{"id":18602,"date":"2020-02-18T09:38:39","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T14:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18602"},"modified":"2020-02-18T09:43:07","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T14:43:07","slug":"developing-a-wise-presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18602","title":{"rendered":"Developing a Wise Presence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UqFcetG7wGQ\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tuesday, February 18, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>C<\/em><em>AC Faculty member C<\/em><em>ynthia Bourgeault&nbsp;<\/em><em>shares how&nbsp;<\/em><em>Three-Centered Awareness<\/em><em>\u2014heart, mind, and body\u2014<\/em><em>allows us<\/em><em>&nbsp;to be<\/em><em>&nbsp;fully<\/em><em>&nbsp;present to&nbsp;<\/em><em>ourselves,&nbsp;<\/em><em>our lives, and God.&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When a person is poised in all three centers, balanced and alertly there, a shift happens in consciousness. Rather than being trapped in our usual mind, with its well-formed rut&nbsp;tracks of issues and agendas and ways of thinking, we seem to come from a deeper,&nbsp;steadier, and quieter place. We are present, in the words of Wisdom tradition, fully occupying the now in which we find ourselves. Presence is the straight and narrow gate&nbsp;through which one passes to Wisdom.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This state of presence is extraordinarily important to know and taste in oneself. For sacred tradition is emphatic in its insistence that real Wisdom can be given and received only in a state of presence, with all three centers of our being engaged and awake. Anything less is known in the tradition as \u201csleep.\u201d It is like the disciple Peter suddenly sinking beneath the surface of the waters&nbsp;[Matthew 14:30].&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Everybody has all three&nbsp;centers&nbsp;(head, heart,&nbsp;moving)&nbsp;in them.&nbsp;Most people are born into the world&nbsp;favoring one center or another.&nbsp;We learn to make one our dominant center for our own orientation to the world. And in the Western culture, I would say that\u2019s overwhelmingly, shockingly, the intellectual center.&nbsp;In&nbsp;traditional&nbsp;schools,&nbsp;that\u2019s the capacity we train, with maybe a little bit of space left for&nbsp;the&nbsp;kinesthetic moving center&nbsp;through&nbsp;sports programs, and virtually nothing for the emotional center. Any budget cutback and what leaves? Arts and music, the primary channels through which the emotional center is still trained.&nbsp;So&nbsp;in&nbsp;the West&nbsp;we\u2019re formed&nbsp;as&nbsp;heavily lopsided intellectual-center-oriented beings.&nbsp;That\u2019s&nbsp;how most of us get our start.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In pop culture, we say, \u201cWell, find your center, acknowledge it, and live in it.\u201d&nbsp;But&nbsp;the inner tradition work&nbsp;calls us&nbsp;to&nbsp;develop our under-utilized centers.&nbsp;If&nbsp;we over\u2013use&nbsp;the intellectual center, then&nbsp;our&nbsp;work lies in bringing&nbsp;the&nbsp;emotional and moving centers&nbsp;fully online and integrating them.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201cwork\u201d is&nbsp;to discover our starting position and reach out to incorporate the other two so that they&nbsp;are fully\u2014and in a balanced way\u2014part of our perceptual center. Whatever&nbsp;center&nbsp;you may find yourself to be, don\u2019t detain yourself on it, because it immediately sets out your job of discovering where the other two are hiding inside yourself and bringing them&nbsp;forward.&nbsp;It\u2019s only when you have balanced the three centers\u2014kinesthetic moving center, emotional center, and intellectual center\u2014and integrated them&nbsp;that&nbsp;you become&nbsp;conscious.&nbsp;We\u2019ve&nbsp;got to&nbsp;have all three as the basis of&nbsp;a good, strong tripod before&nbsp;we\u2019re&nbsp;really awake.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tuesday, February 18, 2020 CAC Faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault&nbsp;shares how&nbsp;Three-Centered Awareness\u2014heart, mind, and body\u2014allows us&nbsp;to be&nbsp;fully&nbsp;present to&nbsp;ourselves,&nbsp;our lives, and God.&nbsp;&nbsp; When a person is poised in all three centers, balanced and alertly there, a shift happens in consciousness. Rather than being trapped in our usual mind, with its well-formed rut&nbsp;tracks of issues and agendas and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18602"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18602"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18604,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18602\/revisions\/18604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}