so presence practicing of presence is a good preparation should life present you with an enormous challenge an immediate an emergency that needs to be dealt with immediately so that the emergency does not overwhelm you you you can face it um that's one thing but there's another form of overwhelm that's to do with the uh the thinking mind so you have some problems in your life and uh or maybe a succession of problems that's you why you become overwhelmed you have several problems not Emer absolute emergencies but difficulties in your life somebody close to you dies
and you lose your job the next day and then you get home the day and your wife has left you or your husband left you or whatever many things suddenly I can't take it anymore I'm so over well okay so here we're talking this is a somewhat different situation from the actual immediate emergency uh this overwhelm is produced by the thinking mind trying to find some kind of coping with an impossible seemingly imposs possible situations that you cannot actually do anything about right now at some point you can take action to to solve situations but
right now because it's not an emergency so right now you just have all these problems arising in your life here's your the my investments have collapsed if you had any uh my bank account is empty I can't pay my rent can't stand it all these things are could lead to overwhelming but what is the overwhelm is uh the thinking mind uh creating havoc in your mind oh my God you I can't take anymore what can I do my life is come to an end I can't cope with it ET that and there you need to
take action and here again a preparation for that should it happen that that in your life you are faced with several problems occurring in a short space of time uh to practice presence in your daily life again is a wonderful preparation for coping with a series of problems that may arise in the short space of time in your life so that's why it's very important to practice presence when things are going relatively okay so that what I call Presence Power grows in you and as Presence Power grows in you uh when these situations happen you
are able to take your attention out of the chaotic thinking mind and bring your attention into the present moment in whatever way through your breathing or your we but don't believe your mind when it tells you I can't do it now I can't I've got I need to think about my problems I can't I can't do presence now it's impossible this this thought is a lie if you have been practicing presence and then you have this thought and says I can't do know there's no point in you don't believe in every thought that comes into
your mind that's another great practice don't believe in every thought that comes into your mind your thought says I can't do it now there's no point of course you can take a conscious breath there's nobody who cannot take a conscious breath if you decide to take a conscious breath and if you don't believe your mind it tells you you can't do it then you take it from Just Breath on a practical level uh physical movement helps if you feel overwhelmed uh go out into nature and breathe consciously there and take in your surroundings nature is
a very healing thing when your life is be especially when your life is becoming chaotic go into nature even if you live in a city there will be nature somewhere maybe you have a backyard maybe you have there a big par where you can go there will be nature somewhere you can get out of the city even better so you go into nature and nature can help you become present it's more easy it's easier to be present in nature than to be present in a city once presentence power grows in you it make hardly any
difference or you may still have a preference for nature but you can can be as present in a city too but in the early stages of presence arising in you nature is very helpful so when when life becomes so a burden to you then go into nature and bring your attention to your sense perceptions and your breathing be there fully and it can liberate you to some extent it liberates you from this mental overwhelm this was perhaps the interesting story from my early life when I was a child I was I didn't have a happy
childhood well there were some happy moments yes in fact this is what I'm going to talk about now on the home my life my home life was not happy because my family environment was chaotic and a lot of screaming and anger and uh hor my parent meant well but they were in the grip of their own unconscious conditioning they couldn't help it so I was not happy there was very unhappy at school too so I carried this unhappiness and at some I don't know how old I was maybe 10 I got a bicycle for Christmas
so I was able to get out of the city it wasn't it was a mediumsized city so I got took like 15 minute bik ride and I would be out it wasn't Grand nature like just corn fields and hedges and trees and little grows but it was nature so I I was I got out of the city many times on my bike and the moment I reached nature I felt so much better and there was one thought that repeated it itself every time I did this it repeated itself in my mind and that thought said
I didn't fully understand what it meant by just thought that this will always be here this will always be here this will always be here and when this refer to Nature so I this intutive realization there's a human made World which was the world of unhappiness for me and there was the natural world which represented The Liberation from unhappiness and and he represented well-being and and Harmony uh so that's and by first but that was my first spiritual uh experience in life was that many many times so nature is wonderful in a way you could
people may not realize the world that you inhabit consists primarily of human made things and natural things you can divide all your sensory perceptions into human made things that surround you all the things Furniture cars buildings utensils everything human made and then you have nature even as I sit here in my room I can see all the human made things and then there's nature here's look out of the window there's trees this nature and I've got some plants here potted plants look at the plants this the human way world and there's there's a plant and
there's another one behind me it's a rubber plant it is and that's natural and it's interesting to see that you have these these two Dimensions the human made things and the natural things and then of course there's always the sky sky is all even if you're in the middle of a huge City you can't see a single tree there still the sky is still there and the sky is a a beautiful thing that actually can represent the inner consciousness this is why Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven this which in my translation is the
dimension of spaciousness which is an inner Dimension which is presence so Jesus talking about the Kingdom of Heaven Dimension Kingdom of Heaven vast spaciousness is the inner spaciousness of presence Buddha talked about sunata usually translated as emptiness but a better translation is spaciousness again as an inner State a realization of this inner Dimension all pointing to that it all comes together it's only there's only one truth one true teaching comes in just different forms so overwhelm with actual emergencies and then there's the overwhelm by your mind and that you can do something about and get
ready for it because we all get challenged and we're living in a time when collectively humanity is going to be challenged more and more so there will be challenges that affect every one of us there have already been some and there are some now Collective challenges so you're either prepared for them or you're not if you're not prepared you you'll become very unhappy and you won't be able to cope but if you're prepared it will the the challenges that humanity is facing will be an Inseparable part of the Awakening of humanity humans don't awaken even
other life forms don't awaken unless they are challenged deeply that is part of the evolution of Consciousness so it's all good what looks bad on the surface from a deeper higher perspective is all good and it all makes sense be ready for the challenges in life it's incredibly important to grow in presence so to speak to the Presence Power can manifest itself more fully through you presence itself is timeless of course but your ability to to become a vessel for presence a conduit for presence that be that grows in time because here we inhabit the
dimension of time and yet presence is the Transcendent Dimension that is timeless for
