to integrate insecurity (fear) first. Then, when that 10 weeks is done, set the intention to integrate anger. And if necessary, set the intent to integrate sadness for another 10 weeks. Naturally, that order can occur, it seems, according to MB, but I've noticed more progress when I set those specific intentions. I usually set another one or two intentions each time, too. Like addictions or behavioral patterns, etc. Each person has to feel it out for him or herself, but that's kind of how I do it.

PainfreeB,
As for focus in on symptoms, Yb44 is right, MB doesn't say to focus on the pain symptoms, but rather the felt resonances and emotions attached to them. The pain is something we accept and get used to so that we can access the felt resonances and emotions. Once the underlying emotions and felt resonances surface and integrate, the pain they're causing goes away. I may have explained that poorly before.

Good luck you all!

 

well then I'm not sure how to take some of his points here. maybe I'm being too literal? but he writes:

'we choose to "be" with our pain or discomfort w/ a clear intention to compassionately soothe it with our full attention" pp 168
and
'... we are being asked to compassionately feel the physical mental emotional sensations that we have long been taught to suppress & run from..." pp169

I know MB's intention is to acknowledge that as a gift or message of being out of balance & to try to heal that from w/in rather than run from it or look elsewhere, but I really struggle when focusing on the pain vs TMS intent to look elsewhere & not give it any credibility.

the funny coincidence is I haven't been in much pain UNTIL the day this session started. the pain is so bad at times when I give it attention - I literally cannot concentrate & end up taking pain meds just to function. I haven't had to do that for a while. I have lots of anger & disappointment that I'm not doing this week right (have had great success so far) or that I don't know how to be compassionate w/ myself or my pain when it turns on me. I'm supposed to greet it as a friend when I want to kill it...

guess that's my work? self compassion ;-/

 

Sorry you are in a bit of a 2 & 8 (state), painfreeB. Looking on the bright side isn't it more than just coincidence that you get to this particular week, feel conflicted ("focusing on pain vs TMS intent") and then bam, pain city? I would see that as further proof my pain was TMS.

MB talks about how situations unfold exactly how they are meant to be. Could your pain be a trigger, trying to goad you into reacting, resisting and possibly giving up? I would never put pressure on anyone to do this process or continue if it didn't feel right. However remember what MB says repeatedly - 'the only way out is through'. There are times when it gets pretty close to the bone though.

Soothing pain or discomfort - I interpret that as soothing my inner child rather than focusing on how much my knee/back/teeth/head hurts. For me learning self-compassion is an ongoing process that will take a lot longer than 10 weeks, not that I'm calendar watching on that score.

Brian, not sure anything integrated last time but the way I have been feeling and acting when I think no one is near tells me I am boiling over with rage - but I'm a nice person and can't possibly tell people what I really think and feel, can I? The conflict thing again.

 

No, you're correct. We are supposed to put our attention on our pain. I'm not sure why I said differently yesterday. I've had a rough week having to stay home with my son who was sick for over a week. I think it effected my brain. lol Sorry for the bad info. The pain is the least important part, really. It's the emotions and especially the felt resonances that are most important. They're causal.

Yeah, our pain is the cry for help. If we hate it, we are hating the emotion and felt resonance. That binds the pain to us. Accepting and enduring it will bring about integration.

That being said, it's perfectly normal to hate the pain. You've done nothing wrong--only what's required. You can't expect anything of yourself. What happens is required. You haven't failed. If you're in pain, MB actually says you're making progress, and that's exactly what's supposed to happen. So, good job!

You took painkillers, and that's expected. MB says that as you feel the pain more frequently and it integrates, your medication will start having a stronger effect on you, so you won't need as much of it. Eventually, you won't need it at all. So, you're right on course.

And awesome account of what we can achieve is The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence (if you want to order this, let me know beforehand so I can find you the full version--it's hard to find). Brother Lawrence processed so many dysfunctional emotions that he eventually came to a place where pain felt amazing to him. It caused him to feel God's presence even stronger. So he would pray for God to let him suffer something for Him (sickness, mainly, or pain of some sort). There was no fear in the man, and the bliss he felt most of the time sounded amazing. I use his testimony as a reminder of what's possible with emotional processing. Just keep in mind that Brother Lawrence's account is through the eyes of a 17th century Catholic monk.

Hope that helps!

 

We don't say what we'd like to say to people when we're upset, because that's a reaction and an attempt to suppress our anger. Instead, we remove ourself from the situation as soon as we can, and go sit with our anger, putting our unconditional attention on it. If we can't do that right away, we bank he emotion and bring it up later when we have time to process it alone, maybe before, during, or after our 15-minute breathing session. Sometimes, while doing my breathing, I'll remember the emotions or situation and the emotions will surface for me to deal with. I usually cry through most of those breathing sessions, which is good progress.

If you're feeling the rage, then you're definitely doing well in his 10 weeks! Awesome.

 

PainfreeB,

I'm going to rehash this again, because I just reread this post of yours. You said that you were asking what emotion the pain is distracting you from, then feeling that, and it often releases the pain. That's what happens sometimes with me as I do TPP. A pain will come up, and I'll say, "How does this make me feel emotionally and at the felt-resonance level?" Sometimes the pain will go away and be replaced by an emotion and felt resonance. Sometimes the pain stays and I feel the emotion and felt resonance. Sometimes, I don't get an emotion or felt-resonance when I ask the question--I guess it's not ready to surface yet. I'm not sure. The emotion, and especially the felt resonance, are the important things to feel. The pain is only felt if we need to feel it for some reason, then we put our unconditional attention on it. So, if it's there, we're supposed to feel it at that moment for some reason rather than trying to ignore it by putting our attention on the emotion or felt resonance. I place my attention on all three of those things if I'm feeling all three. Whatever I feel--whether physical, emotional, or vibrational (felt resonance)--is what I put my attention on. So, maybe that will help with understanding what to do with the feelings.

Keep in mind that if you're feeling the pain you used to feel before you started TMS, then it's still there. Whatever you were doing with TMS wasn't integrating it, or at least it wasn't integrating much of it. You know when something integrates, because you laugh and cry (happy tears) for a while. It feels great. If that's not happening, something probably not integrating. So, the fact that those pains are back means you're on the right track, because they were hiding before. Now, you get the chance to fully integrate them so they have no causal point anymore. And you'll feel great afterward, too, because integrations mean more energy in motion (emotion) has been freed up to use for whatever you see fit. Integration can sometimes be exhausting, but after some rest, energy is more flowing. Hope that helps a bit.

 

UPDATE: WEEK 5 (PP#4)

A few days ago, a couple of days after my second Reconnective Healing appointment, I realized that the reason I didn't feel things nearly as strongly during these appointments as other people is because my heart, subconsciously, was resisting God's help. A Reiki practitioner told me a while back that at the stomach area, she could tell I was not accepting her energy (I was resisting it--blocking it, and I've known this for a while). I never made the connection that the resistance to God's help was the cause of the problem in my stomach. So the day after my appointment, I decided I needed to deal with this emotional block. I spent some time talking to that part of myself, imagining it as a small child, speaking for him to me, and speaking back to him as me (I just did this in my head--I've done it before with excellent results). I cried for a while as the integration started (no laughing or happy tears yet). That started the unblocking process.

I realized that the first Reconnective Healing appointment was the beginning of unblocking this issue by giving me a bunch of work. Once I got the work, I had to decide how to break it to my new client that I have to run off of their insurance. I kept putting it off. Then, suddenly, it affected my stomach, making me sick.

So, yesterday--the last day of week 5--I had an integration. It occurred to me that I haven't been putting my attention on the physical pain in my stomach. So I placed my attention on the pain in my stomach, and suddenly there was an up-welling of thankfulness. I was actually thankful for the pain, happy to have it. That thankfulness really reassured that emotional part of me that I loved and cared for it. About an hour later, I was listening to Anthony DeMello. He tells hilarious stories and he's great to listen to if you like learning about Awareness (waking up--what we're doing here in TPP). He tells this story about a disciple who tells his guru he's going to a far place to meditate and hopefully attain enlightenment. The disciple sends letters to the guru periodically that say things like, "I now understand what it means to lose the self." Each time a note would come in, the guru would read it and tear it up. After a few years, the notes stopped coming. Eventually, the guru became curious and asked a messenger to take a note to the disciple to find out what happened to him. The messenger brings the guru a note that says, "What does it matter?" When the guru read that, he shouted, "He made it! He made it! He finally got it!"

I'd just listened to that and got interrupted and stopped listening to the audio for a moment. After the interruption, it came back to me. "What does it matter?" Suddenly, that truth integrated in my heart and I began to laugh and cry (happy tears). Part of me finally realized that I didn't need to worry about anything, because God has it all taken care of. So why am I trying to do all of this "stuff" in my life to control things when He's already got it worked out? I'm wasting my energy. What does it matter? Just live life and enjoy it. A big weight was lifted.

So my stomach was REALLY resonating--hurting--last night and this morning, because I needed to make a decision. So I decided I'd have the insurance discussion with my client today and let the cards fall as they may. I could lose the client, who will yield me more money in one month than I made all last year. But a few years ago, I told my two clients about the insurance issue and lost them. Two months later, they said they couldn't live without me, so they hired me back and worked out the insurance. So, it was one of those "What does it matter?" situations? God took care of it.

I realized that it was around the time my wife got pregnant with my son that my stomach began having some issues that I wasn't really aware of, but that would wake me up early each morning. That's happened for nearly 5 years now. And it was all due to me not trusting God to take care of my family, and not trusting my authentic self to do so, as well, with God's help. I'd blocked off a big part of authenticity. It's been blocked off since I was born or right after, but it manifested much more strongly 5 years ago. Finally, it's getting freed up to flow.

Great progress!

 

UPDATE: LOTS OF TEARS AND FELT RESONANCE & PORN ISSUE GONE AGAIN

It's funny--I identified my unconscious definition of love during my first PP, and yet I'm still integrating it in little pieces. lol It's very simple: I believe love is being taken care of. And when I feel as thought I won't be taken care of, I feel powerless/helpless.

I bought a car recently. I didn't have to buy it, and I didn't spend much money on it. It's a 1991, but a very nice car. I did so because I have a lot of business in the next two months that will pay off the car and we can start paying big chunks of our debt off. But after I got a loan for the car, issues started manifesting. I was trying to suppress something by getting this car. And the added debt caused me a lot of fear, which caused sickness. Once the feelings manifested, though, the illness immediately went away. Now, I'm feeling the resonance each morning when I wake up, and a dampened version during the day. MB says that we learn to take these emotions out and be with them when possible, and then we put them away when we need to focus on other things (and repeat that until the emotions integrate). So that's what's happening.

Each morning I wake up way too early, as usual, and my stomach resonates (hurts a bit, as a result). I breathe with it for a long time. I get out of bed eventually and go cry. Yesterday, just a little crying. Today, tons of crying. Very productive crying. After a very long cry, I started reading a page of TPP and immediately felt as if I was having a small integration. I felt thankful for the emotions that were surfacing lately. I imagined them as a small child whom I hugged and thanked. Then, as I began to read, the child crawled up on my lap and we read together. It was very cool. This major emotion--the most important one--is beginning to trust me. I'm still having a little trouble trusting God/Presence/my child-of-God self to take care of me, but that'll come as this emotion integrates more and more.

Also, it's been at least two weeks (maybe 3) since I looked at porn or did anything of that nature. I didn't try to stop doing it. It just came naturally. I've noticed that when I feel this particular felt resonance, I don't need porn, sex, or anything like that. Now this felt resonance doesn't feel very pleasant most of the time, but it's definitely at the core of the porn issue.

 

thanx brianC... I've noticed that when I wake up feeling 'bad' vs. good I've most likely had turbulent emotional dreams during he night. there;s been a few times I've awakened in the middle of a very angry, fearful, sad scenario & that's how I feel when I open my eyes. it's a real drag to start the day that way but I have to breathe & let myself feel it & I can connect the emotional charge to my childhood. normally I don't recall my dreams --but now believe when I wake feeling down that I have been triggered during the night & it's a way that my subconscious is revealing to me the message & emotion that needs to be integrated at the time. wondering if you think that could be going on w/ you?

fyi - my concept of love is; attention - as undivided time, energy, interest, adulation connection etc. can be physical (sex) or mental but def emotional. if it's not there then I feel unimportant & must be unlovable ;-/

also doesn't MB write that all addictions, illness, pain, etc are a result of un-integrated emotion? I too have noticed a decline in my compulsive addictive urges (except for dark chocolate -- so that's a good thing & means your doing something right... no?

 

PainfreeB,

When my wife got pregnant with my son, that's about the time I started waking up every morning at around 3am - 4am. I'm blessed on the mornings where I can doze sometimes so that the next couple of hours goes by quickly and I'll get out of bed at 6am. On other mornings, I lie there with lots of thoughts going through my head or I do my breathing there in bed for the next 2 hours till I get out of bed around 5:30-6:00. I like to give my body that time to stay immobile so I can get a little rest.

What started this was fear of not being able to protect my son and wife (fear that I was completely unaware of). This goes back to me being a little baby and feeling the vibrational and emotional signatures my mother (and father) felt while I was in the womb. Very soon after I was born, I saw or heard my dad spanking my sister, because she got angry and threw a fit (she'd do it every day). So my instinct was to repress everything, which is why my mother says I was an angel child--quiet as can be, easy to raise, compliant, etc. My drug was control, basically--control myself, and then control the people around me through manipulation in order to stay safe and be taken care of. I was trying to cover up the feeling of powerlessness. Luckily, I know the cause was what was passed down to me, and so I get to just work on the emotional integrations now.

I noticed, at some point, that I was controlling my son the way I controlled myself when I was young. So now, I give him a ton of freedom, which means he feels more powerful and has to be more responsible. Helps him not feel powerless or shameful.

Yeah, all addiction is unintegrated emotions. Once we start feeling them and integrate them, the addictions go away. My porn and sex addiction went away after my second PP, but came back during my fourth, because I was intent on integrating anger. Sexual issues are always anger-based.

 

so my biggest concern so far is that I'm not able to feel or connect w/ many emotional signatures earlier than 7 yrs old. most of my feelings go back to maybe 4th -6th or 7th & 8th grade. I can identify w/ a lot of fear & anger but any earlier than that has not been really coming thro yet. how would Iv know a signature from earlier or even the womb?

 

MB says not to worry about it if you can't trace it back all the way. I didn't trace hardly anything, because I knew it wasn't important (and also because I did so much digging through my past in recovery a few years ago). What's important is feeling he feelings and getting rid of the story. Whatever you're feeling from 10 years old came from when you were 3, so it's the same emotional signature. I think the only real purpose of tracing things back is to prove to us that we are reacting to the same emotional signature repeatedly.

So no worries on this. Just feel what you feel, forget the story, and let it integrate. The only time the story might be important is for necessary insight, and so you can share. I didn't get insight on my early childhood stuff. I just happen to know what happened back then so I can connect the feelings with what happened. My mom told me what happened.

You're going to find that no matter what concerns you have, we'll respond with something that let's you know it's completely normal So there's no need to worry about it.

Also, if you don't have the second/revised edition of TPP, I highly recommend it. It gives so much more information and in a much more fatherly way.

 

thanx that helps. I know the story all to well.... same at any age.

the sheer # of things that trigger me is amazing but they seem to elicit one of 2 emotional charges; one has lot's of sadness & fear & has to do w/ less than important - I am not enuff stuff etc...

the other is anger & feels like an over inflated sense of self- like a toddler tantrum when not getting his way. I AM important/special usually happens when I don't get my way etc. but BOTH seem to occur when I am not getting something I want/need; unconditional attention/acknowledgement = love...

so I am wondering if they are more like opposite sides of the same coin? or entirely different emotions I need to integrate... it's confusing because they are so opposite in their emotional charges but the message has common theme.

 

Yeah, my issues have their similarities to yours. When I get triggered, it's either fear of not having enough money, or fear of being rejected because I did something that offended a friend. So there's probably part of me that's still trying to be "good enough," and hasn't quite gotten the message yet that there's no such thing as "worth."

It was funny, it hit me one day that self-worth is non-existent. There is no such thing as "worth" at all. Things simply are. I exist. The only way I have "worth" is if I am judging myself. But the second I drop my judgment, I have no value whatsoever--I'm just a human being who simply exists. I mean, how bizarre is it that we have this need to be "worth" something when it's an imaginary thing? But it stems from not loving ourselves, of course. We think if we're good enough, we'll be loved or love ourselves, but that's not true since "good enough" doesn't exist. lol Same with shame. Shame doesn't exist. We created it with our immature heart (ego). We assumed there was a standard and that we transgressed it. But the truth is, there never was a standard. We just needed to mature, is all. It's so simple, yet we make it so complicated.

You'll save yourself a whole lot of trouble if you completely stop trying to figure out what those emotions are, and instead, just feel them. Don't give them names of concepts humans have placed on those emotions. Each emotion is slightly different, unique in its own right. What's important is memorizing how it feels, and feeling it unconditionally. I don't really try to figure it out anymore. When necessary, I can properly convey it to people. Aside from that, I don't much care about it. I might name an emotion periodically while I'm dealing with it, but it's usually just to appease my mind, I think. lol

Sounds like you're making good progress--more than I made the first 10 weeks. But then again, we all have to move at our own pace.

 

Does Michael say anything about continuing (somatic-based) therapy during the process or not? It helps me get into the emotions and addresses trauma but I'm not sure if it's advised that we cut off anything where we rely on external help for this. Thanks.

 

Hi Danielle. Good to have you in he thread!

MB only discusses the shortcomings of today's psychological therapy. He doesn't comment on whether a person should stop it or not. I've seen some people post that it was helpful to see a therapist while doing TPP. I was offered free ETT while I did my second and third PPs. It was useful, because ETT causes felt resonances to surface for processing. Talking with the therapist heloped just a little, I suppose, but I prefer not to have therapists, because they often try to be too mind-and-events oriented rather than giving the heart the bulk of the causality. The heart-brain is scientifically proven to be smarter than the brain. If you see a therapist, you might consider trying to keep the focus on the emotions and felt resonances rather than the mind and events hat supposedly caused the issues, but that's just my opinion. Everyone has to feel it out for their self.

Eventually, as you get farther into the process and integrate more emotions, you'll find that you have no need or desire to see a therapist. And it sure does save money, too! (added perk)

However TPP happens for you is how it's supposed to happen and it's what's required for you. So it's very hard to go wrong, if possible at all.

MB does mention that it's helpful not to talk to people about our experiences in TPP, because there's usually some kind of ego-driven reason for it, wanting someone to support you (using them as a coping mechanism). TPP is about containment and processing So that a person is personally responsible for their self completely, needing no one else to save them. That's why I say you'll eventually feel you no longer need your therapist. However, if your therapist is utilized as a safety net, then he/she is like an addiction and will need to be seen less and less as you separate from him/her. This is not uncommon. Happens all he time in recovery. People exchange their substance addiction for addiction to dumping their issues on he group. This is why we practice containment (not repression) and integration. We take full responsibility for our experience of this life, because no one can feel for us. Only we can feel our pain and process it. And feeling is what determines how we experience this life each moment. We become much more happy when we do this, and we are much better friends and family to those around us.

Can't wait to hear your experiences!

 

There is one section during the early part of the ten week experience where MB mentions talk therapies and how they can conflict with the felt experience because we can get stuck in the mental rather than the physical realm as we focus on describing feelings or retelling stories surrounding them. I mentioned this to my therapist when I was going through TPP the first time last fall. She finally concluded that it did conflict with our work and even though I had been telling her things I had read and insights I had had from the start, she hadn't quite picked up on the implications until I was nearly through the ten weeks. This time around I am a free bird so can explore the felt perceptions with an occasional mention on this thread. However if your therapy is somatic-based which is meant to address trauma in the body, you might find it complements TPP but you also may find it too overwhelming. If your therapy is helping, perhaps carry on with it. Reading the book if you haven't done so already will give you a better idea of what it's about. I read it through first myself. At the start of therapy when I was in serious pain I wouldn't have been ready to undertake TPP. I wouldn't have been able to even read about it. I had to wait until the time was right for me.

 

And speaking of occasional mentions, today is the end of Week 3 which is about responding and not shooting our messengers. Without going into these particular stories, Presence has set me up big time in the last couple of weeks. My buttons have been truly pushed. I accept we are instructed to respond (even if that response is simply to keep our traps shut) but what all the mental stuff? What about lashing out (reacting) at others in my mind? Originally I thought I could get away with this because it was all contained within my head and no one was getting hurt. This time around I've decided that all this mental stuff is just another type of reaction and someone is getting hurt - me. Whenever something comes to mind that starts to yank my chain I do try and breathe the thoughts away and recite the 'conscious response' but this does take some time and practice.

I had some insight yesterday into what a felt perception is and how it's linked to the past. Okay, here's a story for the purpose of explaining myself. A couple of years ago, before I read TPP, I was eating dinner with one of my adult daughters. It was just her and me on this particular evening. In the middle of the meal she very casually announces that one of her good friend's brother had died in a bike accident the previous week. He was in his late teens/early 20's. I had only met this friend in passing once for a second so didn't really know him and certainly didn't know his brother. My daughter said her friend was okay about it all. I said that this was ridiculous. How could her friend be okay, what about his parents, etc but she insisted he was absolutely fine. When she told me I had this overwhelming urge to cry and I was struggling to breathe, let alone swallow, yet I kept eating my dinner. In the present I can recall that lump in my throat at the dinner table when I was a child, being told off, feeling humiliated, angry, upset for whatever reason yet conscious of repercussions should I miss a beat and stop eating or, heaven forbid, leave the table without permission. My daughter had triggered that felt perception. I remember being really angry at her and wanting to shout and storm off, but I didn't. Instead I just repressed it. I'm now aware she was my messenger delivering a message from my child self. Is it any wonder why I have an issue with emotional overeating?

So I'm trying really hard to get into those felt perceptions and leave the stories to the side but it's hard. Several times this week I have finished my 15 minutes of breathing and opened my eyes to find them wet with tears but I hadn't been crying. Instead of rushing off to resume my daily activities or go to bed I try to sit and breathe regularly for a bit, to give the dust time to settle.