One of the big reasons why I am so attracted to Michael Brown (The Presence Process author) and his teachings is that so much of what he talks about I can really relate with in my own life, for example he saids that there only needs to be one or two integrationist in the family to integrate the family imprinting.  And that one integrationist will often feel like the black sheep of the family.

…I can definitely relate to that.

And he also talks about when we go into the healing work and discover different healing tools, we immediate want to introduce those tools to the family… “Hey look I have something that will fix you all!”

hilariously I have to admit that… I’ve done that as well in one form or another before, with zero success.

He explains that we have the urge to heal our family because we see our own hopelessness reflected in them, in hindsight this insight is also true for me… admittedly sad but true and also kinda funny now…

And he also talks about the pathway of awareness during his journey to heal his painful condition. How he went from first taking the physical approach to mental to emotional.

I can also see this pathway clearly in my own life.

First I did many physical things, studied such thing as how to act outwardly to talk to girls for example, thinking that if I just rearranged my physical circumstances my life would be better.  I did many things… such as moving from one dorm to another.  Making new friends. I even went on a raw food diet, and even tried water fasting for 14 days.

Again my attention was predominately physical, I intended to change the quality of my life through the physical. No lasting change was accomplished.  I may feel a sense of change but feel better for a little bit but the same issues returned.

Then I went into the mental, this is when I studied LoA, all the affirmation stuff (which was great at covering up stuff), watching my thoughts, changing my thinking pattern, visualizations, and such thing as metaphysics really got me excited. which Michael likes to call “mental-gymnastics”.  Studying things like 5th dimension, merkabah, etc.  In hindsight much of those pursuits was about me trying to leave the here and now into something else, because I was continually dis-validating my own experience. (Michael also explains his plight to escape the here and now through mental-gymnastics)

In the book The Presence Process, he talks about in time we only “think” that something is happening… I’ve done this a lot, again this journey has been about going to the mental to impact my life.

He explains the mental-physics part of the journey as the kitchen… it’s got bunch of sexy tools and different things to play with but you wanna just get in there and get out.  If you stay in there forever you overcook.  And I totally “got that”.  Metaphysics definitely allowed me to mentally grasp what Michael is speaking about… and understand/digest it so I can work with it in my own life.  As Michael saids, information allows us to move in formation.

I’m slowly realizing that the intent that was driving the physical and mental journey was to feel better.  Not getting better at feeling.

Eventually I got curious about the human emotions and the role “feelings” has on the quality of life.  This is when works like faster EFT, Mada Dalian, shadow work, inner child work, Phone Booth really got my attention and interest.  Eventually I found the Presence Process and began to see the impacts of emotional process work, the journey is still young at this point and so it continues.

“It’s not about feeling better, it’s about getting better at feeling.”

I’m really seeing how most of my behavior is reactive… the smallest trigger could set me off to telling “stories” about it and the stories become so convincing that they force me into action.  This seems like these episodes of reactive outbursts are happening more often these days, but I assume they’ve been happening all my life, I’m just becoming more aware of them.

This reactive behavior and addiction to negative thought patterns, has been for a long time a great source of frustration and hopelessness, despite all my efforts to “change” this predicament, I seem to addictively “cling” / attach myself to them over and over again, seemingly out of my control. Even if I intellectually know that such behavior is hurtful to me and others, I seem to re-act the negative drama over and over again.

My next realization has been that underlying this reactive behavior, there is a uncomfortable feeling to it.  This leads me to my next realization that I’ve been having recently is that, looking past on my life with the eyes of felt perception, which means simply seeing how this uncomfortable feeling has been with me through out all my life from childhood, I realize that much of my life has not changed.  Meaning despite the changes in the surroundings and the stories, the underlying feeling component of it has repeated over and over again.  It’s also this feeling that has driven me to “fix” myself, get into personal development, doing affirmations, actively pursuing something outside of myself so I can feel better.

Hence, most of my behavior has been reactive.

Realizing the most of my life nothing has really changed, is a daunting realization but I hope that this is the portal awakening me to real authentic shifts… for the first time in my life.

first step is getting very real. what I mean by that is.  Getting real with what I am feeling in each and every moment.  And becoming responsible for what I’m feeling which means to adopt a responsive behavior.  Realizing that I’m responsible for what I am feeling.

The challenge has been the sheer addictive-ness of these triggers, they quite literally feel like attacks on my mental / emotional states.  Seemingly coming out of nowhere and even when I’m most vulnerable.

Michael Brown illustrates this occurance beautifully in the article: WELCOME TO THE “ICU”  Part I: Skimming The Surface

At first (when I was first getting into the Presence Process) I didn’t pay that much attention to this phenomenon of parasitic entities, but after months of actively exploring my feeling body and witnessing myself over and over again getting triggered into completely unconscious reactive behaviors without much of my control, I’m starting to take this article much more seriously.  Seeing how many of my upsets came as thought forms that trigger me into telling stories about it and reacting to it.  I’m beginning to leave room for the possibility of the existence of parasitic entities… as creepy as that sounds

Practicing ICU consistently I’m beginning to experience it’s fruits. Instances where I catch myself in the midst of “seeing” the presence of the uncomfortable feeling and catching it with the light of my awareness.  I still do get smacked around into unconsciousness quite a lot still but at least now I have the tools that lead me to more and more balance.

Today I typed in “Presence” on youtube and clicked “Presence in Relationship” by Eckart Tolle. Mind you this is the first Eckart video I’ve seen in a very long time, And in this video Eckart is talking about the exact same thing Michael talks about…about these parasitic entities.  It was amazing to hear another’s perspective on it.  And it was even more amazing because it is exactly what I’m going through at the moment… I love the humor that Eckart puts into this…  Just the fact that Michael and Eckart is pointing at the same truth is giving me renewed faith in this approach to this inner battle.