I started reading a novel while Angus and I were away. I haven’t felt called to do that in a while, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Now I am back, I am finding plenty of time to read because I am gripped. I’ve also been hiking since coming home and not working late. I am feeling an inner spaciousness I hadn’t realized I was missing. I have also noticed experiencing a softer heart. I feel kinder.
There is nothing more needed. Struggle always ensues when I don’t want to be present with what is. When I don’t like what is, and resist. Or when I feel like I can’t relax into what is because I have too much on my mind. But nothing more is needed than presence. That is enough. There isn’t really anything interesting to write about it because it is so simple and ordinary, yet everything is here.
Everything is in this moment. It is such a delicious feeling to let go into the nothingness.
It is not a nihilistic void. It is rich and nurturing. I feel it filling me up. And I want to do even less and hang out here even more. Of course, I can be in this space and do, but it is just as beautiful to be in this space and not do.
In my work, I speak to people who are suffering. The problem might look like it is conflict, lack of money, lack of inspiration, too much feeling, lack of energy, overwhelm, or something else, but no matter what the presenting problem (to use clinical language) is, presence is the part of the answer. When we get present, we get perspective and we hear our own answers.
One day I won’t be needed because it will just be understood the way we understand the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. People will know the value of presence and they will understand how to get present.
It can be hard to get present because we have habitual thought patterns that run unceasingly through our minds and the more we try to resist the thought patterns the more gripped we get. Resistance only makes thinking stronger. Thought dissipates by leaving it alone.
Presence is found in the spaces and the gaps. We naturally fall into the gaps, and we are more prone to fall into the gaps when we understand the importance of relaxing into what is exactly as it is, caught up in thought or not. Being with experience as it unfolds in an open and receptive way allows for presence. At some point, we disidentify with the inner narrator chattering away and fall into being, and feel the embodiment of our experience in the moment whatever the experience is. This requires not being afraid of our experience.
In that space, there is the recognition of how we are held by that which is unchanging. We can rest into that and be with the surface experience that is ever-changing.
My time away was an interrupt and a reset. It has allowed me to slow down so I can relish more in presence and enjoy living at a slower pace. The inner resourcing is filling me up.
If this sounds appealing, I encourage you to allow yourself the time to relax and slow down to see what is revealed to you about presence.
If you would like to listen to the Rewilding Love Podcast, it comes out in serial format. Start with Episode 1 for context. Click here to listen. And, if you would like to dive deeper into the understanding I share along with additional support please check out the Rewilding Community.
Rohini Ross is co-founder of “The Rewilders.” Listen to her podcast, with her partner Angus Ross, Rewilding Love. They believe too many good relationships fall apart because couples give up thinking their relationship problems can’t be solved. In this season of the Rewilding Love Podcast, Rohini and Angus help a couple on the brink of divorce due to conflict. Angus and Rohini also co-facilitate private couples' intensives that rewild relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is also the author of the ebook Marriage, and she and Angus are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about her work and subscribe to her blog visit: TheRewilders.org.