Presence and understanding

[Steppingfeet]

What do you think is the cause of the resistance that I'm feeling? Trying to maintain this awareness feels like a burden at times. Tolle mentions that awareness is like a light, and when you are aware you are shining light on your being, including the darkness. Maybe the resistance is me struggling to accept and cope with my shadow.

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It's particularly hard when im going to sleep. It's hard to be aware of your body and try to sleep at the same time.

Perhaps you might picture yourself just beginning to learn the scales on the piano and ask why you are not playing like Mozart.

Cultivating presence is a disciplined skill that, like most other skills, requires time, persistence, patience, study, and application of self.

Further, there is a incremental build up of being able to be in the flow of presence more reliably and dependably. One does not go to the gym on the first week expecting to pump away. There is conditioning to be undertaken, soreness and muscle tear to move through, and overall development that increases the capacity to work out.

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Tolle also equates mind with resistance. One of its essential functions - or at least the way it's been conditioned for use on this planet - is to resist what is. To resist surrender. To resist the reality that there is no separate, individual "I". To resist the infinite nature of things. To resist its own (seeming) death.

Therefore it's understandable that any attempt at presence or meditation will be met with resistance. Not only "met with resistance", but trying to abide in stillness with a mind long accustomed to turbulent non-stillness, will create some kickback. Attempting to abide in stillness may even accentuate the raging motion of the mind. Akin to how light makes the shadows sharper and seemingly more pronounced.

I think it takes gentle but persistent practice over a period of time, Folk-love. It is a long road. You can't do it all at once, and you are not going to start out from square one being in a state of presence all day.

Though presence can be practiced anywhere under any seeming outer circumstance, you might try pre-set times in conducive settings.

Meditation is essentially practicing presence. Perhaps finding times for formal meditation would be of aid.

42.9
Ra: "Patience is requested and suggested, for the catalyst is intense upon your plane and its use must be appreciated over a period of consistent learn/teaching."

Please of course ignore if this is unhelpful.

With love/light,
Gary