The day I met Cindy, a women's network was milling about her artistic loft in the newly gentrified part of Salt Lake City doing what women's network groups do. Cindy quietly and powerfully stood out from the rest of the frenzied chatter and buzzing. I hadn't known I was seeking an executive coach - that is, until the minute I met her. That's presence.
I've been thinking about presence lately. So many of us think that ideas, memes, concepts, speeches, posts, corporate objectives and mandates, venture capital pitches, and any form of communication can be stripped of the person delivering the message or perhaps if people come into play are strictly influential as a function of one's title and given authority.
I am a fan of the Socratic method and believe we can only guide others to what is always there within themselves. Thus, there are really no experts, gurus or authority figures with all the answers but simply people because of their own centeredness point the way back to our own center.
At the center of your being you know the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. - Lao Tzu
Perhaps You Are The Message more than you know. Of late, I feel the sense of losing my presence as my oversaturated melting mind begs to stare into space and a chance to re-connect again with a greater Presence. We speak of voice being stripped from today's media. But how many of us are stripped away from ourselves, period. Voice is just one of many of the casualties. Voice, an important component of any written media, is intimately an expression of our presence.
We can speak of presence as related to mindfulness, but that term has many interpretations. I like how Brother David Steindl-Rast phrases it:
I think "wholeheartedness" is the English word that expresses better what mindfulness as a technical term means; that you respond to every situation from your center, from your heart -- that you listen with your heart to every situation, and your heart elicits the response.
I think presence and wholeheartedness are clearly expressed in a writer's voice. You know when you witness it in your reading. And you know when you witness it in yourself.
I asked my friend Cindy Martenay of Insight Shift for her definition. Luckily she was out-of-town and couldn't grab any nifty quotes from her books, so what you read is her raw thoughts jotted down in a quick email (sometimes the best posts, btw). Cindy speaks nows:
In a short definition, I would talk about presence as "our deepest capacity to sense into the world and respond appropriately."
When we talk about presence, we're talking about whether a person is really here, with us, fully experiencing and aware of the richness of what is happening in the moment.
We're talking about permeability -- an openness to let new constructs and possibilities in, thus enabling us to respond appropriately versus reacting or even acting based on set principles. We may have a principle to "stay the course" or "stand firm" but there are times when we can sense that it's appropriate to veer off course or yield.
We're talking about allowing ourselves to be impressionable -- at New Ventures West, they like to talk about being like "soft clay," allowing your client's world to impress upon you, so you can more fully feel your client's world and take another world into your own experience.
Many call this "mindfulness," but it goes beyond being "mind"-ful (mentally aware of what is present) to include a sense of interconnectedness with whomever and whatever is around us. One can be quite mindful and still remote (although some folks do make distinctions between being "present" and being "connected," I tend to link them).
My definition would include a sense of being present to mind (thoughts), heart (emotions), body (sensations), and spirit (interconnectedness with others and to what is invisible as well as visible in the universe) -- I know, a tall order!
I would also include the concepts of permeability and impressionability, since no matter how hard we try, we are conditioned by our history to pay attention to some things and not to others, to make meaning from certain parts of experience and not others -- in short, no matter how well-intentioned and evolved and educated we are, we all have a particular "structure of interpretation" that shapes how we let parts of experience in and not others.
If we cultivate -- in our bodies and nervous systems -- an ability to open up our lenses on the world, to become less sure of ourselves and more curious, we become more present to more of our experience as well as others' experiences with us.
You can tell when someone escapes to their thoughts and loses presence by that faraway look in their eyes or that disconnected sound in their voices. They don't notice the sounds in the room or the temperature or the lighting or the emotions. Some get "lost" in their thoughts, disconnected to their own emotions, sensations, body, and spirit in the endless world of thoughts. Others get similarly lost in their emotions, while others lose themselves in sensations and physical experience. Regardless, there is a loss of presence when we are overly tuned into a single part of experience, at the expense of the whole.
When it comes to helping writers access their unique "voice," being (becoming) present to one's unique experience in its fullness allows "voice" to come through.
No matter how "present" we become, we still have unique histories and opportunities to notice cause and effect in the world, thus our "voice" will always be different if we allow the fullness of our experience (head/heart/gut/soul/community/environment) to come through in our writing!
If we are deeply present, then we have access to depth in our voice and we can respond appropriately (to write and not to be "lost" in perfectionistic, critical thoughts), bringing our voice into the world.
Thanks, Cindy. And may the presence of gratefulness and love be with all my readers this Thanksgiving holiday.
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Posted by: Luke Razzell | Nov 25, 2004 at 02:40 AM
Evelyn, thanks for this post. It's quite an interesting idea to think that we have within ourselves many of the answers we might be seeking, if only we'd take a moment to listen.
Somehow this post seemed to reflect the thoughts of Ben Saunders, who skiied some 1000 miles in arctic cold alone. He says he did this to show human potential, because he feels we use only 5% of our potential as humans. A recording of his speech at Pop! Tech can be heard here:
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail254.html
BTW, I came to your weblog via Hugh McLeod. Keep up the excellent work! :-)
Posted by: Mike Rohde | Nov 30, 2004 at 09:15 AM