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Books like The Presence Process: A Healing Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

The Presence Process: A Healing Journey Into Present Moment Awareness

2005Michael Brown

4.4/5

This book is a must-read for everyone seeking emotional maturity so that you no longer end up in emotionally-distraught states. If you suffer from illnesses (curable or incurable), addictions, you feel like your life's stuck, or you feel awful or hopeless, this book's process is what you're looking for.Everyone can benefit greatly from this book. And yet 99.999% of people on the planet don't know how to do what this book teaches--emotional processing. It's the most important thing anyone could ever learn in life: how to love oneself unconditionally so that one's dysfunctional emotions (fear, anger, grief, and any mixture of them) will integrate. The more a person integrates, the more they feel whole, like their authentic self. Their life balances out, and when tough times come, they're not triggered by them emotionally anymore. Or if they are triggered, they know exactly how to deal with those triggered emotions so that they don't get overwhelmed and go into a downward spiral.I was good with psychology and knew myself pretty well before I started this process. But no matter what I knew about myself, and no matter what emotional work I did, I could never seem to get my emotional issues corrected. No one could tell me how. When I read through The Presence Process and let it guide me through the 10-week process, I saw actual emotional transformation. I didn't fear uncomfortable emotions coming up anymore because I knew how to handle them. In fact, I wanted them to come up. The more they came up, the more I got to be with them unconditionally and get used to them or let them integrate. I had no idea how to love myself unconditionally before I read this book. Now I understand how to do it, and I do it daily in order to help integrate my uncomfortable, dysfunctional emotions that drive my less-loving behaviors. When I actually feel the emotions integrate, it's amazing. I laugh and cry (happy tears) at the same time. It's hard to describe unless you've experienced it. I can be happy and depressed at the same time, which seems counter-intuitive or even impossible, but it's actually not. The point is that even when I feel a depression within me, I'm still content and have no problem with it. When I finished my first Presence Process, I could feel my emotions much better than I ever had in the past. That made life so much more enjoyable! The process made me better at feeling instead of trying to "make me feel better." Yes, this process has the side effect of us feeling better as we continue to do it, but actually, it's about getting better at feeling. We can finally feel the uncomfortable feelings we've repressed from long ago that have been driving our unsavory behaviors. This reverses our desensitization to feelings so we can finally experience them and process them. Feeling those without condition and without judgment has amazing results. The better we are at feeling everything inside, the better we feel our own innate joy and peace. There's nothing better than that.I used to go to movies before and I would feel a little bit of emotion and I might shed a tear or two, but that was about it. But about eight weeks into the process, after my first big conscious emotional integration, movies became a whole knew experience. I'd watch a movie and feel all of these sensations throughout my body from the emotions running through me. It made movies really cool. It gave life a whole other dimension that made it so much more enjoyable. Music does the same thing to me, as well as powerful scenes in books or in life.When I finished my second presence process, I felt awful because of all the stuff that it drudged up. But you know what? I didn't freak out about it. I was really excited that all of that stuff had come up and I finally got to deal with it. I enjoyed it. It was tough at times, but not bad, really, because I knew how to deal with the uncomfortable feelings. And I knew all of it was surfacing to help me mature emotionally. The process usually brings up issues to deal with in little bits, but sometimes it brings them up for quite a while. It works like that because we're ready for it and we're asking for it so we can make progress.The book puts everything in life into perspective, connecting it all so that we understand how everything works and how it's all working together to help us, not hurt us. It flips your perspective on life. I never thought I'd be excited to feel pain, but I am now. When we no longer fear pain, we stop trying to control our life to make it "happy." Instead, we take life as it comes and it's a lot more enjoyable. It's so much easier like that. And we become very unconditionally loving and giving, too.UPDATEIt's been three years now since I started doing The Presence Process and did five of them back to back, and then continued with the breathing (except for one stint where I was experimenting with not doing the breathing for a while--I edited that into my original statement above). Life is pretty good now. I'm not 100% emotionally mature--that's a long, long process--but I'm doing much better than before and I continue to make progress. I haven't done a presence process in around a year and a half, and I'm not sure I need to bother doing another one. I just make sure I'm diligent about dealing with emotions when they come up and about doing the daily breathing practice in the morning and evening. I've gone through times of depression and anger and who knows what else, but none of them caused me to break down. I took them all in stride and was fairly content through most of it.Depression is caused by repressed anger. I started out in life repressing all my anger, which caused a lot of health problems and little emotional issues. So finally, that anger is starting to come up--that's what I'm dealing with now. Which means I'm finally confident enough to deal with it. I don't get rid of it or repress it. I actually do my best to contain the anger and keep present with it as much as possible throughout the day. By doing that, I've gotten used to feeling it for long stints without reacting to it. I'm not always successful at that, but I do pretty well most of the time. That's huge progress for me. I used to just stuff anger and end up depressed periodically. That's not good for anyone. Anger is a secondary emotion, always repressing fear along with grief. So I find that when I the anger has been around enough, I'll end up processing the grief during my breathing sessions or when I have some privacy. When it integrates, the anger that was held in place by it will be gone because it's no longer needed. It has nothing to repress, no reason to attempt to control that emotion anymore. Anger's one of the most difficult ones, so I'm glad I'm finally doing well with it.Don't be hard on yourself at all and take it slow and easy. You will progress at exactly the speed you're supposed to. No need to judge yourself or your progress in any way. Whatever you do and whatever happens is required.I highly recommend this book to everyone, no matter what your situation. It can really change the way you approach life and make it a lot more enjoyable.
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