Close your eyes for a moment and ask yourself, from zero to hundred percent, how present am I in my body right now? See what number just pops up without thinking about it. When you are focused on thinking about something, it could be some place, some time in the past or future, some person or some event, at that time you may be absent from your body and present at the focus of your thought.
Imagine that while you are focused on one such thing with your complete attention, simultaneously you are also aware of the pain caused by your tight shoes pinching your toes. In this case, you may be ten percent present in your toes and ninety percent present at the focus of your thought.
In general we might be experiencing several different thoughts continuously in rapid succession. A little bit of our presence is present in each of these places, times, events and people and some of it is present in our body. This is called scattered presence. Everyone is in this scattered presence state most of the time with varying degree of presence in each place/time.
For a manager responsible for overlooking and coordinating multifarious activities across locations, scattered presence may be a necessary part of his or her job. For a mother, scattered presence may be necessary with each of her children. The point is not to judge if scattered presence is useful or not. We have a probably unknown or unrecognized ability beyond and deeper than our thought level, this is our Awareness. While we are scattered with our presence, simultaneously we will be able to observe and note that we are scattered and also know where and to what extent. This is not a thinking or rational/ logical/ analytical aspect of us but rather a deeper knowing aspect of us.
We can be awake to this Awareness and simply be aware of our presence. When we are aware, we will be able to bring back all our presence a hundred percent to our body and to the here and now whenever needed. For example, while driving and navigating a tricky, twisty or slippery road. This simple background awareness and ability to adjust presence could become the only differentiator between life and death sometimes. On a more mundane level, this ability could help in better choices, decisions and actions leading to ease and certainty in our achievements.
The first step is to be aware or know of our ability for being Aware and being able to note and manage our presence. Once we know this, we would realize that we usually pretend to not have this ability and choose to remain scattered and unaware. We can no longer blame accidents on circumstances once this first step is taken. From here on all missteps are accidents will serve as reminders and practice sessions to help us come back to being present and grounded and build a new habit of holding a background awareness of our presence. You can also use the various tools that you will learn in the “Awareness Journey” course as well as our daily online live guided meditation sessions to assist in this new habit building process.