We are born being in essence but lose touch with it early in life because something happens that triggers overwhelming feelings of fear, sadness, anger, abandonment, etc. in us. To deal with these strong emotions, we take on personas which are roles and behaviors that we think other people expect of us. Some of these personas are the "A" student, the quiet kid, the sick kid, the show off or the athlete. A persona helps to protect us from the pain of overwhelming feelings and helps us to gain recognition from those around us. Early in life we choose to abandon the world of how we feel inside for the world of how we appear to others from the outside.

What do we do instead of living in essence?

When we lose touch with our essence, we try to restore the feeling of wholeness, often with methods that absolutely do not work. One common example of this is addiction; to food, drink, drugs, sex, etc. All addictions and eating disorders are toxic attempts to restore essence through artificial means. A second dead-end path is the accumulation of things. This is an attempt to connect with essence by acquiring the symbols of it. A third common way that people attempt to restore essence is to find happiness in intimate relationships. While this distracts us from our pain for a time, inevitably the unconscious patterns return.

Here are some of the ways that people avoid becoming present to what is important:

-          Being judgmental to our own feelings and those of others so that we don't give ourselves any room to be with them.

-          Repetitive Drama is when we recycle dramas, usually in a way where we are right and someone else is wrong, we don't need to think about what is real underneath.

-          Conceptualizing removes us from the immediacy of our feelings. A lonely person may escape feelings of loneliness by visualizing the contents of their refrigerator.

-          Faulty Attribution is blaming something out there for something that is actually caused by something in here. My neck hurts because my boss yelled at me.

-          Explanation/Logic is when people analyze and justify in great detail why they feel what they feel. Justification is feeling righteous about our feelings. If I deserve to feel the way I do then I don't have to look deeper into myself and figure out the reasons behind my feelings.

There are hundreds of ways to avoid being present but only one way to become present. Life is full of distractions. People avoid dealing with the issues of their lives by eating too much, watching too much TV, gambling, becoming addicted to drink or drugs, accumulating things...We have attempted to satisfy ourselves through our mouth, eyes and ears to escape a problem that lives inside of the body and that can only be effectively confronted through feeling it IN the body.

How can we get our essence back?

All of the ways to shift back into presence are based on being conscious of what we feel in our bodies. Here is a way to begin to do this.

Tune into something that you are feeling in your body. It could be hunger, tiredness or a feeling of unease. Put your attention on it without doing anything else to the sensation. Don't try to fix it, judge it or make it change. Simply rest your attention on it without doing anything else. Notice what happens when you get your attention fully connected with the sensation. Can you keep your attention on it, or does it jump away onto something else?

Breathing bridges the conscious and unconscious mind. When we sleep, breathing is unconscious but when we're awake we can choose to slow or speed up our breathing rate. Consciously choosing to breathe slower often effectively reduces stress that we feel. In the same way, feeling body sensations and connecting to the emotional content that causes them is the way to connect to essence.  If you want to learn more about how to get in touch with your essence here are some good places to start.

Visit the Hendricks foundation website at:

Awakening Mindfulness - Course Description - starts this Thursday,Oct.7