The Gift of Being Present
/Recently, I started to drive again. I took a couple of lessons to bring me up to speed in driving in the UK, and then I just started doing short drives. I use it mostly to take Rufus to walk on the Heath or to go for food shopping.
When I was still getting used to driving again, I felt pretty scared and I was paying attention to everything.
As time went by, I started getting more confident and nowadays I do what many people do, which is driving in automatic mode.
One of the things that started bugging me, was forgetting if I had locked the car or not. Having to come back to check. Doubting and double doubting. Until one day, I decided I did not want to doubt or have to come back to check. All I changed was, I bring myself to the present, I make sure that I watch myself lock the car, I listen to the noise and the lock going down, and that’s it.
Now I don’t worry if I locked the car. I know I did, because I actually paid attention when I was doing it. That is the same thing as being present.
A few years back, I knew that something was not ok with me when I went to a cash machine, typed in my code, selected how much money I wanted, removed my card and then just walked away. I had gone quite some way down the road when I remembered and noticed what I had done. When I went back the money was no longer there. For me, at that time, this was a wake up call. I really felt that something was not ok. The way I was choosing to go through my life not noticing, like a robot or zombie, did not feel healthy. More so, I’m not really keen on loosing money.
November 2018, I decided to take myself to do a silent meditation for 10 days. I wanted to explore what would happen when I could not speak to anyone else, not even engage in eye contact, I could not read or write, no TV and no phone. 24 hour/7 for 10 days. There was no distraction from myself.
I shared my thoughts on my experience in a video that you can find here: www.pelagiapais.com/blog/vipassana What I did not share was how even the act of going to the toilet for a poo was changed during those 10 days.
I don’t know about you, but I like taking something with me to read when I go to the toilet for longer than a wee. Now, a lot a people may frown on this, or to my tasteless mention of poo, but there is a reason.
I take something to read, because it distracts me from the act, as historically I have been a bit anxious in this department, after being constipated for quite a lot of my life growing up.
During those 10 days, there was nothing to distract me. I attempted to read the labels of whatever detergents or packages were there, but this was not possible in all the toilets as some did not have anything. So, even in the act of pooping I had to become present. There was no distraction. And after a few days, I understood that it was possible, that I did not need a distraction, that I could be fully present for a process that is so important to the body. There was no other option. It just needed to take whatever time my body needed to expel the things that were not essential or toxic to it’s healthy functioning. I stopped rushing, I started being more present to my body in this process and this somehow fascinated me.
I am a keen observer of life, people, surroundings. I like to notice. Since being more conscious on my personal growth, I have experienced how taking time to notice, taking time to being present allows for picking up on patterns, things I had never seen before. It keeps my curious mind busy with something that could lead me to knowing more about myself, the world and people around me. It keeps me in student mindset. A student of life and what it means to be a human being in this world.
In this world, where everything happens at such a speed, it is very easy to just go on living without noticing or being present.
If like me, you have experienced trauma as a child or adult. If like me, you have learnt the neat trick of disassociating, ie being physically present and seeming engaged, when we are totally checked out and completely not present and not paying attention, being spaced out… then being present becomes even more of a challenge and even more important to practice.
I do not have a memory of many years of my life. I don’t remember much from childhood or of being a teenager. I have certain memories, where I only am able to remember part of the information, but the rest I just can’t seem to recall. Quite a few years in my late twenties and early thirties seem to be mostly an empty space where most of what I can remember is the colour of a dull grey, of not feeling, of just existing like a zombie. Going through the motions, laughing, crying, working, fully functioning, but not feeling a single thing deeply. Everything was kept at the surface. I even thought I was having deep conversations back then, but when I look back I was barely scratching the surface as there was something really deep and scary that I did not remember. It was being kept deeply buried because I was clearly not ready for it to come to the surface. At some point, as a child, I made the decision to hide it so deeply, because I would not be able to survive if I was constantly having to deal with it. As a child, I was not ready to deal with it. So I did a great job of putting it far far away and out of reach.
Disassociating helped me go through most of my life. Anything painful…I would just check out. Any strong emotion...I was out of there. It becomes a habit. I did not know I was doing it for a very very long time. The thing is, not knowing that I was doing it also meant that I was checking out of not only strong moments but of quite a lot of time that were good and positive.
A few months after my body showed me the memory of my childhood sexual abuse, I was attending a Foundation Certificate in Counselling and Psychotherapy (you can read my experience of remembering here). The topic of that weekend was Psychosexual Therapy. The teacher started the day with a simple questionnaire. When was my first sexual experience? How was my first sexual experience? Etc. As she handed out the sheet of paper with these questions, she said in a really soft voice that seemed barely noticeable to me: ‘for some people, like me, my first sexual experience happened as a child’. I looked at the questionnaire feeling panicked, not sure if I had heard right. Was the teacher actually saying that she had been sexually abused as a child? Did dies mean that my first sexual experience was also as a child? I know now, that this was probably the last thing I remember. I carried on with the day. I participated in class. I had conversations with my course colleagues during breaks, I went home, I did normal home things. I woke up the next day, travelled to class, sat down, participated in class, talked to people, etc. I got home, I spoke to my mum. Part of what we had to do during the course was keep a journal about the days we attended classes. My mum knew this, we were chatting and as usual, to make the conversation with her more bearable, I disconnected, I answered some of her questions. But when she mentioned journaling what I had experienced in the weekend, I suddenly realised I could not remember anything. All I could remember was a thick fog that started the moment I questioned if I had heard the words from the teacher right or if I had made it all up, just like my own memory of childhood sexual abuse. I was distraught after the call. It was the first time I was really noticing how much I was not present. How I had simply lived for two whole days without fully being there. On automatic. I started crying deep full sobs. The same deep full sobs of when my body showed me my experience. I could not stop.
The next day I felt raw and my mind was taking me into a whirlwind of doubt. Doubting that I had heard it. Doubting that something had really happened to me as a child. Fear of having made up both of these things. It was like if what I had heard about my teacher was wrong, then I was wrong about my memory. Yet, I viscerally felt in my body, I deeply knew inside of me that what had happened to me was real. I was divided, torn to pieces.
It took me two weeks to find the courage to speak to my teacher. When I finally spoke to her between tears, she confirmed to me that I had heard right and that she had been indeed sexually abused as a child. She wanted to be sensitive about the subject with the knowledge that it could be triggering for a few of us in the group, but for me, as she said it so low, it ended up triggering me even more, because it touched the doubt I had been experiencing since finding out about my own trauma.
This whole experience was another wake up call. It was the first time I really was able to see what it felt to experience being in a disassociating space. Of not being present at all. It was so shocking. It felt like I had wasted two whole days in my life. It was this that allowed me to see that I lived in this state for big chunks of my life. It was through finally seeing it, that I realised how I missed out on most of my first forty years living on this planet.
It is my belief that quite a lot of us have experienced trauma growing up or as adults, or both. Trauma can be experienced in many different ways. Trauma is not what happens to us, but how we experience it (paraphrasing Dr Gabor Mate).
Even if there isn’t any significant trauma in your life, the way our world is built around us, the way we have been raised to expect things to come so quickly to us. The way this world is going fast fast fast… it is not conducive to being present.
Except that now and all of a sudden, we have been brought to a sudden and abrupt halt. We can no longer just go from place to place, moving about quickly. Being distracted. I mean, there is still quite a lot to distract us, even when having to stay at home for most of the time.
But I’ll tell you that what is keeping me sane, at peace and content in these times (not all the time, but most of the time) is being present. When my mind goes into the ‘what if’s’ I gently remind myself to look at what is around me and that I am not somewhere in the future, that right now, whatever I am thinking ‘might’ happen, is not happening to me and my immediate surroundings. There is nothing I can do about the future. Even if I tried to create all sorts of different scenarios, I would not touch the surface of the infinite amounts of possibilities. I don’t know what tomorrow brings. So I might as well start noticing what I choose to do with my time now, today. I can choose what I can do today, the next hour or minute. This all requires practice, and if my sharing and words have touched you in any way, maybe this can help you start this practice too.
Regardless of your life experience and it including trauma or not, the practice of being present, of noticing what we are doing, our thoughts, the people around us is a valuable tool for life. For living a life fully lived.
Maybe you can notice how your body feels when you are showering, the touch of water running down your body and your own hands touching it. Or you can notice the different cloud formations in the sky each day. With spring happening all around us, you might want to choose to look how the colour of the leafs is changing, the different flowers that blossom each day. You may want to notice what sort of feelings and emotions are surfacing for you in these times and just notice how they make you feel and how it feels to actually be present for them, instead of distracting yourself with something else. Maybe you decide to do everything really slow for one day.
The possibilities are endless. All you have to bring with you is curiosity.
And maybe some day, you may find that there isn’t a better gift than being present.
(PS: If you would like to start a practice of noticing and being present in nature, a friend has created a group where we are all invited to notice three things in nature each day and share in the group. Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/695081894566204/)
Pelagia Pais is still figuring out what to call herself and her offer to the world. She is an Intuitive, a Coach, a Healer, a Writer, an Artist and so much more of what lies in between. For now you can read more of what she experiences and shares in her blog ‘It’s not all happiness and coconuts’ (www.pelagiapais.com/blog).
If you are looking for a morning routine to help you ground your energy in yourself, be more present and start the day feeling calm and centred, check her Morning Star Practice - A Standing Guided Meditation here: www.pelagiapais.com/shop. The practice is available in different prices that suit all pockets and is a form of contributing to her work and continued offerings.