There is a difference between awareness and presence – and making this distinction can help you to understand what you are really working towards in yoga and meditation.
Awareness
As humans we have the capacity to observe our thoughts, feelings and emotions as objects separate from us in some way. It is not always easy, but most certainly possible. To get clarity on these objects we need to observe in a way that is free from judgement or justification – otherwise we are actually still bound to their content or what I refer to as their ‘pull’. When you finally can observe in this way for a sustained time, with a final clamour, this pull literally dissolves. In this moment where there is nothing to observe, you experience yourself as awareness – clear, alive, open.
Presence
The space this creates stirs up deeper and more subtle thoughts, feelings and emotions which pushes you on to sustain an even greater sense of objective observation. It will force you to question ‘truths’ you had absolutely taken for granted, sometimes leaving you on shaky ground. You have to be brave here, keep noticing the same patterns playing out – only different stories – and you continue on.
‘Stepping back’ to observe ourselves with an objective awareness is a powerful way to a self-understanding that begins to change that self. It is necessary when you are dealing with emotional states that are uncomfortable to look at in every way – from shame and guilt to grief and downright fear. At some point, you are pushed on beyond this practice because presence is coming through. Presence has the capacity to ‘hold’ emotional conflicts without separating from them. They are felt and experienced within a sense of deep steadiness. As this happens, the experience is of fulness and richness. Emotional states (the very ones we spend years supressing) become the means to experiencing this fulness.
Presence helps us to become an integrated human being. We live in this world, we have passions and desires and we are real. We are not striving to be ‘loving’ or ‘compassionate’ – these states arise spontaneously.
Experiencing presence clarifies why life felt empty before more than anything anyone can ever tell you or explain. It feels like you are permeating every pore of your skin, every cell of your body, all of experience that had ever been taken for granted.
In yogic terms this ‘integration’ is where the energy travelling up the spine to the crown chakra then settles back down at the heart centre. It is when you are willing to give up the highs and bliss of the heavens and be right here. Not easy. Many teaching focus on bringing you an experience of the highs. The view that these must be the aim of yoga is completely relative to the suffering and pain that is associated with life and being. It also means that people approaching yoga write off their chances of finding fulfillment because it is associated with smiling bhuddas, saints and sages giving up possessions, loved ones and wandering the earth. Maybe you don’t have to.