Being Present is Not a Skill

Some meditation advice has a vibe like... “To become more present, all you need to do is practice! It's just a skill, like learning to ride a bike 😊”

This never worked for me. When I tried to force presence through practice, I made little progress.

Being present isn't a skill to build — it's the natural state! What blocks presence is unconscious predictions of bad outcomes. Remove these blocks to make presence automatic.

1. I struggled to be present with emotions in my body. Daily meditation didn't help. Finally I asked: “What bad thing happens if I feel my feelings?” My system responded: emotional pain would be overwhelming, feelings would make me less productive, expressing emotions would anger others. After untangling these predictions, emotional presence became much easier. (Details)

2. With others' emotions, I felt I'd be obligated to fix their pain if I truly experienced it. After addressing these predictions, empathetic presence improved significantly. (Details)

3. When investigating my chronic neck tension, instead of trying to "be more present" with the pain, I looked for what bad things I felt would happen if I fully felt it. My system revealed: feeling the sensation meant acknowledging I could leave social situations that felt unsafe, which itself felt dangerous. After untangling this and other blocks, most of my tension resolved. I'm still finding and untangling more blocks. (Details)

Now, you might wonder: if presence isn't a skill, why do some people seem to benefit from meditation practice? In my experience, meditation can help with noticing blocks and creating space to work with them. But the practice itself isn't building presence so much as creating opportunities to identify and release blocks that prevent presence. This is what I believe explains why some people can meditate for years without becoming much more present, and others grow quickly once they find and integrate their core blocks.

Most of what I’ve done to develop more presence is ask my system: “What bad thing happens if I'm fully present right now?”

One last thing: Once you become fully present, you may be tempted to think “Oh, I get it now! Being present is so simple! Just be present!” But that will overlook all the little blocks you untangled along the way. (Once blocks are untangled, they are forgotten!)

Natural presence is already there, waiting to be uncovered. Find the blocks.

How I put this into practice:

Integrate self-rejection, gain self-acceptance

Thanks to Stag Lynn and Shailen for help editing. Thanks to CFAR, Anna Salamon and my clients for support.