The Soul’s Presence & Pure Awareness
Carl Jung wrote in The Undiscovered Self, “You cannot solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it”. The ego is a mind-created “problem”, so it cannot be “solved” by the mind. We have to use a higher level of consciousness – the pure awareness of our soul (the Self’s primary field of consciousness). It was the absence of presence and pure awareness that resulted in parts of our consciousness being exiled and their associated ego structures being created. Our young and innocent personal consciousness simply did not have the capacity to be with these distressed parts, so we exiled them out of conscious awareness. Being with these parts fully (i.e. giving them our full presence and awareness) is all that is required to heal the separation and return them to wholeness. We are simply doing now what we couldn’t do at the time of the original distressing event. This type of healing only works if the awareness is pure (i.e. no agenda, judgement or fixing) and the presence is intimate (i.e. no resistance, avoidance or suppression).
Alice Bailey wrote in Esoteric Healing “cures are brought about [when] the soul pours through to the point of concentrated awareness”. This means that the healing process is activated simply by moving our awareness to the appropriate area of our body and allowing our soul to take care of the healing and reintegration. The soul has to merge with the part (exile, hole or structure); merely putting our awareness on it is not enough. Observing the part, even up close, is not enough because there is still separation. Healing and reintegration can only occur when there is intimate contact (presence) – when the soul and the part become one.
Exiles, holes and protective ego structures are generally negative thought-forms bound up in negative emotions and negative energy (coping ego structures are primarily just thought-forms). The thought-form is the core of each “structure” but that is not what holds them together for all these years. The thing that holds them together is a piece of soul – a piece of soul that has become identified with the part – a piece of soul that believes it is that part – a piece of soul that has forgotten it is soul.
The presence of the rest of our soul is absolutely vital for the healing and reintegration process because its intimate union with the part allows the misidentified piece of soul to reunite with the rest of our soul (causal body). Without the piece of soul to hold it together, the part dissolves and its constituent elements reunite with the mental body, emotional body and energy body.
Discovering and Practicing Presence
Presence is fundamental to personal development and transpersonal (spiritual) development, and it is a pre-requisite for most of the practices and techniques described in this book. Presence has a palpable feeling – it feels like a subtle energetic swelling or presence within the body (or part of the body). It has a sense of fullness; like something within us is expanding and trying to get out. This pretty much describes what our soul is doing – manifesting more fully within us and coming to the fore.
Presence requires our awareness to be present spatially (right here) and temporally (right now). Presence requires us to “be” – right here, right now. It should be easy to just “be”; it is our natural state after all, but it is far from easy. We have spent decades practising “doing” and have forgotten how to “be”. We need to put less emphasis on “doing” and re-learn how to “be”; both of which require practise and commitment. Thankfully, they can both be achieved through one simple practice – practicing presence:
- Spread your awareness throughout your entire body and sense the subtle but palpable presence.
- Watch, notice and feel whatever arises, without any agenda. You are an impartial observer.
- Don’t try to do anything or achieve anything during the practice.
- Don’t analyse, assess, judge or criticise anything (including yourself) during or after the practice.
- All you have to “do” is feel your awareness spread throughout your entire body and notice what arises – that is it – if you are doing anything more, you are doing too much.
The first few times you practise the exercise, you may not be able to actually “feel” the presence in your body. But it will happen, when you relax and stop trying to feel it. You will probably notice that there are areas of your body where it is more difficult to feel presence than others, and areas that feel blocked or out of balance – these are the areas where your psychological material is stored (exiles, holes and ego structures). Presence is the central element of most of the practices and techniques described in the coming chapters, so practice it as much as you can. I do it while driving my car, reading, watching TV and lying in bed. With practise it can be done whilst walking in nature or performing slow simple tasks. I really cannot stress how important and beneficial this simple practice is. It gets us out of our heads and into our bodies, which allows us to experience life more objectively and live life more fully. It takes us deeper into ourselves – deeper into our body, feelings, emotions, desires, behaviours and beliefs. It helps us to become less reactive, so our relationships with other people improve, and it helps us to develop an authentic relationship with our Self.
Body Awareness (Feeling & Healing with Presence)
During our childhood, the authentic aspects of our consciousness that should have been activated by positive life experiences got shutdown (and exiled) by negative life experiences. It is the ego’s job to get us through life without feeling the pain and distress of these negative experiences. Personal development goes directly against this objective because it requires us to feel into our old hurts and inquire into our false core-beliefs. It is about reconnecting with the parts of ourselves that we have exiled from conscious awareness by burying them deep in our sub-conscious. It is sometimes called “shadow work” because it deals with the parts of us that live in the shadows of our consciousness (our subconscious).
Feeling and healing with presence is a relatively new approach to psychological healing and spiritual growth. Instead of focusing on the symptoms (as a regular doctor or psychologist might) we focus on the root cause. It involves tuning into our body and fully feeling the sensations, blockages and structures that make their presence felt. Because we can feel them we can infer that they are ready to be healed and reintegrated. Simply staying with the sensations and the emotions and feeling them fully (with loving presence) gently reintegrates the parts back into the wholeness of our being.
We can identify which areas of the body hold exiles, holes and ego structures by the sensations we feel in our body (e.g. pressure, tightness, pain, blockages, magnetic repulsion, hollowness, membranes, stickiness, rigidity, energetic sensations, etc.). The more “handles” (sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, etc.) we can get on a part the more fully we can feel it and the easier we can heal it. Our role is simply to keep our awareness on these handles and feel them as fully as possible, and keep our awareness pure – i.e. not have any agenda or desire to fix or change anything. The healing and reintegration will occur naturally in their own time.
The Feel It to Heal It Technique
This body-centred approach is a very simple yet effective way of working with emotional parts, e.g. exiles and distracting ego structures.
- Connect with Presence: Before you begin, take a few really deep breaths and centre yourself. Connect with your soul by closing your eyes, spreading your awareness throughout your entire body and feeling your soul’s presence.
- Open Invitation: Gently invite your wounded parts, conditioned behaviours, reactive emotions and distorted beliefs to show themselves. Reassure them that it is safe to come out. Let them know that you would really like to get to know them and that they don’t have to be alone or afraid anymore. Invite them to tell you or show you their story.
- Pure Awareness: Pay attention to whatever arises, then move your awareness/presence into it. Really feel it and intimately merge with it so there is no separation. You and the feeling are one, but in a non-identified way, i.e. you feel it completely, but you are not overwhelmed by it. Maintaining pure awareness enables our sense of identity to remain distinct from the feeling, whilst still feeling it fully. It is a pure and intimate connection but it is still objective.
- Healing with Loving Presence: Acknowledge the part, reassure it, be with it, hold it, comfort it, accept it and love it. Loving presence really helps to heal our relationship with the part. We were too afraid to fully feel its pain all those years ago because our young and undeveloped consciousness didn’t have the capacity. Now, as an adult we easily have the capacity to feel pain and distress, the only thing that might stop us from maintaining an intimate connection is if we become over-identified with the traumatised part and allow its fear to overwhelm us. Establishing a deep connection with the soul’s presence before we begin reduces the chances of emotional flooding, but it does still happen sometimes (see below).
- Reintegration: Allow your soul’s presence to dissolve into the part, and allow the part to dissolve into your presence. The exiled piece of soul reunites with the rest of our soul, and the mental, emotional and energetic components dissolve and reunite with their respective subtle bodies. Note: Inviting in essential qualities such as love, joy and curiosity increases our alignment with the soul which increases the healing and integrative power of the soul’s presence.
The fear, trauma, confusion and distress that are carried by an exiled part can become reactivated when doing inner work. If we focus our awareness solely on the area of emotional distress, it can sometimes feel as if the localised distress is overwhelming our entire being. This can be very frightening, but it can be easily overcome by spreading our awareness throughout our entire body. Widening our focus in this way puts the scale of the emotion into perspective, i.e. it helps us to realise that only a small part of us is affected. Slow deep breathing is also helpful because it dissipates the emotional energy.
