Tag: Michael Brown

• Activating Inner Compassion.

  “The Presence Process” by Michael Brown

  Activating Inner Compassion

  The Intent to re-establish a loving relationship with our child self activates the procedure of learning how to become our own parent. Connecting with our child self calls us to step onto the pathway of self-nurturing, a pathway that is paved with compassion. This pathway invites us to overcome issues we unconsciously have with our own parents by reaching into a place where only forgiveness can take us. Every effort that we make to re-establish a loving relationship with our child self is rewarded with an every-increasing sense of present moment awareness.

  Many of us in this world appear to be very helpful, but when it comes to the necessary ability of knowing how to nurture ourselves, we discover that we are at a loss. We also realize that we tend to feel a deep sense of guilt whenever we attempt to do anything real and loving for ourselves. This is because it is only our unconscious sense of helplessness and neediness that drives us to sacrifice ourselves in the name of helping others. The behavior of running around and trying to help everyone to our own detriment is always fueled by the reflection we see of our own helpless plight mirrored in the world around us. We cannot give away what we do not have, so only when we learned how to truly nurture and unconditionally love ourselves do we develop the propensity for authentic service. Unless we consciously step into the present moment and own our life, our ability to be truly of assistance in this world will remain shallow and ineffectual. The first step in learning how to nurture and unconditionally love ourselves is to understand which aspect of our being is really suffering and needing our attention.”

  As adults, we experience myriad physical, mental and emotional states of imbalance, and when we do, we usually do everything in our power to numb, or distract ourselves from our plight. Or else we run to someone for attention. When we live in a time-based paradigm, what we are unable to see is that none of our physical, mental, and emotional difficulties stem from what is happening to us right now, even though they are clearly reflected in and by what is happening to us right now.

  During Session Four, we were encouraged to allow ourselves to feel all our pains and discomforts without fear or judgment. By allowing ourselves to have this experience, the realization to which we are opening ourselves is that all our pain and discomforts carry and emotional signature. The identity of this emotional signature will be one of the many emotions that arise from the trinity of fear, anger and grief.”

  Throughout The Presence Process, we call this emotional signature “the emotional charge”. We may identify this emotional charge by a variety of names ranging from fear to rage to grief. This emotional charge is an unpleasant feeling that we will literally do anything not to feel. As we progress through The Presence Process, it will become clearer to us that it is the emotional charge crouched behind our pains and discomforts that fuels our compulsion to metaphorically run from the present moment and into distraction. By reacting to this emotional charge, we lunge free Presence to pretence. We sidestep from authenticity to drama.

  We also know by now where this emotional charge is really anchored. We have already been shown how to track it back in time. To recap: if we look back over our life, and instead of viewing our past experiences as physical circumstances we choose instead to see them as a re-occurrence of emotional signatures, we will see a clear pathway of similar emotional signatures extending all the way back into our childhood. This pathway reveals to us that the imbalances that we feel today, be they physical, mental or emotional, have nothing to do with our present adult life. They are merely reflected in it. This pathway shows us that all our experiences of imbalance were initiated by encounters that we had before we turned seven. And so one of the biggest revelations we can have at this point is:

  It is not our adult experience that requires healing: it is our childhood.

  From the moment we turned our backs on our childhood so that we might become acceptable in the adult world, our child self has been using physical, mental, and emotional states of imbalance to attempt to attract our attention. Our child self has been attempting to attract our attention so that we can consciously and compassionately attend to the unintegrated emotional state in which we left it. Until we consciously attend to the unintegrated experiences of our childhood, our adult experiences will continue to be an unconscious unfolding “effect” of our unintegrated childhood.

  In “time”, our adult experience is an echo of our childhood.

  Until we integrate our childhood, our adult life will continue to be an seemingly chaotic and disconnected experience sewn together with what appears to be randomly occurring physical, mental and emotional imbalance. It is crucial at this point in The Presence Process that we understand that an unbalanced adult experience is “an effect”, not a cause of anything. It is crucial that we understand this because it is futile tampering with an effect of anything, as it is only at the point of cause that any real change can be initiated. The only value our adult symptoms of imbalance is that we can use them as clues to successfully navigate our awareness to their childhood causes. Unless we embark on such a journey, we remain ineffectual.

  The pursuit of happiness, in other words, the drive to control and sedate external circumstances so that we can feel at ease within ourselves, is nothing more that a behavior that stems form attempting to fiddle with an effect to adjust the cause. This is impossible. Such behavior leads us further and further away from our inherent joy that is already available and waiting for us within our child self. The child self is our harbor of innocence, joy and creativity. When we ignore its state of imbalance, we trade our inherent innocence, joy and creativity, and instead invest our energy in attempting to be happy by “making something of ourselves”. And so we are faced with another major revelation:

  Unless we are prepared to reach back through time and space and rescue our child self by bringing it into the safety of the present moment, where we can give it unconditional love and attention it is calling for, we as adults will never experience authentic peace.

  The intention to metaphorically reach back and rescue our own child self can be thought of as a form of time travel. However, this form of time travel is not science fiction. It does not take place “out there”, and its purpose is not to visit other far-off places. It takes place within us, and its Soul purpose is for us to compassionately reconnect with a particular attribute of our own Being from which we have become separated and alienated. This is an inside job that consciously connects our present moment with our past. It invites unconscious behaviors triggered by our past experiences to the surface of our present life so that we can consciously attend to them right now. If approached with commitment, consistency, and sincerity, this inner work releases our child self of its pain and discomfort. The unfolding consequences of rescuing our child self is that our present adult self will gradually be released from the emotional charge that is the source of all our distraction and imbalance. In other words, it is our child self that is the caretaker of our emotional charge. Emotionally it is in charge.
  Michael Brown.

  One more paragraph….

  If we have not done work with our child self prior to this moment, then it is important to realize that our relationship with our child self right now will be similar to that of a parent who has for many years abandoned their own child. At about the age of seven, most urbanized humans begin preparing to enter the adult world. This requires a willingness to turn around and walk away from our childhood. As the years unfold, it is very unlikely that we choose to look back or even consider the state of the child we once were. In most cases, we lay a blanket of forgetfulness over that aspect of our Being and openly admit that we cannot remember much of what happened when we were children. We can no longer see our child self, yet it sees everything. We seemingly no longer feel its pain, yet all our adult pain is a mirror of its unresolved feelings. We may ask, “Why must we now go back and deal with the past? Can we not just leave it alone and carry on with life?”

  Our unfortunate predicament is that the pain and suffering of our unresolved childhood issues follow us as an emotional trail of imbalance that pollutes our adult experiences in an ongoing patter that is as regular and punctual as a time piece. And this timepiece is not neutral, as the mechanical watches we wear on our wrists. The ticking of this childhood timepiece and the effects it has on our present life is what maybe thought of as “emotional time”. Wearing a watch and using it as an instrument to navigate the present moment of our life is different. It is a conscious experience. We can choose to remove the watch at any moment and no longer be exposed to its influence. However, the debris of “emotional time” is constantly invading our present moment and distracting our attention. For years, we can sedate and control the effects of the childhood debris which leak out into our adult experiences, but sooner or later it will rear up like an angry snake and challenge the very fiber of our Being. It is not necessary to get to a crisis point in our life before we begin paying attention to it, but sometimes a crisis is exactly what it takes for our desperate abandoned child self to harness our attention.

  Yet the moment we turn inward and start sincerely attending to our child self with the unconditional love, compassion, and the devotion it deserves, our physical, mental and emotional states of imbalance gradually begin subsiding. This is the real work, and it realizes very real consequences. Once our child self comes to peace, so do we. It is that simple and that powerful. If we are not at peace, it is our child self that is in conflict. There is nowhere else to look, and there is no other solution but to compassionately reach inward and lovingly attend to this precious part of our Being. Only when we begin to accomplish this task, we will be able to truly understand what it is meant by the words:

  “Only when we become as children again, can we enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:2-4)

  January 13, 2011

  child, childhood, Michael Brown, moment, our inner, pain, past, present, rescuing, suffering, The Presence Process, time, travelers

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• Attend to me.

  In the past few days I have been tangled and untangled, in the present and in the past, with my mother and with my boss, young and then old, a child then an adult, feelings from the past trickling into the present, until I feel frozen in unknowing how to be, how to respond etc.

  The overall feelings I have is being neglected and under the rule if you will or under the care of a self absorbed person.

  My brother had me looking into The Presence Process book for a section he was curious about, and ironically or not, it was the words I needed to explain my past few days.

  I was perfectly set up to revisit the environment and the nature of my relationship with my mother, how she acted and how I then felt.

  It was so perfect, that even the home/office was falling apart and when my boss left the office she was replaced with a man who was irresponsible and a risk to be with.

  The choreography of the Universe leaves me shaking my head in awe.

  There is a line in the previous post that I took from the book, “An Unbalanced adult is an unattended child.”

  Looking back at my childhood, if I were to put one word on how I felt, it would be ‘unattended’, and I was given a tour back there via my experiences at work in the past few weeks.

  It’s re-creation was remarkable and my the feelings that surfaced were perfect little time travelers from the past.

  The resemblances between the two women brought to me the exact emotions I needed to feel.

  What kept me silent at work was that I was confused as to what now? I did question my boss about her choice making, and was met with defense, and even the defense was perfectly my mother.

  Each time there would be one more item from the past that completed a perfect picture of the dynamics that create the atmosphere where a child is left to its own devices.

  I could clearly see the shoes my boss stood in and why she made the choices she made, her inner constitution couldn’t take one more day in our office.
  It mattered less to her the kind of individual she left in charge or who was under his care, what mattered most was her rest and her sanity, she fled.

  And like my mother who ran away repeatedly in my childhood and in my teenage years she came back feeling better, not wanting to explain or hear my side.

  Feelings of resentment of her being able to escape and me being left to deal were perfectly felt.

  My mother left my father in charge, who wasn’t really a take charge kinda man, so I had to step up long before my age had this kind of responsibility tools.

  So, not only were we left alone with a pedophile, we are left with me, a unattended child taking care of unattended children.

  In a home that was falling apart or held together on a string, whose cupboards were lacking, mountains of clothes, piles of kids, endless disasters looming.

  As I sit here today, I am still silent and feeling.

  I know that the messenger/boss was delivering my past, that I am to feel my feelings releasing this fear of being unattended, and attend to me.

  What I love the most is that at the end of the day it is now my honor to attend to me.

  I am not stuck in the office, I am no longer a child, there are not children who are in vital need of care, I am not little girl who is unable to defend herself, it is not my worry if the furnace breaks or the water pipes freeze etc.

  I am able to witness and now see the scene before me and not feel that I am responsible and unattended.

  I am grateful for the set up for my boss playing the messenger, and for me being released from the fear of being left unattended.

  Unattended.

  Oh the ways I want to care for the unattended little girl in me…

  I will attend to me.

  January 5, 2011

  childhood, emotions, fear, integrating, memories, messenger, Michael Brown, neglected, past, present, The Presence Process, unattended

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• Dismissing the Messenger.

  In Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process, he speaks of dismissing the messenger.

  “The first step is to acknowledge that the person or event setting us up has nothing to do with what is actually happening; they are just “the messenger” (Mess-ender). They are reflecting a memory that is surfacing from our unintegrated past. It is pointless to “shoot the messenger” because the Universe has an unlimited supply of them! So the first step in the emotional cleansing process is to dismiss the messenger. Internally, we can thank them for their great service and let them be on their way. In other words, instead of reacting to and venting at them we can say, “I could use a little time alone right now.” In the beginning, this step of gracefully side-stepping our urge to react may require courage and powerful self control because it requires breaking our life-long habit of knee-jerking into drama.”

  Step two Get the Message. The second step is to not automatically resort to our predictable yet unconscious physical, mental and emotional drama, but instead get the message. We have practiced this too. To accomplish this, we turn our attention inward by describing to ourselves the nature of our emotional reaction we experienced from being set up. We find one word that captures our emotional reaction. We say out loud to ourselves, “I feel angry. I feel sad. I feel hurt. I feel alone. I feel….” We keep searching in this way until we find the word that resonates, physically with our emotional reaction. If we are angry, our face may flush, or our hands may buzz, or we may feel a downward movement in our solar plexus. Once we have accessed the word that describes reaction that the set up has triggered within us, then we have completed step two.

  Step three: Feel it. Instead of externalizing what is occurring to us by resorting to blame, we must now consciously internalize the experience. We must feel it. We have practiced this step as well. This particular step is a remarkable part of this whole procedure because instead of projecting our emotions out into the world as we normally did when we got set up in the past, we are now choosing to internalize and thus contain the experience. This is not to be confused with the act of suppressing our experiences. Our conscious choice is to internalize the setup so that we can learn from it is not suppression: it is discovery. It is also called “containment.” Suppression is the act of pretending it did not happen. Our choice to now be present with whatever upsets us enables us to realize that we can physically feel within our body what we initially thought was happening “out there”. So whatever the emotion is that we have successfully named is what we must allow ourselves to feel without censorship or judgment. In essence, what the messenger (mess-ender) has done, or has been attempting to do, depending on how many times we have been triggered by this same event is to bring to our attention the fact that we have an internal blockage that we resist feeling our way through.

  Step four: Come Pass On. Once we feel this emotional blockage as a physical sensation within our own body, we are ready to transmute it with “divine alchemy” by moving it out of our body by applying the power of our compassionate Presence. We have already prepared ourselves for this step as well. Take a careful look at the word “compassion.” Phonetically and visually it reveals itself as “come pass on”. Compassion throughout The Presence Process means: You can come to me and I will let you pass on without interference (entering fear) or judgment (agenda).

  At this point in the procedure we might justifiably exclaim, “oh come on! Here we are feeling angry, our hands buzzing, and our solar plexus all tightened up, and now we are suddenly expected to switch to compassion? Get real!”

  Getting ‘real’ is exactly what we must intend. Activating compassion when we are in the midst of an emotional reaction involves inclusion of our child
  self. To accomplish this, it is important to remind ourselves that the emotional reaction that was triggered within us by the messenger has nothing to do with our present adult life. It is a cry from our child self. It is an echo from the past calling for our attention because only our attention can restore real balance to the quality of all our experiences. We choose to respond to what we are experiencing emotionally therefore by closing our eyes and picturing our child self feeling exactly the same way we are as a consequence of being set up by the messenger. We have already practiced this too. By metaphorically embracing our child self, we automatically activate compassion. We are saying, “you can come to me, and I will love you unconditionally until what frightens you, making you angry, or making you sad passes.”

  When we become sincere in approaching our child self, our chest will automatically start to well up with the emotion that we have resisted
  feeling for so long. This suppressed emotion will surface in waves and dissolve into tears. We will feel the energy moving up and from our solar
  plexus, through our chest area, into and through our throat and eventually out of our body. Often we may even have the sensation of heat literally
  peeling off our body.

  Once this experience of release subsides, we will enter a sense of relief and peace. Through consistent application of The Emotional Cleansing Process, we will discover that the messenger that had repeatedly triggered us over and over again will not return. Why should it when we have consciously received the message? Sometimes, it will take going through this emotional cleansing procedure two and three times over a couple of days or weeks to restore balance to a particular experience. With devotion and commitment, balance will be restored. The more diligently we apply The Emotional Cleansing Process, the more proficient we become at wielding it and subsequently the more efficient it becomes. So the new pathway of learned responsible behavior is:
  Dismiss the messenger – get the message – feel it – com pass on.

  We can apply this technique to solve disagreements, to heal physical ailments, and to integrate any situation of conflict and confusion arising in our life. Every time we apply it, we will be equally astounded by the realization that we can transform the quality of any experience “out there” by moving consciously inot ourselves and compassionately making the internal adjustment. This technique confirms, without a doubt, reflection of our internal emotional condition. It proves that making peace has nothing to do with the other party. It shows us that an unbalanced adult is an unattended child. It also reveals that tears detoxify the Soul and that compassion is the key to reopening the doorway of our heart.”

  Michael Brown

  January 5, 2011

  child, emotions, feelings, messenger, Michael Brown, past, suppressed, The Presence Process

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