The Presence Process: A Journey into Present Moment Awareness

Michael Brown

Why is it so difficult for us to respond consciously when we are upset? Why do we resort instead to harmful, repetitive, unconscious, and reactive behaviors?... The reason: We all have deeply repressed emotional imprints that have been programmed into us through experience and the example of others. These imprints unfold automatically over the course of our first seven years of childhood, until these emotional charges are consciously recognized and terminated. Whenever we are disturbed, we automatically resort to these reactive behaviors whenever we are disturbed.

The Presence Process invites us to aspire to “conscious emotional response” as a way of life. Reading and applying the simple procedures found in this book make it possible for anyone, anywhere, to transform their quality of life experience from one that is reflexive and uncontrollable. , to willful liability.

We all long to be freed from our emotional outbursts and instead experience a calm inner response in the face of difficulty. What the Presence Process reveals through direct experience is that any attempt on our behalf to "get rid of" our emotional discomfort is misguided.

In fact, it shows us the miraculous transformation that unfolds when we instead embrace conscious emotional responsibility. The presence process is a guided, self-facilitated journey toward taking full responsibility for our emotional lives, a step-by-step path for the grieving child within us to mature emotionally.