Yoga Hobos

The Presence Process, A Healing Journey Into Present Moment Awareness, by Michael Brown might not be considered a yoga book by many, but it is for me. What would constitute a “yoga book” anyway? Pictures of various asana? Discussion of the eight limbs? Considering the fact that The Presence Process has helped me experience Samadhi, I have no problem writing about it here.

A friend I met at a consciousness group meeting recommended The Presence Process to me and I’m glad she did. Should you decide to pick up this book, my guess is that you’ll either decide that it is brilliant or a load of crap. While it speaks truth to me, we’re all experiencing slightly different realities and need different tools, so it may not be truth for you. Allow me to copy a passage to see if it pulls at your heart:

Because we were not unconditionally loved as children, we became uncomfortable within ourselves. This set off a chain of events in which we began to seek that which would restore our inner peace. Because we were not accepted for who we are, we turned away from our authentic Presence and went in search of who we were supposed to be. Our parents asked us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” We believed that if we could live a life that would supply the correct answer to this question, we would then receive the unconditional love that we did not receive as children. This search set in motion the endless “doings” that became our adult life. We tried to prove that we were worthy of being alive by succeeding or by not succeeding. Even though we were already alive, we went in search of our purpose so that we could “earn a living”. The truth behind it all is that what we have really been trying to accomplish is attempting to, “earn a loving”.

The consequence has been imbalance, confusion, separation, lack, and all that stems from the trinity of fear, anger, and grief. The consequence has been a poisonous quest to find meaning and purpose in all that we “do”. Because we have seen no importance in our Being, our inner Presence, we have sought to realize this importance in all our outer “doings”. More than that, we have sought to place great importance on all “the stuff” that we do things with. By believing that all our doings and all the stuff we have enlisted to serve our doings could be the source of our liberation, we have inadvertently used them to build a brick wall between us and what is real. We have used it all to manufacture an illusory gap between our sense of wholeness and ourselves. This gap is the source of all our fear, anger, and grief. This gap is not our purpose, and our purpose can never be found in it. This gap is something we did. This gap is something we made because we could not, were not, and have not been shown how to recognize and appreciate the value of our own Inner Presence.

If The Presence Process has set out to accomplish anything, it has been this: to facilitate us in rescuing ourselves from our endless unconscious array of doings and instead invite us to return to our authentic state of Being. From the beginning, this Process has asked us to stop. To stop and breathe. To stop and watch. To stop and respond. To stop and feel. To stop and pay attention. To stop reacting.

The Presence Process drops a bomb on you about 40-60 pages in. If this bomb was alluded to on the back cover or told to me by my friend, I would not have read the book. I wouldn’t have been open to it. But Michael Brown draws you in so quickly that you come to know that what he suggests needs to be done. This is done over a 10 week process, and for me, the results have been nothing short of miraculous.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Yoga Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.