The Joy of Being Present

What if there is nothing to accomplish, nothing to understand, nothing to get right, and the invitation is simply to play?

Most of us approach being present as one more thing to get right. We try to quiet the mind and hold our attention in place, and we quietly check whether we are doing it well. With Reconnective Healing®, being present can be much lighter than that. It can be just for the fun of it. When we release the need to understand what is happening, we become available to wonder. To the wonder of what is happening. And suddenly, curiosity becomes play. Play becomes joy. And joy becomes its own reason for being.

The Pressure to Get Being Present Right

Somewhere along the way, many of us picked up the idea that being present takes discipline. We picture a correct posture and a correct result, and we measure ourselves against them. That quiet measuring pulls us straight back into our heads.

Here, the invitation is gentler. Just for the fun of it, just… there is no right, there is no wrong. There is no perfect way to experience this. There’s only the invitation to play.

When Curiosity Becomes Play

Something is happening with these frequencies, something intriguing, something that catches our attention in a way we may not even be able to describe. And suddenly, we want more. I want to know more. I want to see more. I want to hear more. I want to feel more.

Not because something is missing. Not because I need to reach a destination. But because something has captured my curiosity, and curiosity has a wonderful way of inviting us into the unexpected.

This is where being present stops feeling like a task. Curiosity holds our attention on its own, and it does so gladly. Reconnective Healing® is an approach, with nothing to perform, so all that is asked of us is to notice and to receive.

Listening With All of Your Senses

What is this? What’s happening? What else is here? Hmm. What to do? What to do? Perhaps nothing at all. Or perhaps we simply allow ourselves to become more aware.

Listen. Be still. Listen with all of your senses and maybe with senses you didn’t even realize you had. What would it be like to listen with your eyes? To hear with your hands, to taste with your ears, to feel the rhythm of your heartbeat as though it were music, inviting you to dance. Move. Slightly. Slowly. Smooth. And then… be still.

Being present, in this sense, is a way of listening. We let our attention drift toward whatever is interesting and stay with it for as long as it stays interesting. It feels much more like enjoyment than effort, and it brings a sense of wonder along with it.

What You Might Notice While Being Present With the Frequencies

What caught your attention? Where is it now? Perhaps one of these, or something else entirely:

• A warmth moving through your hands
• Coolness
• Tingles, pulsing or clicking
• A sensation that appears in one place and then seems to vanish, only to reappear somewhere entirely unexpected
• A wish to move, or a wish to be still
• A gentle wave of movement through your body
• A presence
• Feeling encouraged, supported, uplifted or intrigued

Or perhaps there’s nothing you can identify at all. Wonderful, wonderful! That, too, is part of the play. There is no requirement to experience anything in particular. And there’s certainly no reason to compare what you’re experiencing with anyone else. We’re simply enjoying the invitation to be… present. And then… something catches our attention again. What was that?

Playing With the Impossible

What if you’re playing with the impossible? Imagine moving through clouds. Soft. Billowing. Endless clouds. There is no resistance. There’s nothing to push against, nothing to hold on to, and yet… I find myself wanting to see beyond them, so I start moving them aside, creating an opening, and the clouds simply swirl in return. I can’t really move the clouds out of the way, but… it’s fun to try!

It’s like digging a hole in water. No matter how much you move the water aside, it returns immediately, refilling the space, restoring itself. It doesn’t know how to do that. It just does it. It’s a response.

There’s something so beautifully liberating about realizing that we can participate without needing to control. We can be curious without needing answers. We can be aware without needing to interpret. We can receive without needing to determine what we received. We can play without needing a reason. Being present asks only for our participation, and control was never part of the invitation.

The Extraordinary in an Ordinary Moment

The extraordinary doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it arrives disguised as an ordinary moment. By the sensation of our fingertips. By the space between our hands. By the sound of a breath. By the unexpected feeling of delight that seems to appear from nowhere.

This is where being present meets daily life, in the kitchen or on an evening walk. Researchers at Harvard University found that people’s minds wandered away from what they were doing in nearly half of their waking hours, and that people were less happy when their minds wandered (ScienceDaily, on Killingsworth and Gilbert’s 2010 study in Science). A playful kind of being present offers a softer way back, because curiosity tends to bring our attention home by itself.

And we begin to recognize that play isn’t something we have to create. It’s something we can allow, and simply enjoy. Not because we’re trying to become more aware, but because awareness itself can be so much fun. The frequencies can also be experienced in a Reconnective Healing® Distance Session, arranged by email beforehand and received while simply resting at home with everything switched off.

Permission to Be Delighted

Perhaps the greatest gift we can give ourselves is permission to be delighted. Delighted by what we notice, delighted by what we don’t understand. Delighted by the mystery.

We’re not here to perform. We’re not here to impress. We’re here to experience. To receive, to be curious. To be present. And to remember that sometimes the most profound invitation is also the simplest. Being present can be exactly this light, the same lightness that runs through expressions of joy. Just for the fun of it.