JOSE AIID LENA STEVENS 101Exercise #6: Developing Presence
Set up a wastebasket across the room from you or about
ten feet away. Crumple up a sheet of paper into a ball and
toss the ball into the wastebasket. Set up the distance so that
it is possible to reach it, but not too easy. Shoot some bas-
kets.
Now, purposely think of doing something else. Imagine
that you are driving your car or shopping or anything you can
vividly imagine. TTirow some more baskets without taking
your mind off your imaginative pictures. How well did you
score?
If you are like most folks, your score for direct hits
dropped dramatically when your thoughts were elsewhere.
You were not present. You are not present whenever your
mind is occupied by endless worry, rehearsing for future
showdowns with the boss, or mulling over recent conversa-
tions. Presence has to do with being here with whatever you
are doing now. It has to do with your spirit body being in the
same time frame as your physical body. Whenever there is a
disparity between the two, you lose some of your presence
and therefore some of your power to handle the situation at
hand.
When you are tossing the paper ball into the wastebasket,
your physical body is present. Your body is always present in
this time frame. But where your thoughts and emotions go,
so goes your spirit body. So your spirit body has gone shop-
ping, or driving, or wherever you imagined yourself to be.
That means that your spirit body grows dim around your
physical body, making you look and feel less real.
When you are in a meeting or talking with someone and
your mind wanders, you become less present, less real, less
impactful, less powerful. We say that powerful people have
presence. That is true. They are present with their thoughts
and emotions. Their spirit body is strong within and around
their physical body. They are all there and they are the ones
who get results. Shamans know how to be powerfully present
in physical reality.
They also know how to be consciously present in the spirit
world when they are journeying for knowledge or guidance.
As you have seen, shamans make sure their physical bodies
are protected during their forays into the spirit world. If they
are going to deliberately shift their attention away from the
present physical reality, they take the necessary precautions
to ensure their own safety.
You have learned something about the shamanic perspec-