What better time than now to focus on this topic, seeing as we are in the season of gifts and giving?
I absolutely love the joy and celebration of the Christmas season! It's all about togetherness and spending quality time with loved ones, which is incredibly important to me.
Nowadays, it’s all too easy to get swept up in the commercial side of the festive season, as we are bombarded with advertising earlier each year. It feels as though as soon as Halloween is over, out come the Christmas adverts.
As consumerism reaches new heights, the essence of Christmas, which, in my eyes, is celebrating Love and embracing unity, is easily overlooked or lost altogether.
External pressure can often create unnecessary stress to get the perfect gift or organise a perfect day if we gather with family and friends. This can cause far more hassle than it's worth when the whole point is enjoying being together in peace and joy, above all else.
All that we need to make that happen is ourselves, to be fully present and as open-hearted as possible with our loved ones. That’s it. The rest is just tinsel on the tree.
While festive celebrations can bring the topic of gift-giving to the forefront, the gift of presence can be applied all year round as a way of being.
Training ourselves into the habit of presence is life-changing.
But what does being present truly mean?
Understanding Presence
In essence, presence is simple.
At its core, being present is being fully conscious in every single moment. It’s bringing your awareness out of your head and back into your heart and operating from there.
Living from the heart enables you to become conscious of your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions and create your life consciously.
Being entirely focused on each moment is the key to embodying awareness, which allows you to interrupt the automatic programming the ego-mind runs on and instead operate from the soul’s Higher Mind, which you can easily access from the heart.
Now remember, simple doesn’t mean easy. Like with all things unfamiliar, it will take practice. But the life-changing results this will reward you with are well worth it.
Please don’t take my word for it.
Introduce presence into your life, and you will feel the inner shift for yourself, which will, in turn, reflect out into your external world.
“Sense your presence, the naked, unveiled, unclothed beingness. It is untouched by young or old, rich or poor, good or bad, or any other attributes.” - Eckhart Tolle
Being Present With Yourself
Embodying presence is the best way to extend it into other areas of our lives.
The best practice I have found is prioritising time to be silent daily. Doing so has been life-changing for me. The most significant benefit is living in a more profound state of peace amidst life’s continual roller coaster ride.
Have you ever tried regularly carving out the time and space to be with you?
Just by being fully present and prioritising time to be with yourself, you allow yourself to honestly be seen by you To feel all that needs to be felt, hear all that needs to be heard and acknowledge yourself in the ways you’re craving from others,
Ultimately, we are the ones we crave approval from - it is an internal job rather than an external one. Our outer reality is simply mirroring our inner one.
When we spend time in silence with ourselves, we also create the space to receive guidance and answers from our Higher Self. We often pray and ask for assistance, but do we create an opening to receive the answers?
Learning to listen to ourselves and our inner guidance will allow us to honour our truth and assist us in learning how to listen to others.
Once we can establish presence within ourselves, only then can we be truly present with others.
How can you create the space to embody more quality you time in your life?
It need only take a few minutes a day and your willingness.
Being Present In Your Daily Life
It’s easy to get carried away dashing about from one task and errand to the next, but how is that serving you?
Bringing our full attention to what we are doing, whether washing the dishes, driving, brushing our teeth, cooking, finishing a report or whatever we do at any given moment, is generally called mindfulness.
When we are mindful of our actions, our mind is full of presence as it is not running away on its usual wild goose chase of goodness knows what, but instead is wholly focused on the now, where all the magic lies.
Being present allows you to enter the flow state and experience all the good that comes from there, Allowing you to produce the highest quality possible of whatever you engage in.
You give it your undivided attention when you are fully present with whatever you do. In doing so, you are giving it the best of you, whether a task, an artistic creation or a person.
“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.” - Marcus Aurelius
Being Present With Others
Spending time with people is the best way to honour them.
Being completely present with people and listening to them genuinely honours them.
Learning how to listen genuinely takes a lot of practice.
It may even be a lifelong work in progress for us to be out of our minds enough to embody presence, but it is worth every effort.
It is all too easy to excitedly interrupt another as they express themselves or think about our following response while another is speaking.
It takes a consistent effort to train ourselves out of these mind-based ways of being and return our entire focus to our hearts and onto the other person.
Doing so will allow you to deepen your relationships and understanding of others and instil a more profound sense of presence in your own life as you gift another with yours.
I understand that it can be incredibly challenging. My mind is highly overactive when left to its own devices, and it takes a monumental conscious effort for me to embody presence fully. Sometimes, I am better at it than others.
What matters is that I am continually trying to improve. The more I practice, the better I get. It’s the desire to evolve that counts.
How present are you with other people?
Could your listening skills use an upgrade?
Indulging In Our Most Precious Gift
While we can often pay top dollar for diamonds and gold and all of Earth’s material luxuries, they are not the most precious resources we have on this planet.
All of those beautiful gems will outlive us all.
We have limited time in this life, so isn’t gifting others with our presence the greatest gift we can offer?
Of course, jewellery, fashion, and other Earthly indulgences are exquisite and to be enjoyed, for we live in a material realm after all. But even those presents need to be purchased consciously and given with Love. Otherwise, they are just more meaningless things in an already overconsumed world.
Children crave their parents' Love and attention more than any material item in existence. Being fully present with them allows them to feel wholly seen and, thereby, feel loved.
What do you remember from your childhood?
Do you remember what presents you received every Christmas or how loved you felt, and what fun you had with your loved ones?
Our inner child still lives in each of us, whatever age we are now. We are all seeking the same thing - to experience Love. And what better way to love another than to live in presence?
When you are fully present, your attention is entirely focused on yourself or another person, thing or project, thereby pouring your Love over it through your embodied presence.
Isn’t that the most tremendous boon?
If not the most invaluable gift any being or creation can give or receive!
I wish you the joy of embodied presence as you continually evolve along your journey.
Infinite Love,
Ponder Woman
“Don't assume that money, shelter and creature comforts are enough to demonstrate your love. Nothing can replace your presence, your hug, your smile, your touch - you!” - Denis Waitley
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Beautiful! Also to hear your voice 😍