Practicing presence is risky

Practicing presence is risky. When I am willing to sit with whatever is arising in the present moment, I give myself permission to actually know what I know and feel what I feel. This is the impulse and the outcome of awakening. To be authentic. To be free. And yet, the pathway to freedom is riddled with a lifetime of the feelings and truths I have been avoiding. I spent so much of my life being taught to not know what I know and not feel what I feel, that awakening itself is simultaneously liberating and terrifying.

In our culture, we learn to play so many games with each other, answering to old ideas of safety that require us to abandon our connection to truth. We have confused love with playing these games and so our knowing stays just out of reach, too dangerous to acknowledge. But as we come into deeper connection with ourselves, it seems inevitable for these superficial games we play to stop working. The desire for authenticity, for the embodiment of our divinity, compels us to see the truth revealed in all aspects of our lives.

So this practice can feel risky. The protections that I created so early on to survive can feel like life or death when they begin to fall away. Meeting the truth means meeting those old fears from the past and then, in a courageous attempt to not abandon myself, I sense into a responsibility to start living from that exquisite knowing. As I practice and heal, there is more love available to be with whatever I discover without the chokehold of all or nothing thinking, without the fear of abandonment or persecution (or at least to more easily sit in the face of it). The practice of presence is risky and powerful and ultimately, freeing. And in a world where the games we have been playing are being revealed in more and more outrageous ways, it seems more critical than ever to let ourselves know what we know.