The Presence That Was Always There
La Presencia Que Siempre Estuvo Ahí
A student describes a new experience of presence remaining even while thoughts arise, and the teacher reflects on the lifting of a kind of hypnosis that makes us believe something is lost when thinking occurs.
The Presence That Was Always There
A student describes a new experience of presence remaining even while thoughts arise, and the teacher reflects on the lifting of a kind of hypnosis that makes us believe something is lost when thinking occurs.
I feel that I'm in a process, and the process is changing. It's unbelievably fast. I want to share what is happening. I experienced being, as in another session, but this time it came with a more lively color. Before it was dark; now it was like a rose color.
The surprise for me was that during the experience, I could see and feel a thought pass, and yet I could still feel the presence. In other moments I had been separated: the being on one side, then the thoughts and emotions on the other. But now thoughts arose and I could still be. It was very tender, very different. This whole scene was seen as a center.
I felt more like the little girl who has presence. Not unconscious, but a presence that can observe. And the feeling was that I had felt this in my childhood, and then it went away, and then all of this unfolded. There was a lovely sensation, like what you say: it was always here. It's here and it's here and it's here. I cannot repeat your words exactly. It's present. You can see it. Sometimes I don't know how, but what surprised me was the thoughts and the being together.
So it's there all the time. It's the attention: if I jump into more contact with it, it's different. This is my experience.
Can you say a little more about that last part, about jumping in?
Yes. I never had this experience of having thought and presence at the same time. I felt the presence constantly and said to myself, "I have never had this experience." So it was there, but something in me was denying it. I wasn't in contact with it.
And that became a bridge to my childhood, and also a bridge to recognizing that the thoughts are more tender. The experience is that what's going on is not so terrible. When thoughts go very far, very far away from presence, it's different, because then it's all thought, all mind, all emotion, and that can be very intense. But now it's okay.
The lifting of a hypnosis
I don't want to say a lot, because it feels like this is very fresh and still in movement. But if I were to say something, it would be this: there is a lifting of something like a hypnosis, which is very common in how we experience one thing or another. When thoughts are there, there is a sense that something is lost, and that is why the thoughts feel so terrible. If the thoughts are good, then maybe it's okay, but normally they're not. So there is always this sense of a battle to change what the mind is doing.
But once you realize that there is something always there, the dimension in which thoughts are happening becomes a lot smaller. It felt as though something was lost, but you are actually realizing that presence was always the case.
Always the case, yes.
Nothing is actually lost
There isn't something actually lost.
That was a great experience, because I never had it before. Or maybe I couldn't understand what was going on, because when you are not able to understand it, it isn't really concrete. But now it was.
If you look at what you're describing, something changed, but not at the level of thinking or at the level of the mind.
Yes, it's not at that level. It's sat. It's sat. Thank you.
That's great.
What has happened with this group, with the presence here, is that I can go through experiences so different from anything before. I have a background that was very difficult. But this is a place where the experience is so different. I wanted to say this, because the group is also calling something new, or calling forth a new sensation. And when you talk about it, you put the words to it, and you can teach me what's going on.
That's great. It's really my pleasure.