THE LIGHTEST TOUCH
More presence, less force
Contrary to popular belief the lightest touch is all that is required to make the deepest impact and the most profound shifts. With all of our reaching for the hardest, most aggressive ways to work with the life, including working with our body, as the only means we think have the capacity to effectively do anything, we find ourselves forcing a lot. We can’t figure out why with all of the force we still can’t quite get the things to work out or behave how we’d like them too. One would think that with all of the efforting surely something profound would happen, yet when all the work barely moves the mark we have to investigate deeper as to what really creates impact. Logically we know that more brute force doesn’t typically do the trick, as is evident by the fact that wars, both inner and outer, do little to change one’s state of being into anything that would be desired. This fact however doesn’t stop us from continuing to believe and act in ways of force and aggression as the seeming solution to what we desire to experience.
What does it take to shift our thinking and ways of being into less forcing and efforting in order to make things happen? One of the most fundamental things is slowing down inside. I don’t mean taking a vacation or short mental breaks. I mean slowing way, way down in your being. Sometimes, often, coming to a full stop. Yes this might mean that things don’t happen in the pacing and timing that you think they should, but at some point I promise that will no longer matter to you. Things happen only when they happen. How you be in relation to the happening is what makes the difference in your experience of life. Slowing down is the first key to discovering what it is to actually be present with life rather than do life. This doesn’t mean doings don’t get done. They do. They likely always will. It just means that doing isn’t the primary driving forcing. Rather you start from being and then do. What you will quite quickly discover is that all of the sudden it seems like you have to work less hard and you feel more at ease. While you are still engaged and active, you are simultaneously not forcing or efforting. Instead you are allowing the doing and work to move through you, rather than trying to move all of the things.
Now this might all seem like a play on words, but I assure you it is much more. When you are present and coming from being, the lightest touch is all that is required. At first it may seem miraculous to you that such little efforting creates such a tremendous shift. Your head likely won’t be able to make sense out of it, but your experience will validate that when in fact you are more present you require less force to create impact. As an added benefit you will also enjoy your experience much more, even if whatever you are doing is not your preference.
TOUCH OF PRESENCE
Instantaneous shifting
All of our frustration about this thing or that thing is a result of us not being present. When we are present there just is what there is and we aren’t trying to be anywhere else or having anything else be. Truly there isn’t anywhere else to get. You understand this fully when you are actually present. Changing experiences doesn’t mean that anything is actually changing, but rather only that there are different sensorial experiences in your awareness. Yet we often think that when the environment changes that something is fundamentally changing in us. It isn’t. We give ourselves the permission slip of different environments and sensorial experiences to feel different inside, yet when we are present we recognize more and more the changelessness of our being. Presence then comes in the forefront rather than background of our awareness. This non-changing present awareness is the stability of being that remains untouched despite the moving of the seeming pieces and parts of creation.
When we are rested in our presence, we are at peace. It’s that simple. Peace means harmony with, rather than efforting to make happen. Again we logically know this, yet experientially play out the game of our life differently. We are so afraid that things won’t happen, won’t get done, won’t be taken care of, will fall apart, will be a mess, or will be somehow be bad, and because of these fears we effort. We think more effort is the answer that will palate our fears and feel that more effort means we will be ok. We never take the chance to trust presence because we are too afraid that it will fail us. Fear seems more trustworthy, more familiar, more consistent and reliable. We know fear. It motivates us. Presence on the other hand is way, way, way less familiar. We barely know it, let alone trust it. That it will be there for us. That it will have our best interest in mind. That it even exists. The irony is that presence is the only state of being that knows what’s best, what works, what doesn’t, and is clear and unobstructed. Presence has no agenda, yet is intentional in being. Presence is full of aliveness, energy and novelty, each moment new onto itself. Even if things look the same on the surface level, no experience is ever the same to presence.
The lightest touch is the touch of presence. You’ve all experienced it at some point even if it’s not been the most pervasive of experiences for you. It’s in those moments where someone looks into your eyes with love, or touches your heart with their care, or melts your defenses with a smile. There is no effort in those moments, just a deep seeing and recognition of love, which is presence and is also the prime mover of life. The capacity for love to move with its simplicity of being is profound. It changes your state of being instantly, which then gives the appearance that everything else has changed too. The configuration you hold your body in can radically change with just a moment of presence. The structures of your life can shift dramatically with just a moment of presence. When life views life, or love views love, or presence meets presence, the portal into peaceful bliss opens wide. Before you know it you’ve arrived in love’s rapture and you aren’t even sure how you got there. You just know that now you are here and all is well.
Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractor, Boulder, Colorado
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