The Most Important Thing in the World
In a world that often feels chaotic and disconnected, how can we cultivate a sense of deep connection and peace? As a mindful communications coach, I've discovered that the answer lies in practicing loving presence - a state of being that has the power to transform our relationships and our lives.
The Essence of Loving Presence
Loving presence is more than just a concept; it's a powerful way of engaging with the world around us. It involves:
- Being fully present in the moment
- Connecting with others on a profound level
- Suspending judgment and embracing compassion
I share insights from my years of study with Ron Kurtz, creator of the Hakomi Method, and explain how this practice has fundamentally shaped my approach to coaching and personal growth.
The Transformative Power of Presence
Through personal anecdotes and wisdom gleaned from my mentors, I illustrate how embodying loving presence can:
- Create spontaneous healing in relationships
- Enhance our ability to truly see and hear others
- Allow us to access deeper levels of wisdom and intuition
Practical Steps to Cultivate Loving Presence
This episode offers actionable advice for incorporating loving presence into your daily life:
- Slowing down: Creating space for mindfulness
- Letting go: Releasing expectations and judgments
- Opening the heart: Allowing yourself to feel and express love
The Ripple Effect of Love
I explore how practicing loving presence not only enriches our own lives but has the potential to create positive change in the world around us. By embodying this state of being, we can:
- Influence the energy of any situation
- Respond more effectively to challenges
- Create an atmosphere of healing and growth
This episode serves as an invitation to explore the profound impact of loving presence in your own life. Whether you're a coach, a leader, or simply someone seeking deeper connections, these insights offer a pathway to a more fulfilling and authentic way of being.
Are you ready to tap into the transformative power of loving presence? Join me in this exploration of what might be the most important skill we can cultivate in today's world.
Transcript
Foreign hello, my name is Brett Hill, the mindful coach.
Speaker A:And today I want to talk about.
Speaker A:I want to talk about the most important thing in the world.
Speaker A:That's kind of a big assertion.
Speaker A:And what I'm referring to is loving presence.
Speaker A:Loving presence is a state of being, a state of experience, and it can seem elusive these days, a little too much so, I'm afraid.
Speaker A:And I have found over the course of my years of work, practice, seriously working hard to get to the heart of what it means to be a human being, and a helpful one at that, if I can manage to be so.
Speaker A:And my work was deeply influenced by Ron Kurtz, who is the creator.
Speaker A:Creator of the Hikomi Method, or actually one of several creators of the Hokomi Method.
Speaker A:And I had the privilege of working with Ron Kurtz, John Eisman, Phil De Prince, and others involved in that community.
Speaker A:And it had a very, very profound impact on me at that time and for the rest of my life.
Speaker A:Even these days, I pretty much live and breathe principles and practices that I learned from that study because it was so foundational and so grounded in the practice of being present in a way where you can have more richness in your life, in your moment.
Speaker A:And in particular, since my work involves working with other people, being present with other people in a way that allows you to feel connected in a deep, a deeply caring way about.
Speaker A:Not in a personal relationship, although there is a personal aspect to it, but the humanity, the essential beauty of the soul in front of you, and the practice of bearing witness to the struggle of another human being to inhabit their own life in a way that feels powerful and organically whole and aligned and integrated.
Speaker A:And all these things we'll call the absolutes.
Speaker A:Beauty, peace, love, justice.
Speaker A:We all light up around the experience of those because that's who we are in our.
Speaker A:In our core, at least, that's what I believe.
Speaker A:The practice of loving presence is fundamentally one of really letting go and letting yourself have the experience of bearing witness of being with another human being in a way where you can truly see what's right in front of you and listen to what's coming to you.
Speaker A:Ron used to call this seeing through.
Speaker A:And I talk about this in some of my other work, where you're not.
Speaker A:You're going beyond the words.
Speaker A:You're not just.
Speaker A:You're not trying to solve a problem.
Speaker A:You know, oh, how can I fix this person problem?
Speaker A:I hope I can say the most powerful thing here.
Speaker A:I hope I can be super helpful.
Speaker A:Those thoughts just fade away because of a state of caring compassion that is emerging in your awareness and as you look and simply are with another person.
Speaker A:That in and of itself has an impact on the dynamic of the communication.
Speaker A: written by Donna Martin from: Speaker A:There are about three books, booklets, I should say, on presence and one actually pivoted from Hakomi as a psycho Psychosomatic therapy or psychosomatic, excuse me, somatic therapies, psychotherapy to really, really embodying the use of loving presence as a primary skill for practitioners.
Speaker A:Because he had this insight that when you embody a state of loving presence and you engage with another person, healing happens spontaneously.
Speaker A:He said it very beautifully in this paper.
Speaker A:When the mind is still, the heart does the work.
Speaker A:When the mind is still, the heart does the work.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:So powerful.
Speaker A:I was privileged to take the very first Living Presence workshop that Ron created in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker A:I think it was the late and in that workshop I got certified certification was at the end of it he goes I hereby bestow upon you the right to go and teach these workshops and stuff.
Speaker A:I never did teach one.
Speaker A:I would like to but it was a powerful experience because there were some unusual practices in these workshops that took you into a state of presence that were kind of uncommon.
Speaker A:But here's what he said.
Speaker A:This is the opening to this little booklet called the Practice of Loving Presence.
Speaker A:Imagine a happy and contented mother looking at the sweet face of her peaceful newborn baby.
Speaker A:She is calm, loving and attentive, unhurried and undistracted.
Speaker A:The two of them seem to be outside of time, simply present, being with one another and gently held within a field of love and life's wisdom.
Speaker A:They are as present with each other as any two persons can be.
Speaker A:That is a pretty pristine example of a state of loving presence.
Speaker A:Connected and there's no doing involved, simply a connected state of being with another human being.
Speaker A:It goes on to say loving presence is a very special state of mind and a way of being.
Speaker A:It's a state in which we are open hearted and well intentioned.
Speaker A:It's is pleasant, healthy, rewarding in and of itself.
Speaker A:Interject that means this is an objective, this is.
Speaker A:This is self fulfilling.
Speaker A:Simply managing to practice the skills that allow you to be in a state of loving presence is in and of itself rewarded in its purest form.
Speaker A:Continuing on, we'll find ourselves being spiritually nourished and more sensitive to subtle energies and experiences.
Speaker A:I can say from Personal experience that is so profoundly true.
Speaker A:Because when I sit across from somebody and I really, really get present in my get, still a whole world of information opens up to me about this other person that goes way beyond the words they're speaking, the clothes they're wearing, the way that they're showing up, the story that they're telling, way beyond that, and into what is the nature of this person, what are they struggling with in a core way?
Speaker A:And the story they're telling is just the current cartoon frame of a much bigger story.
Speaker A:And you begin to get feelings and insights into what that might be about.
Speaker A:And it's a truly, exceptionally rich experience for me.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:It's one of the main reasons I do this work.
Speaker A:Continuing on.
Speaker A:Certainly the best state to be in when we are offering emotional support to someone.
Speaker A:And by emotional support, I mean support for the experiences that create and sustain a healthy, happy emotional life.
Speaker A:One look around tells us that it is desperately needed in the world today.
Speaker A:Healthy emotional lives require that we have feelings of love for others and know that we too are loved.
Speaker A:This is a necessary experience for healthy, emotional human beings, emotionally healthy human beings, to love, have the capacity to love, and to feel loved.
Speaker A:This was a big deal story for me.
Speaker A:I was pretty good at being able to help people realize I never really let myself feel cared for.
Speaker A:And to this day, the people who work with me know that I struggle sometimes whenever someone says something nice about the work that we're doing or they appreciate something about me personally.
Speaker A:I had learned, had to learn to pause and breathe that in, let myself feel cared for for a moment, appreciated at the least appreciated and cared for, maybe even loved.
Speaker A:I have a meditation, how much love will you allow?
Speaker A:And I pose the question to you.
Speaker A:If there's an unlimited amount of love in the world right here, right now, not love from another, but just simply love as a force like air or sky.
Speaker A:An unlimited amount that you can experience.
Speaker A:How much will you allow?
Speaker A:How much will you allow yourself to feel?
Speaker A:If you want to go to a metaphysical space like God is love, or Christ love, or some other form of emanation of love, then it goes beyond something that you give and something you receive.
Speaker A:It's a more fundamental element than that.
Speaker A:It's eminent.
Speaker A:It's a foundational part of the manifestation of.
Speaker A:Now there is an unlimited amount of it.
Speaker A:And so you can simply ask the question, well, if that's so, then how much will you allow yourself to feel?
Speaker A:It's a big question.
Speaker A:And I have dived into that question deeply with spiritual practices that are about immersion in the field of love and trying to see if I can actually blow myself open by letting myself have those feelings.
Speaker A:And you know what?
Speaker A:It turns out you can.
Speaker A:And this is actually the path of devotion in spiritual practices.
Speaker A:It's like letting yourself love.
Speaker A:And very often early stages, it starts with like love of a guru or love of a God figure, and that's love of another.
Speaker A:In that case, it's still other oriented.
Speaker A:Eventually, hopefully, that shifts to be simply love itself of, but love itself.
Speaker A:And when you feel yourself as an emanating force and love is part of that fabric, then you simply have to allow yourself sense as much as you wish, and you'll find some boundaries around how much of that is okay.
Speaker A:Emotional lies require that we have feelings for love of others and know that we too are loved.
Speaker A:It happens for the infant through constant interaction with the parental caregivers.
Speaker A:For infants, they learn to be cared, that they're cared for.
Speaker A:And if not, bad things happen through the neurology of that infant.
Speaker A:And that becomes, you know, the basis for treatment later on.
Speaker A:And it's a tough one.
Speaker A:It is the basis of human relationships.
Speaker A:Loving presence.
Speaker A:And it is necessary to us as air and food.
Speaker A:So powerful.
Speaker A:So this is why I'm talking about loving presence.
Speaker A:Because as people in the world, particularly if you're a therapist or you're a coach or you're working with it, it doesn't really matter what your rule is.
Speaker A:You're a human being in the planet.
Speaker A:And in retro, you'd be finding a place to let yourself experience a state of loving presence.
Speaker A:And then interacting with the world from that place changes not only you, but the world.
Speaker A:And what else could the world need more than this right now?
Speaker A:Loving presence doesn't require reciprocity.
Speaker A:It's not about, oh, well, if you don't give it back to me, then I'm unhappy, or if you don't approve of me, then it's not okay.
Speaker A:It's not about that.
Speaker A:No more than the sun requires that you appreciate sunshine.
Speaker A:For them to be a radiant force in the world, in the solar system, it simply is radiant force.
Speaker A:And that's what we're talking about.
Speaker A:This natural phenomena.
Speaker A:How do you connect to, embody, embrace and practice this skill of loving presence, this state of being in living presence?
Speaker A:Well, that's a great question.
Speaker A:Glad you asked that.
Speaker A:It begins with slowing things down.
Speaker A:And mindfulness is the gateway for so many things.
Speaker A:I often call it the first gate because your capacity to slow the mind down is what Allows presence to emerge.
Speaker A:I recently came to this insight about.
Speaker A:At least to me it feels like an insight.
Speaker A:Presence is an emergent state.
Speaker A:It simply shows up.
Speaker A:This is a little ironic.
Speaker A:Whenever you are mindful, mindfulness, a state of mindfulness where you're not thinking about what I've got to do tomorrow.
Speaker A:I'm not worried about.
Speaker A:About what happened yesterday.
Speaker A:I'm not concerned about the words I'm going to say or any other fear or desire.
Speaker A:I'm simply being present with my experience.
Speaker A:And maybe I'm in that case.
Speaker A:Maybe if I'm having thoughts about what I'm worried about, there's that thought.
Speaker A:I want to be powerful for this person.
Speaker A:I want to be helpful as a coach.
Speaker A:I'm noticing it's really important to me to be really helpful.
Speaker A:I'm noticing it's really important as opposed to I have to think of the most powerful thing I can say.
Speaker A:It really matters and I'm in that thought.
Speaker A:I lose my connection to the moment of being present with what's actually happening.
Speaker A:Instead, I'm lost in my thought.
Speaker A:I can't even hear.
Speaker A:See the other person.
Speaker A:Ron tells a story in this book about how he came to this notion that loving presence was really crucial in his.
Speaker A:In his work.
Speaker A:He was in a workshop and he was doing session after session after session with people and he was exhausted.
Speaker A:He just gets so confused and couldn't keep things straight in his head.
Speaker A:He was just so tired.
Speaker A:And here comes another person.
Speaker A:And the person was talking that he said, that guy has eyes closed.
Speaker A:He was talking.
Speaker A:And then this happened.
Speaker A:And then the thing and the thing.
Speaker A:I'm worried and Ron, that he couldn't make any sense out of any of the words.
Speaker A:He was just really, really tired.
Speaker A:And he began to not panic, but had this sense of, oh my gosh, how can I help the person?
Speaker A:And then he just said, I just made a decision to let go.
Speaker A:To let go of all of his concern about it and simply notice and not be worried that he wasn't paying attention to the words and that he was thinking, well, this guy's going to open his eyes and ask him a question.
Speaker A:He's not going to have any idea about what he was talking about.
Speaker A:He was sitting there and then he said something really remarkable happened.
Speaker A:He began to really see the man's face and to notice nuance.
Speaker A:And he began to see something beautiful and profound and the way the man was moving and the way the man was speaking.
Speaker A:And he started to connect to something deeper than the story or the problem.
Speaker A:Or the struggle.
Speaker A:And by the time this went on for a little while he was and he found himself in a state of loving presence, just simply being with human.
Speaker A:And he said after a little while, when the man paused for a moment, Ron asked him to open his eyes and just connect with him.
Speaker A:And the man looked at him and could tell that Ron was in this state of connected loving presence.
Speaker A:And it took a breath and it brought him into the moment.
Speaker A:And they began to talk about real in the moment issues.
Speaker A:And the whole session just went right into deeper, more powerful work rather than the storytelling simply by the man noticing and sensing the quality of Ron's state of loving presence and mindful awareness.
Speaker A:This is an example and I've seen this happen in my own work as an example of how you.
Speaker A:When you bring a very refined state of open hearted acceptance, non judgmental awareness to a moment of encounter, that moment has potentials that it does not otherwise have.
Speaker A:And those potentials are generally in a really, really positive direction when the state that you're in influences everything around you.
Speaker A:Someone walks into the room and they're really angry and agitated and there's five other people in the room, it changes the room.
Speaker A:People start to vibrate at a level of like oh, they're either they're in reaction in response to the state of this person that walks in the room.
Speaker A:Some people might go, oh my God, I'm so afraid because he's so angry or she's so agitated.
Speaker A:Other people are like, well, what's up?
Speaker A:Becoming care.
Speaker A:But everything shifts if you're mindful and present.
Speaker A:You say loving presence, you don't shift so much as you simply notice what's happening.
Speaker A:It does change things because a whole new person works in the room.
Speaker A:But your state is simply a loving presence in relationship with someone who's agitated.
Speaker A:And that way loving presence becomes so much a place where you can hang out in a way that's not so disrupted by circumstances.
Speaker A:It does not mean you don't care about injustice.
Speaker A:Because I've seen some criticisms about mindfulness being.
Speaker A:Well, it's about helping people be okay with terrible things.
Speaker A:It's not that at all.
Speaker A:But it's about not letting yourself get whipped around by the tides of things that happen.
Speaker A:Transient events, some of them exceptionally powerful and they matter.
Speaker A:But who you are in these moments is really foundational and can change your experience of even the worst situations and can change your experience of the best situations as well.
Speaker A:And to help them be even better.
Speaker A:So it improves every single thing.
Speaker A:So why not right in many ways, this is the state of presence and state of being and rapport with our world that people are really aspiring to.
Speaker A:Because it doesn't matter if you're rich, it doesn't matter if you're poor, it doesn't matter.
Speaker A:I mean, it matters in the physical sense, but in terms of loving birth, there's no more love available to a rich person than a poor person.
Speaker A:There's no more love available to someone who's ill than someone who isn't.
Speaker A:It's just a matter of how much will you allow, like I mentioned before.
Speaker A:And so I want to invite you to explore what's it like for you to move in the direction of being in a state of loving presence, whatever that means for you.
Speaker A:It almost always begins with a sense of letting go of thoughts, expectations, judgments, suspending them at minimum, and just letting yourself be present with your in the moment experience in a way where you're not.
Speaker A:Well, what does that mean?
Speaker A:Or what does that mean?
Speaker A:Well, this means that.
Speaker A:And it could be like this, but not so sure.
Speaker A:Those kinds of thoughts are normal and natural.
Speaker A:But simply noticing, oh yeah, and experiencing, if you can, if you wish, inviting you to experience, inhabiting a state where this more or less emanates.
Speaker A:There is love, and it's unconditional.
Speaker A:It's not like I'm going to love you or just you or not you.
Speaker A:And I want to put in a marker here that just people can behave badly.
Speaker A:And these days there's a lot of.
Speaker A:And this is not saying dismissing that bad behavior or taking away responsibility for it.
Speaker A:If someone is behaving in a toxic way, I'm going to do something about it or remove myself from the situation and I'm going to try to help the people who are influenced by it.
Speaker A:But I don't want to live in a state of reactivity to the negativity.
Speaker A:Why would I do that when I can be much more effective and have a better moment when I'm in a state of living presence?
Speaker A:And so that's the invitation.
Speaker A:There's so much more to say about this.
Speaker A:So I invite you to think of a time in your life where this was perhaps more of a direct experience, maybe meditation, maybe in the arms of a lover, maybe an experience of some kind.
Speaker A:That's simply you and love.
Speaker A:And the key thing about this is that it's not.
Speaker A:It's not.
Speaker A:This is going to sound strange, it's not relational, the space.
Speaker A:And it's like I mentioned before, the sun, when it shines on something, the sun doesn't think, oh, I'm brighter now because I am reflected back by shining on this.
Speaker A:It simply is shining.
Speaker A:And so that's what I'm inviting you to be.
Speaker A:Simply be a loving presence and notice what that's like for you as you move in that direction.
Speaker A:That's my wish for you.
Speaker A:That and for me and for all humanity that we can stand in the experience of this, put aside our thoughts and judgments and constrictions and resistances so that we can manifest our nature, which is, I believe, at its core, an eminent force of loving presence.
Speaker A:It's my wish for you that this is your world, your moment, and that we encounter this in each other.
Speaker A:And if you have that, this is resonating with you, go, yeah, I know what this is.
Speaker A:I entreat you mightily to engage with others in a way that is helpful and healing simply by offering opportunity to connect.
Speaker A:Because I mentioned before, when you interact with people in a state of loving presence, healing happens for everyone involved, spontaneously, automatically.
Speaker A:And I should say it has its best chance for healing to happen.
Speaker A:So blessings to you.
Speaker A:And if you'd like to learn more about this or would like a roadmap for how to practice for your particular situation, then reach out to me and I can craft a path that can help you.
Speaker A:Because there's some neurology involved and there's something that's involved.
Speaker A:This will be an exceptionally rich effort on your part.
Speaker A:And it's my wish for the world, because we need more loving presence now than ever before.
Speaker A:And so, once again, if you're someone who this resonates with, and you know this is good, this is alive in you, then please give yourself away.
Speaker A:Empower yourself to spread more of that goodness in the world.
Speaker A:And I believe we all have that.
Speaker A:So blessings to you.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:The Mindful Coach Podcast is a service of the Mindful Coach Association.
