The Heart of Presence

I wrote a blog called "The Heart of Listening" in November 2023. The experts I was listening to then were Stephen Porges & Gabor Maté on the topic of Trauma and the Nervous System. These experts pointed out the importance of listening in trauma therapies, but added a couple of specifications: seeing with the heart, and listening with the heart. “It’s only with the heart that one can see rightly… . So listening is far more than hearing and we have not, in a sense, given it its true place.” (3:38) The heart of listening requires an additional step most of us don’t think about regularly unless we’re professionals working in the field of trauma. That step is engaging our hearts in such a way that both listeners and speakers feel it’s safe to have a meaningful discussion.

That video described what I struggled to put into words back then. The heart of presence is similar and certainly engages the speaker's and listener’s hearts. However, as Maté and Porges state, “the heart of listening” and I posit the heart of presence “require an additional step most of us don’t think about regularly.” In my experience, lately, that extra step is engaging our intuitive senses. The listener still needs to listen with their heart so both listener and speaker feel safe enough to allow such a visceral discussion to take place, and to engage the intuitive senses in an act of healing.

I’ve experienced this type of connection recently, both as the listener and the speaker, and it was, indeed, powerful and healing, but there’s another difference I must mention. In one experience, there was a third person present who also facilitated healing by maintaining and creating a space of safety for the speaker and the listener.

I was in a state of shock by something someone said that caught me completely by surprise. It ricocheted through my mind, body, and heart with such force that I felt devastated for days after. It was still bothering me when I ran into a friend. Thankfully, she listened with her heart, creating a safe space for me to open up about what had happened. After listening for a bit, she turned that shock, still running amok inside me, into an opportunity for healing. Instantly, I felt happy, inspired, and had a brand new perspective.

I must clarify that healing is something that happens to us or through us. Neither of us were the source of the powerful, mysterious energy capable of changing shock into inspiration. We did, however, amplify this energy to facilitate healing because both of us were aware enough to be open to it. It isn’t just within purview of religion or the religious, either. This mysterious healing energy is spiritual and available to all.

The second instance was another encounter between two people. By chance, I joined their conversation as I knew one of them and had met the other before. I didn’t know what they were discussing as I joined them, but something about one person’s facial expressions tweaked my intuition, so I paid attention to it. What I saw was a strong lady covering up a deep emotion. While I admired her fortitude, I also felt her extreme pain and disbelief. Suddenly, I was right there with her. Out of the blue I said, “Group hug.” I’ve said those words maybe three times in my life, so it’s not at all a common thing for me to initiate. We hugged, and she was on her way. Apparently, someone very close to her had suddenly passed away. The healing was in sharing her pain emotionally and physically.

Were these chance encounters with friends an invitation to look for ways to forge a new reality of caring, a deeper way to connect with others that heal, encourage, and inspire? What about the coincidence of a person who needed support running into the very people who were aware enough to give that support? It sounds like a synchronicity of connection.

My thoughts went back immediately to a series of books I read by James Redfield about prophecies written in an ancient manuscript. The story is fiction, but the concepts it reveals through the struggles of its characters are magical and fascinating, pointing the reader to a massive change in human consciousness. Before reading Redfield’s book, I had a similar sense that our roles on earth were changing. We weren’t here just to live out our lives or leave a legacy for our children. We were here to change what it meant to be human, and it was happening in my life. That sense was so strong, I wrote a memoir and plan to write two more books about those changes.

The heart of presence is not an individual gift. It is shared by those who can sense that mystical, mysterious energy and respond to its nudges and insights. There is another factor present. The person seeking healing may or may not consciously know they want healing, understanding, or insight until after it happens, but somehow, the right person shows up. That it’s happening more often in my life is interesting. If it’s happening to me in my small town, on my island, it is surely happening to millions of others on the planet.

 We don’t need a reminder of what’s going on worldwide. We need the heart of presence with the synchronicity of connection now more than ever, and we can all contribute to that by actively seeking opportunities for connection. It may seem like it’s a small and inconsequential thing to do. It is definitely not, just like it’s a small thing, comparatively, to buy local and Canadian products to support Canadian businesses through this time. Our hearts swell with a wave of new found patriotism. It may seem like an insignificant gesture, too, to grow as spiritual beings and connect in this way. Think about it, wouldn’t the changes in us, in our hearts as we respond to this mysterious energy, sustain and support us through these rough waters?

Think of the events of your life. The old Newtonian idea is that everything happens by chance, that one can make good decisions and be prepared, but that every event has its own line of causation independent of our attitude. After the recent discoveries of modern physics, we may legitimately ask if the universe is more dynamic than that. Perhaps the universe runs mechanistically as a basic operation, but then also subtly responds to the mental energy we project out into it. I mean, why not?

Redfield, James. The Celestine Prophecy (p. 59). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.