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"Your reflections on presence ran through many of the conversations during your last workshop and is also a continuing theme in your written works and elsewhere. Could you condense your views on this into an easily understandable, everyday definition? What's necessary to become more present in every moment?"

My personal sense of presence that I kind of carry around with me is along the lines of "Somebody has to be there first before acting." The more one is there, the better the results in whatever you're doing - more precision, subtlety, relevance...and much less dispersion and depletion. When you watch someone who is good at this, you can sometimes feel like they're actually stretching out the walls of possibility in a given situation, literally creating open space. Much of this comes only through time and experience, eventual understanding that how one does something, not the specifics of action, is what impacts others most. In thinking of people I know who have exceptional presence, they all embody these common traits, which I hope serves as a decent working definition:

~ Open receptivity and panoramic perception

~ Attentiveness and conviction in engagement

~ Unselfconscious equanimity and generosity

~ Close, conscious proximity to essential priorities

~ Self-generated enthusiasm and inspiration

I hesitate to give a single example of this, because there are so many variations in tone, mood and forms of expression, but here's someone with obvious presence who also happens to be talking about the subject...



~ Darrell Calkins

The word wakefulness is a synonym for mindfulness. Wakefulness is described by the American physician Jon Kabat-Zinn as a state of mindful awareness. By being fully awake in the present moment, Kabat-Zinn suggests that we can live fully, with great awareness and intent, which has the potential to give us and those around us an improved sense of peace, joy and well-being.

"Mindfulness is often spoken of as the heart of Buddhist meditation. It's not about Buddhism, but about paying attention. That's what all meditation is, no matter what tradition or particular technique is used.

In Asian languages, the word for mind and the word for heart are the same. So if you're not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you're not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.

Mindfulness is not about getting anywhere else - it's about being where you are and knowing it. We are talking about awareness itself: a whole repertoire of ways of knowing that virtually all come through the senses.

My definition of healing is coming to terms with things as they are, so that you can do whatever you can to optimize your potential, whether you are living with chronic pain or having a baby. You can't control the universe, so mindfulness involves learning to cultivate wisdom and equanimity- not passive resignation-in the face of what Zorba the Greek called the full catastrophe of the human condition."

Jon Kabat-Zinn

"It is up to us to devise our own rituals. I feel that ritual rises from the earth. If we slow down and listen to the land we are on, we will know what to do. Our rituals must speak to the particular ways we've been shaped, or misshaped, by our culture. One of the values of ritual is that it has the capacity to derange us, to shake us out of old forms. We need that derangement, because the current arrangement isn't working. We have ceremonies, but we come out of those pretty much the same as when we went in. You're supposed to emerge from a ritual wondering what the hell just happened."

~ Francis Weller



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"Perhaps the most important life skill is the ability and willingness to learn.

By learning new skills we increase our understanding of the world around us and equip ourselves with the tools we need to live a more productive and fulfilling life, finding ways to cope with the challenges that life, inevitably, throws at us.

Learning involves far more than thinking; it involves the whole personality - senses, feelings, intuition, beliefs, values and will. Learning occurs when we are able to:

Gain a mental or physical grasp of the subject.
Make sense of a subject, event or feeling by interpreting it into our own words or actions.
Use our newly acquired ability or knowledge in conjunction with skills and understanding we already possess.
Do something with the new knowledge or skill and take ownership of it."
Life Skills

I really like this website, especially the underlying tone of simple, clean "Here you go," with no in-your-face "If you pay more, we'll give you all you need!" It's a nicely assembled puzzle of the various directions, categories and specific life skills that one can explore easily, presented with an honest, pragmatically guiding voice. Just a basic tour already provides a solid introduction for looking more sanely at the human landscape of personal engagement.

Recommended,

Darrell Calkins

Darrell CalkinsA Star Who Transcended Music, Art and Fashion

"J'apprends la nouvelle du départ de David Bowie et mes pensées et mon coeur se tournent vers toi... Vous êtes liés à jamais tous les deux...sa musique et ton travail...main dans la main... Les moments magiques, intenses, sacrés lorsque nous l'entendions vivre ses chansons, lorsque chaque note, chaque mot, chaque fragment de sa voix nous guidaient et nous invitaient à le suivre... Merci à lui... Je pense à toi, à la profonde tristesse que tu dois ressentir en ce jour... Et je suis profondément triste...Sound and Vision... Station to Station... Never get old..."

"Music has gone into the dark age again. RIP DB."

"Massive waves and waves of emotional-spiritual power coming out of a place I don't know, but one I could see you occupying with this great artist... Such a profound, mysterious intuition in Bowie. I don't know what to feel or think right now after such a loss and end of an epoch..."

"David Bowie has been such a part of my life, thanks to you. So many songs with such powerful experiences intertwined... And wanted to reach out with an embrace... And gratitude..."

"David Bowie, with all great visionaries...his full out engagement was always unnerving, always made me look where I was afraid to go...more real, raw and uncontrollable, alive...to live a greater life, a larger life, more inclusive with life, and more solitary with life. I feel your presence in his music, there's no way to separate the two of you...this morning it helps me to empathize and feel his loss with you."

Very kind. Thank you.

"I breathe real deep when the movie gets real, when the star turns 'round... And I'm awake in an age of light and living it because of you..."



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