More About Presence

by Sabine vom Hoff

I just had a talk about the “BUT”… how to deal with it, how to get rid of it, how to just DO, without stopping the motion or the flow with that “but”.

I said you can put that big fat ‘but’ in a wastepaper basket, and there it stays and looks at you, but you’ve got to look at it as well. You can talk to the ‘but’, address it, feed it with more attention and it will jump out of the wastepaper basket again and manifest itself into a powerful ‘being’ within your all day presence.
And that would be a choice.

Another choice would be this: you know it’s in the basket, you say “hi” when your attention moves to it, and then you can decide to address it differently: you can simply move your attention to something else. The more you become aware of your own energy, the more you will feel and sense the difference between taking care of the ‘but’ (which is nurturing, feeding, and making it large again) and moving your attention —not only thoughts, I mean your whole energy—  gently, to something gentle and pleasing. In this, the ‘but’ shrinks — each day a little bit more, until you hardly perceive it. When you notice it, you look into the wastepaper basket, and see how big/small its power has grown/shrunk, how much you are still attracted to it, how much attention you give it… and you feel the energy… you become aware of  ‘HOW’ you are creating your ‘but’.

One day, the ‘but’ is so small you find it amusing in the moments that your attention moves to it. You merely say “hi” and laugh, that’s all.

And you begin to wonder how that little ‘but’ used to be such a powerful brick in your life, how it used to be such a huge wall, such an enormous stopping stone.

The importance of shifting perception is to become aware of one’s own energy: how it is altered by doing what you do. When you start to sense it more and more clearly… the question of “where are my choices” is already the answer.

Sabine vom Hoff, April 19. 2009