…the power of witnessing
Presence isn’t only required to live a more aligned life. It is a core ingredient for peace, collaboration and creativity.
Presence requires us to come from a different place than our intellect. We cannot fully tap into the opportunities of every moment if we try to conceptualize or analyze what is going on around us.
Of course this processing is entirely human. Yet, it doesn’t have to define how we relate to ourselves and others.
Let’s take the upheavals that our world is facing at the moment.
We can go ahead and engage through our thoughts, opinions, and perspectives, which is one valid way of doing it. The challenge though is that we then also operate from a place of habituality, unconscious conditioning and ways of thinking that suits our own narrative of life.
On the other hand, I’m convinced that what the world needs right now is more people that see through the binary and divisive ways in which the essence of humanity is presented to us. More people that are comfortable with unknowing on an analytical scale but knowing more deeply on the level of the soul. More people that dare to tap into their sensory experiences - witnessing and observing through sight, touch, hearing, and feeling.
More people that are open to the information that is conveyed to us on these subtle yet profound wavelengths.
As a mediator I know how relevant witnessing and the presence of an objective party is to a heated and/or seemingly intractable conflict. It makes all the difference if parties have the space to verbalize and express in many other ways how they view the conflict at hand and what it does to their wellbeing.
If I’m truly present within a conflict situation I’m not only opening my senses about what is going on for the other people in the room. I’m also aware of what is going on inside of me: tightness, heat, nausea or lightness, openness, relief. In mediating I’m never detached from what is going on between the conflicting parties - spouses, parents, families etc. It’s like an subconscious dance in resonance - I might just as much respond to what is being said or expressed. However, since I’m trying to witness rather than suppress or project what is going on inside of me, I also create the space to do the same for the others involved.
Presence creates the possibility of slowly sinking deeper than thoughts, assumptions, and opinions take us. It creates the possibility for buried feelings to emerge, for unexpressed needs to find their way into the open.
Presence creates the much needed space and time for seeing what is - without our analysis and judgement attached. There is nothing of greater relief than finally seeing and acknowledging where we are with ourselves and each other.
After I had mediated for some sessions a deep-seated conflict between a couple the barriers that each of them had built finally fell when I suggested: “Could it be that you really miss her?” After that they both were in tears, telling each other in how many ways they missed each other and being with each other how they used to. It was a moment of stillness, of letting down the dearly held guards, of giving up in the most positive sense.
This is what presence can do. Going beneath and beyond all the explanations that we have for why we are and behave the way we do. And instead experiencing the humanness in each of us.
To me presence - the power of witnessing is a core human skill much underutilized, especially in larger-scale conflicts. Our collective tendency is to stay out of them and turning the other side, or to take sides, demonizing the one we didn’t choose. Either way we’re not engaging with all the potential we have, and we make the conflicts much worse.
What do you think? Is it possible to practice more presence for yourself and for one another? Will this change the destructive path we’re on?