Presencing

In the movie, Julianne Moore as Alice, a teacher suffering from premature dementia, leaves a message for her soon to be even more disabled self: simple instructions for committing suicide. The still capable speaking to the incapable; so I felt when I came across an old (3 or 4 years ago?) pamphlet I'd written titled Practicing Presencing. 

Almost as if I were reading another's thoughts, I re-encountered my own. I recognize the themes and the pamphlet format, but some of ideas seem as fresh to me as if someone else had thought them first, which, given the way my explorations evolve might well be true, the once scurriers like mice, are then flyers like bats, and now arm-stilt runners like vampire bats; genetic continuity doesn't mean identity. 

Finding this artifact opens up new opportunities for this blog. My posts can be encounters with addressible others, or thought projects, especially stories, or simple exploration of the plenitude, this thing or that made present. A door opens up. (Why always this metaphor?) Can I exploit this opportunity as I did the 2nd person encounters in post after post for a year?

Presences in Our Lives

Presences are all around us.  Consider some:

 

  the other person in the elevator

  the portrait tracking us with its eyes

  the person on the other end of the phone

  the sense of the city all around to someone walking at night

the recognizable voice of a favorite author
rage

  the brilliant idea hovering at the edge of our consciousness

  the TV set incessantly playing in the waiting room

  the submerged rock under the smooth water in the rapids

  the heat of the cup on the table left by a person just departed

A presence is something that manifests itself; we’re aware of it and are confronted by that awareness. A presence is an Other: not me, not mine, not for me, assertive of its own existence, an energy field, exerting influence by provoking response.

A presence can be internalized like a resident foreigner expressing itself within us in the form of voice or image derived from and referring back to the original external presence.

Our sensitivity to the existence of presences is because they, explicitly or implicitly, indicate agents and powers of agency in the world with which we must engage. They serve as the nexus of relevant real world references which facilitate the classification and retrieval of information. Internalized presences serve as mediators between our inner Other and outer Others.

Presences heighten for us our sense of our own presence. We deploy our mental presence in the form of attention in order to operate in the world. Not least, the mutual acknowledgment of presence is the basis of full, free conversation of exploration.

Too many presences and too active, or too few and not active enough, and our mental life suffers. I propose here that we manage the presences in our lives by deliberately furnishing our minds with productive presences of our choice. I call this process ‘presencing’. 

How to Practice Presencing

Our mental wealth can be conceived in terms of the number of active internalized presences within us which provide commentary on the objects of our attention, stimulate us to reflection and reverie, and refer us continually back to the world. 

This inner wealth sent out to rendezvous with particular objects, places, processes or incidents as presences is an expression of our mental affluence so that, while we may not be familiar with, much less expert in, what we encounter, we do see what the observant might see; have thoughts that the intelligent might have and respond as the sensitive might.

A rendezvous is a period of time devoted to the consideration of some particular thing, perhaps 15, 30 or 90 minutes deliberately set aside. It is here that presences are internalized and presencing occurs. The practice of presencing involves the regular scheduling of such rendezvous so as to confirm and deepen presences already internalized or to add new ones.

Every rendezvous has three elements: readiness, reception and response. In the first we get everything set up for the encounter. In the second we take in everything we can.  In the third we ‘seal the deal’ on the internalization by responding in some way to the fact that we’ve been in the presence of the object. In the course of a single rendezvous, we may move from apprehension to acknowledgement, that is, taking in and giving out, several times. 

The whole business is that simple: it’s all a matter of taking some time to look at, think about and link up with some particular thing.  It’s an exercise in active attention like listening to a concerto and whistling it afterwards, or watching a movie and recommending it to a friend, or reading a poem and memorizing it, or seeing an interesting face and trying to sketch it.  These and many more are examples of a kind of investment in our minds that adds to our mental wealth over time as presences interact with each other and the breadth and depth of our appreciation increases.

Tips on How to Practice Presencing

Readiness: Impromptu presencing often happens but just as often our time is fully booked, our attention is so harried by distractions that it starts and flinches at the least excuse. To actually regularly immerse oneself in the presence of something, the help of a datebook may be crucial. Start with a short span of time.  

The object, place, process or incident (hereafter referred to as the object) should be particular, graspable as a whole (though maybe part of something larger, with realistic and ingenuous details, observed directly or as reported on in writing, pictures, recordings….

It’s easy to forget the response phase of presencing so prepare for it by having tools for response on hand: paper, pencil…

Reception: The most important thing is to start attending. However, paying attention for long times can be hard. The session can be divided into two cycles of alternating reception and response (called twicing). Something to do with the hands (doodling for me) can enhance listening as tapping can enhance looking. Stop and look away, then look back when attention fatigues. Allow reverie, provided it is stays tethered to the object.

Make use of some tool for attention. One tactic is to systematically examine the object section by section. Another is to use the Convex Query System, especially Focusing, for question prompts. 

Response: The list is endless of possible ways to acknowledge the rendezvous: descriptions, drawings, maps, models, poems, arguments, analyses, songs, metaphors, tracings of cycles and systems, lists,  diagrams, time lines, genetic trees, before and after comparisons, plans, diary entries, memorizations, speaking aloud, revisiting—the possibilities are endless. 

The richer the response, the more profound the internalization of the presence, but even a ‘tip of the hat’ confirms the encounter.

How Presences Work In Us

An internalized presence may be missing many of the details, even obvious structural components of the original but it will have a characteristic mode of expression we may call its ‘voice’,  

The voice may rather be an image or some other representation and it may be as-if or virtual if the object is not an artifact. A voice is an Other we welcome and host, not wholly strange but not fully assimilated either. It retains its identity by regular referral to its original for revitalization, calibration and news of new developments.

A voice is recognizable by its stance (its take on the world), its style (its strategies of expression) and its sensitivities (its interests). A voice thus performs some of the functions of a mind engaged in critical, creative and conjectural thinking. The voice, still itself, actively contributes to our experience in several ways. 

For instance, by resonating with things around us which partake of its sensitivities, a voice points out new classes of objects worthy of our attention; its stance provides another opinion on what we see. As we seek to express ourselves, the style of the voice provides a standard of comparison and suggests ways to expand our repertoire. 

An internalized presence, a voice may be an attractor around which our thoughts begin to organize, a stimulus for dreams and speculations, a catalyst for internal reconfigurations just waiting to happen, a memorable nucleus with which impressions, facts and knowledge, our ‘owned’ information, are associated.

This active Otherness with its energy, potentiality and power encourages that internal conversation of exploration which is a prime joy of entertaining presences and one of the key features of a healthy mind in vibrant engagement with the world and itself.

Because presences sometimes fade, we need to regularly practice presencing to keep our mental hostel full of interesting guests. 

Mutuality

The world is It and I am I, except when presencing.

When we acknowledge ourselves in the presence of something, we are together with it in certain significant ways. We share with it overlapping vicinities; we are close to each other. We share a portion of history; we keep company with one another in this moment, this now, this immediate present. Not least, through the bestowal of attention, there is a bestowal of dignity, that is, a recognition of each other’s existence as worthy, estimable, honorable. 

Presencing is a ceremony of mutual regard. The relationship changes from one of 1^st vis-à-vis 3^rd person to a 2^nd person, I and you, reciprocity. 

Granted the Other, after its first move of manifestation, may not have ears to listen to us, but we do attend to it and even as we do, we and its increasingly internalized presence engage in a give and take conversation that is true to the Other as we know it. And, it must be noted, often there is public interaction between us, and not just when the Other is animate: a molecule may respond to the manipulations of the chemist.

The internalized presence then serves as a mediator between world and us. It continually makes reference back to its original and to the world in which it resides and so presenting itself to us internally as an interpreter, an ambassador, a reminder. At the same time, the voice is committed to conversation, offering its opinion, responding to ours, bringing up fresh points and being modified by what we offer.  Over time, voices can assimilate and become indistinguishable from ours.

With Others which no longer have subjective experience, written books for instance, we interact objectively; our esteem, for instance, may be part of the public history of an Other’s presence.  In this way, presences mirror and entangle with and participate with others.

Adventure

Why continually engage in presencing? In part for the adventure of it. 

Adventure is a vital nutrient for our mental health, luring us out of complacent routine and into new territory, out of the known which is good fo the possibly better. Presences invite us to explore novel differences in order to perhaps discover the beauty of integrated contrast.

This analysis (after Whitehead) is as follows.  We seek intensity of experience, which comes from sharp contrast between particulars.  Such disharmony, such un-integrated otherness, like the sensation of cold winter wind on our sensitive faces (oh, the Gilmore bridge), brings our existence to the forefront of our awareness.  We know we are alive because…ow! This direct experience of contrast is the zest, the thrill, of life, and we crave it, not just for the moment but also for the relevant future--as broadly as choose to conceive that.

That contrasting presences are within me simultaneously is a step toward a continuing reconciliation of continually contrasting (not contradictory) experiences. Reconciling certain presences within the context of larger presences is the experience of beauty which gives value to actual occasions of experience. 

Intensity fades, however, and so we seek to renew it with new contrasts or to capture it in new presences of wider scope and subtler grain that express more complex contrasts while retaining the intensity of the contrasts between them. 

For this reason, we regularly make ourselves present to new Others. We want to feel the intensity that rouses us to life itself.  There is no end to this process. The creation or discovery or determination of presences that contrast and reconcile contrasts is an endless adventure in which the present is satisfying and the prospect is enticing, on and on. 

Attention

Presences extend and deepen our experience of ‘now.’ When we are engaged with even internalized presences, we have the sense of immediacy that comes from attention not just delivered but drawn. The ‘this, here’ rendezvous becomes a timeless world of giving and taking; we are absorbed, engrossed, rapt.   

Attention is a finite resource meted out moment-by-moment and used up immediately. It involves energy perhaps because much of its work is the suppression of distractions. Finally it always has an (at least primary) object of focus even if only the All or the Nothing. When, through our acknowledged awareness of them, objects become presences, they seem able to ‘hook’ and play our interest so that we experience extended periods of full, free, frictionless attentiveness. 

Even internalized presences can have this prolongation effect when we are engaged in conversation with them. Afterwards, when our attention has turned to other things, information is more readily noticed and retrieved if ‘owned’ by a presence (it itself, its, for it).

Attention is sometimes bottom up, forced upon us by our surroundings and sometimes top-down, that is, intentional. Different mind missions practice their own kinds of attentiveness: maintaining a status quo involves monitoring and vigilance; persistent improvement involves closer and closer attention to finer and finer details; reaching targets and goals involves keeping the eye on the prize, tracking its movements. 

The kind of attentiveness that presencing fosters is exploratory, discursive, interrogative. As a presence, an object is interesting for itself and what it suggests, not first and foremost for what it can do for us. Consequently we can characterize the attentiveness associated with presencing as purposeful and persistent in its listening, its querying, its speculating, its experimentation, its leisureliness, its spontaneity, its excitement.

Education

Education basically means investing attention in oneself, according to Georg Franck, that is, making sure that we don’t pay attention without some sort of down-the-road profit. If, as we live we learn, then education is a life-long enterprise, not just the ‘work’ of the young, and it can be thought of in the broadest terms as a form of presencing.  

There are three linked tasks in education: (1.) expanding our repertoire of skills, or gaining masteries; (2.) extending and linking together the information we own, our knowledge, of the world inside and outside or constructing maps; and (3.) discovering and developing our personal themata or finding missions for our minds and other energies

Gaining any mastery requires long and close study of processes external and internal, repetitions, experiments, analysis of outcomes and so on.  Masteries build on one other, each adding to our ability to operate and express our perceptions in the world and impress intentions on it. Reading leads to writing which leads to the composition of, say, scientific papers. Mastery means power, which can be associated with the response phase of presencing which involves our acknowledgment of the rendezvous. 

Constructing any map involves putting together findings and surmises regarding any topic in coherent configurations and then joining configurations together laterally or hierarchically in ways that include more and more of our common experience intelligibly. So we learn history as stories, timelines, puzzles and generalizations. Mappings mean potentiality because they highlight what is possible in the actual, which can be associated with the reception phase.

Finding missions involves knowing what persistently fascinates us, what our priorities are among our interests and why, what questions we regularly ask and what projects we do undertake.  Missions mean energy, associated with the original initiative to attend or be ready.

The Payoff

To practice presencing regularly enhances our lives. Devoting time to the extended consideration of some object, place, process or incident is, in fact, healthy for our minds and spirits. There are several ways that it does this. 

Presencing enriches us by adding to and refreshing the number and variety of our internalized presences. Their multiplicity and vivid immediacy keep our minds active and interesting to us.

The more we presence, the more ready we are to engage with every aspect of the world. Instead of finding that our minds have no or little ‘traction’ on some of the things we encounter, the mind amply furnished with ‘voices’ is more likely to already find within itself something with which it can build the initial bridge. Presencing is a door to self-expression, making us more interesting to ourselves, our responses to rendezvous being themselves worthy of presencing.

Cultivate, don’t curb, your enthusiasm. 
Presencing keeps our minds eager and exuberant, pursuing adventures of exploration characterized by wonder and wondering, free, various, intense and often beautiful

Time spent presencing feels well-spent. We walk away from the painting with the painting. We can manage the fear of wasting time without rushing around and frittering it away even more thoroughly. We have something to show for the moments of attention which have so irrevocably passed: a internalized presence.  

Because presences are readily communicable, they make us more interesting to each other in conversation; indeed presencing is the perfect basis of conversations of explorations between friends and colleagues.

Finally, deliberately presencing can give us practice in managing the storm of items seeking to become presences in our lives. 

The Big Picture

The concept of presence as discussed here suggests a number of intriguing possibilities regarding science, peace and God.

The concept of presence can be a bridge between the subjective perspective of individuals and the objective stance of science.    There are as many first-person points of view as there are people, whereas the third-person scientific enterprise is to arrive at a single coherent account of the world independent of any individual ‘s view.

Presencing is essentially second-person in that it is between one and an Other, each distinct and yet mutually acknowledging one another.   The 1^st person view acknowledges the presence as an Other and the 3^rd person view seeks the presence as an object. 

An internalized presence as a mediator speaks of the outer Other to the inner, a subjective experience, and is queried by the inner about the outer, an objective investigation.   

The I-You rendezvous of presencing can serve as a model for interactions between people. It involves listening and expression and is predicated on finding the common voice that is big enough to include all the elements of disharmony as well as concord exist between people. 

As a joint practice engaging with a common Other, presencing may be a way for people to understand and engage with each other through the different ways they confront the Other. We can listen together and report on what we hear; respond together and share what we feel.

Practicing presencing is like prayer in its mindfulness.  Can it be that prayer is like practicing the presence of God? Does God practice our presence?  Might the internalized ‘voice’ that speaks of hospitality, friendship and exploration be that of God? 

These questions related to presencing, and many more, are worth exploring.