Question:
I’ve been practicing the presence techniques you teach, but I’m only able to stay in that state for a few seconds. Maybe for a minute if I try really hard. How can I stay present for longer?
The so-called “techniques” I teach to become present are simply doorways or portals into a profoundly deep spiritual state.
There are two main reasons that explain why our minds are so noisy that it seems hard to stay in this beautiful state of “Thoughtless Awareness”.
The first reason is that our minds are cluttered.
What creates all of this mental clutter? Why do we have so much thinking on our minds even when it’s not practical? Why do we ruminate on issues that we can do nothing about in this moment?
The answer is very simple:
You are forced to think about anything you believe has the power to cause your feelings.
The moment you believe another person or situation or outcome has the power to determine how you feel, you’re automatically, almost uncontrollably going to be thinking about it.
So the first solution to having a much quieter, more present-focused mind is to drop the illusion.
Specifically, I mean to drop the Psychological Illusion. In other words, to discard the idea that the outside world, circumstances, people, problems, or anything other than thought itself has the power to cause your feelings. The moment that illusion drops, without any effort on your part, you become much more clear-headed and quiet-minded.
The second reason it can be hard to maintain a quiet, present, focused mind is that sometimes in the present moment, if you were to really quiet down, you would notice that you don’t feel great.
Maybe you’ve been in a bad mood, and even if you quiet your mind, you have negative sensations or feelings that appear to be in your body.
When you feel bad, it’s really hard to clear your mind and maintain presence. Why? Because the present moment doesn’t necessarily feel good. It might feel like an uncomfortable sensation in your body. It could show up as a guilt or worry or energy of anger somewhere in your midsection.
When this happens, the temptation is to ignore the feeling. The fastest way to do that is to dive into a narrative of thoughts and movies and soundtracks in your mind that justify why you feel this way.
The totally counter-intuitive thing to do also happens to be the cleanest, easiest, quickest, most beneficial way of dealing with the negative sensation. And that is, to give it your full attention.
If you want to know exactly how to dissolve negativity by shining the light of your presence onto it, then you are going to love learning how to do the Inner Salam Method.
In the next Nafs Mastery Session, I’m going to do a deep dive into the Inner Salam Method in a session called “The Way Out of Pain”.
We’ll also be doing a deeper exploration of Prophetic Presence and the Psychological Switch.
The combination of these three approaches is absolutely transformative.
If you want to check it out for yourself, go here:
