Harmonic Convergence – Orcas Island Washington, August 16, 1987
Sunrise on Orcas Island
It started out as a normal vipassana meditation at 5AM, scanning inside of my body, backlit by windows that were already admitting light into the room. The scanning was automatic, feeling into each body part – moving my awareness from place to place.
About five minutes into this and I heard and felt the word “Now.” The word seemed to travel instantly through all parts of my body. The “now” voice seemed familiar, as if my friend, Jessie Loo, was speaking inside me. She was in the hospital; we had spoken about 12 hours before.
I went on with my scanning but became increasingly aware of the visual light behind my eyelids. I heard “now” again; once again it pulsed through my body. What was this? It seemed as if my friend was trying to get my attention and convey some sort of message. The “nows” continued and gradually I realized that the “nows” were the message. Each one had a profound effect on my body and my mind. I realized I was being given a practice tool. I started saying “now” silently to myself; I realized that not only could I feel a pulse move through my body, but the light I perceived behind my eyelids would pulse as well. As I continued, my body became lighter and lighter; more and more relaxed. As this was happening I could feel sunlight filling the room – light within and light without! Finally it was time to end the meditation. I felt very grateful for the “nows”. When I opened my eyes I was very surprised, not only had the sun risen, but the clock said 8AM. I had been sitting for three hours!
While still feeling the “nows” inside, I picked up my copy of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) and read some of the words of the Course. All of a sudden it was as if the words caught fire! I could understand the words in a totally different way. Every word, every sentence was written to be read “now.” My body and my reading practice came together! This was an overwhelming experience. For months I’d been trying to make sense of passages in ACIM, much of which had seemed to be written in some kind of code. I had received the cipher; the riddle was being solved. “Now” was the key to understanding.
I was full of the joy of discovery and I wanted to share it with friends who were also ACIM students. I drove to my friend Catherine’s house. I spent some time explaining to her what had occurred. Then I realized that the “now” was also the way to understand what in ACIM is called the “holy instant,” which I now call “presence.” I asked Catherine if she would like to share the “holy instant” with me. I suggested that we both practice the “nows.” We tried for a while – I felt totally at peace and very present. Catherine however started to shift in her chair and look away with her eyes. Finally she said: “This is very intense.” I got the feeling that she was afraid of being taken over by the experience. We talked about it over tea and then I left for my next stop. I was wondering what had happened – why was the experience difficult for Catherine?
Next I drove up the mountain to visit my friends, Dave and Sherry. It was 9AM. They were both sitting at the kitchen table; we greeted one another with hugs. D and S were earnest spiritual seekers, also world travelers. Dave and I were hiking buddies. Although retired, they were very energetic and highly curious. We had had many conversations about spiritual matters. We were not churchgoers. The three of us had been pondering the meaning of the “holy instant” for some time. I told them about my experience and then Dave and I started to practice “nows” together. As we looked at one another I said: “Say and feel the present moment ‘now’ in your body as I do the same.” All of a sudden Dave and I were recognizing one another for the first time! We were experiencing the bond of many lifetimes together. “Welcome back brother,” our eyes and hearts seemed to say. The mirroring of our eyes became a strangely familiar feeling in our bodies. With curiosity we talked with one another about what we were experiencing. Sherry, who was witnessing, said: “This is very profound for both of you.” As we talked from this sharing of presence, the strangely familiar feelings kept coming over us. I left Dave and Sherry’s, with the knowledge that the “now” was real and could be shared.
I then met my friend Lynn who had arranged that we climb Mt Constitution in celebration of the Harmonic Convergence. There was great expectation among non-churched spiritual seekers that the so-called Harmonic Convergence would open us up to a state of higher consciousness. She has a healthy skepticism, a joyous inner spirit, and a strong curiosity. We had both done a summer-long intensive, practicing vipassana. I carried our lunch: sandwiches, oranges, and cookies. As we climbed up the mountain, I told Lynn about my experience. The hike was strenuous but pleasant as sunlight dappled the shadows. We came to twin lakes. Cerulean blue dragonflies were lazily skimming the lake surfaces as we ate. Then we climbed to False Summit, a promontory that overlooks most of the Eastern half of Orcas Island. We sat on the cliff top, next to a medicine wheel and meditated.
Mountain View Orcas Island
Later I attended an outside gathering at the Grange Hall. Jessie Loo had been had been in my thoughts all day. I had said nothing to others about her presence in my meditation… but I knew that, in some way, I was sharing this day with her. I would call her in the hospital and tell her about my day. I found a seat in the front row of the gathering to view a locally produced play called “Once in a Blue Moon.”
Ruth & Hubert Kidder
Next to me sat Ruth and Hubert Kidder, both in their nineties – Quakers since World War II. I was so happy to see them. Ruth leaned over to me and said: “Did you hear about Jessie?” Instantly I realized what Ruth was going to tell me. Jessie had passed away on the eve of the Harmonic Convergence. I replied that I had not heard but that I had felt Jessie’s presence all day and a now I felt a relief that Jessie was free. For almost two years Jessie and I had spent seven hours a day, three days a week together, while I performed her kidney dialysis. Jessie too had a keen spiritual curiosity. A few days after Jessie’s death, Jim, her husband, showed me the last entry in her journal on the HC eve: “Going into the light… ”
I felt very grateful for the gift I had been given, which I still attribute to Jessie Loo. She had known me as fellow seeker. She had passed on a powerful gift. At the time the “nows” just seemed to help me to better understand A Course in Miracles. Little did I realize that the gift I had received would transform my whole life; becoming the main source of my inner teaching and outer actions. I am telling this story because I believe that many of you are experiencing your own versions of this transformation. By revealing more of my inner life, I hope that each of you can start to affirm and live out your own experiences of presencing. I want to pass on the gifts of presencing that were passed on to me. One of these gifts is the realization that “there is nothing to fear.”
Please pass it on.
Blessings. Jack
Meeting the Intrinsic, the Healer Inside: We keep looking outside of ourselves for leadership, wisdom, safety, assurance, and ways of ending our fears and suffering. We’re all looking for a life-formula that will assure us. We are looking for those supports in spite of the fact that if we look at life itself we will see that it is eternal. We have various beliefs that range from pessimistic to optimistic outcomes after our bodies die. Some believe that we will receive eternal life in our present state of awareness, and that the “I that is me” ego will be here forever, based on a belief in merit earned or accumulation of Earthly success. There is no evidence that either eternal rewards or eternal punishments are so… yet these are the issues religions fight about.
Presencing Somatics: We find that our direct relationship with creation exists inside of us, not through some outer agency, but through our own somatic awareness. Instead of vainly trying to find a formula for continuing life beyond the body, we can seek and find the evidence of our own participation in eternal life inside ourselves now. As we practice presencing more and more, we start to become aware that we are accompanied inside by a 
Meeting the Intrinsic: How can we experience the Intrinsic here and now? Like a near death experience, once we become consciously aware of our own intrinsic being, we no longer fear death. We start to experience the constancy of this relationship, which is the healthy core of all relationships. The Intrinsic one will never interfere with the ways we choose to live our lives, but if we move towards It, It will always be with us in our internal awareness. How do we reach towards the Intrinsic? We are going to experiment with prayer, as an opening to this relationship. The prayer will come from each one of us in our own way. If we use Psalms as an example, true prayer always comes from personal honesty. In that sense it will always succeed because the One we are addressing knows and loves us totally:
Our mistake is equating healing with symptomatic relief; whereas true healing is the realization of life. In healing we move into the embrace of what life really is. Life is not the short time we spend in the body, life is eternal and un-separated. Healing is a process of moving into the eternal and un-separated. In practical terms healing is joining or embracing the ones we perceive as “others.”
The Body: Our bodies are designed to repair and heal themselves. All bodies wear out and the healing mechanisms break down… we can then give them the support they need to continue the healing processes. The person that lives in the body also at times needs support. The key to self-healing is to learn to join with the healing processes of the body. In somatics we learn to feel what is happening in the body sensorialy, and then use those senses to guide our consciousness to join with those processes. This is healing for both the body and the mind because it is an act of joining rather than pulling away in fear. The healing is an act of presencing, because we are feeling what is occurring now in the present moment.
Unique Healer: When 
Experiencing eternal life through the temporal body: Ask ourselves: Can we use the body which we know will die to reach a “true knowing” of eternal life. We feel the sensations in our bodies and then start to create interactions with those sensations using proprioceptive awareness… breathing into, touching into, moving the feeling, feeling the shape, intensity, warmth, increasing-decreasing…We follow presencing more and more into layers of inner knowing and see if we can discover a secret truth. We have to enter a state of deep presence in order to experience the qualities of eternal now, one of which is mu, or emptiness. As we interact with our bodies in these ways, we become aware that life does not depend upon form. As we perceive mu, we also enter a state of living awareness. Our temporal body gives us the knowledge that life is always now.
“How little can you do:” The term “bare attention” occurs in Buddhist meditation training. It is an internal application of “just enough.” It means not reacting excessively to anything that occurs. But “bare attention” also implies a basic trust in a life of balance and peace. If we practice presence when we work with our clients we are giving them the same messages: We trust them to live their lives fully and in accord with their own destiny. If they are complaining about their lives or what has happened to their bodies, we meet them with compassion and teach them to trust in life. And most importantly, we help them digest the fears that are causing their suffering. We apply the “just enough” approach so that they become directly involved in their own healing. By doing so we are teaching trust in life as well as full participation in whatever is occurring. At the same time we are opening them into direct dialogue with their own “internal Healer,” which emerges directly out of self-presencing.
Symptoms as “somatic doorways”: Normally the conscious mind tries to avoid areas of discomfort. The tightness that forms around the injury site causes its own symptoms, i.e. limited motion, stiffness, achiness. This is a natural protection against further injury and when we try to move against the guarding we receive further discomfort. It takes a certain amount of time for the body to repair itself. But in the pushiness of our modern lifestyles we neither want the discomfort, nor have the time for the rest required for the normal healing mechanisms to occur. So we mask the pain and sometimes put an artificial restraint around the wounded area. Long after the body has repaired the injury we still experience pain and lack of movement. The somatic doorway is to go directly into the discomforts and limitations without causing further discomfort. There are a variety of ways the practitioner can create this kind of intervention. The most important element is the conscious interaction with the symptoms by the client. In other words, we create a “safe haven” for the client’s explorations. We can alter the symptoms mechanically but this often creates more pain for the client, can re-injure the area, and also supports the client’s weakening of somatic awareness.
Profound: There is a “just enough” engagement between our touch-presence and the client’s inner engagement. The client comes in cautiously with feeling awareness to test the effects of the interaction. When those interactions are met by more and more freedom of movement and less and less pain, the client responds with more trust of the process. So what starts out as bare attention becomes a greater acceptance of the somatic process. These changes can be felt by both practitioner and client. The practitioner started the process by giving the client “just enough” stimulus to start the interaction. By working in this way the practitioner is able come in “under the protective radar” of the conscious mind which has avoided and even feared direct sensory access to the region. We are working with the client’s sensitivity and gently building trust for the process. The releases that happen are guided by the body and do not result in re-injury. A small example: Release of sacral tuberous ligament tightness works best with bare tactile stimulation by the practitioner and bare engagement by the client. Whole Anatomy Trains structural patterns and connective tissue can be approached in this way: “Barely breathe into or barely touch my fingers from the inside of your tissue. I can now feel you coming in. Now touch my fingers as lightly as possible from inside. That’s it. Notice what you are feeling inside as I remove my hands.” In this way the practitioner is guiding the client into an awareness of her own healing response.
Just Enough: “Just enough” is a term that has been used to describe engagement with life that is mutually beneficial to humans and nature. When we take just enough to supply our needs we maintain balance with the rest of life. When we work just enough to provide our sustenance we allow space for others in the work force and more space for our own amusements. When we save just enough to get us through a fallow period we have less spoilage and more opportunity for sharing with others. When we touch the Earth lightly we are constantly rewarded with the beauties and surprises of co-creation. When we support others in their self-discoveries and expressions of their gifts and skills we create a richness in life that is beyond any other rewards. When we observe and learn from nature we become wiser and much less fearful. Presence and gratitude emerge from all of these choices of living lightly. The primary obstacle to all of these choices is fear. The messengers of fear tell us we will never have enough, be enough, see enough, or make enough. Presencing is the antidote to fear. In our work with touch we can also be aware of using “just enough” physical and sensory information with clients to create powerful changes. We can work in somatic partnership with our clients to support the body’s healing apparatus. We do not have to overwhelm the body’s defenses or create a sympathetic response.
Reaching towards one another: The basis of this, the first of two articles (Part II will be posted next week), is that when client and practitioner both feel into the same part of the client’s body, both become consciously aware of tissue changes. They also can feel one another’s conscious awareness through direct sensory interaction. In this sharing of sensory information each person is brought into presence… because the conscious interaction of awareness is occurring in the present moment. Owing to the mutual presencing, some quite surprising things occur. There is a palpable flow of healing energy back and forth. And when either person uses proprioceptive impulses to modify the interaction the other person feels the results. And surprisingly, the intent to reduce the amount of proprioceptive content produces a much stronger impulse for the other person. For instance the practitioner can feel the client breathing into the practitioner’s hands on a part of the body; when the client changes her attention to just barely touch the practitioner’s hands from inside her body sensory awareness, the practitioner receives a huge jolt of energy and feels a profound tissue release from the client. We are exploring the internal dynamics of this interaction… there seems to be a felt sense of “just enough” connection between both persons to create an interaction of consciousness in a realm of increased sentience.
Meeting in presence: It can be a “felt sense”, or proprioceptive, or interoceptive experience and it can happen in any part of the body. The same can be true of motor nerve interactions. Rather than having a client push through his/her own resistance, we can ask the client to barely feel into places of her own bodily defenses and initiate just enough neuromuscular engagement to match what she feels coming from the practitioner. In such an approach the client is witnessing her own patterns with bare attention. For instance if we feel into the contracted tissue that is protecting a recent injury while the body is repairing the tissue, we barely initiate a muscular action, that may relieve some of the limitation and speed up the repair process by sensing and joining in with sentience or somatic awareness and increasing blood flow and relaxation. We may feel much warmth and softness come into the repair site.
When we engage the client’s somatic awareness very surprising things can happen: We can use gentle tapping, decompression, distraction, verbal coaching, and narration to help clients engage into their own internal sentience. Almost as soon as the client barely engages, we feel great changes in the tissue. When we first palpate the defensive contractures around an injury, we become aware that the client has little sensory awareness in that body part. When we draw clients’ conscious awareness into the defensive contractures and support their delving with our own conscious presencing of the area, something changes. The client goes into a parasympathetic response, drawing deeper and deeper breaths, relaxing the tissue and experiencing warmth and pleasance. The more this happens the more the practitioner is able to follow the waves of change in the tissue. The more the practitioner encourages the client to feel into the experience, the more completely the tissue restores itself to the state of tonus prior to the injury.
When we guide and feel a client’s somatic awareness into symptom, we are involved in changing the client’s mind: The symptom becomes a source of curiosity rather than fear. “What are the sensations; can I feel the shape of the lesion; where are the sensations the strongest; what happens when I breathe directly into them; what do I feel when the practitioner taps the painful tissue; can I increase the sensations; can I decrease the sensations; what can I feel when the practitioner decompresses the guarding tissue; what do I notice when the practitioner asks me to describe the sensations?” As the client responds to these interior probings with curiosity the tissue is responding parasympathetically.
In the I-Thou relationship, human beings are aware of each other as having a unity of being. In the I-Thou relationship, human beings do not perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, but engage in a dialogue involving each other’s whole being. In the I-It relationship, on the other hand, human beings perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, and view themselves as part of a world which consists of things. I-Thou is a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity, while I-It is a relationship of separateness and detachment.
Here is some background. Much more is available on my 
In my ethics classes (
Maturing our profession: Two months ago I wrote that our upcoming classes (in Seattle) would include seminars on peer supervision, palliative care, body-centered verbal interaction Focusing and Table Talking, and on-going meditation for bodyworkers. At the time I mentioned that I had recent conversations with colleagues about maturing our profession. As the 
What are your thoughts? The 
Not superficial: Bodywork is not superficial! Many of us realize that bodywork may be changing the way that humans perceive one another as well as the ways that we are living our lives. I have had the advantage of witnessing these changes in two different cultures: Japan and the United States. One of the things I have learned over the years is that everyone is capable of having an inner life in which their awareness becomes capable of feeling their body sensations accompany inside what is occurring their outer experiences; and this ability opens them up to a self-knowledge that is very transforming; they are “remembering now.” This experience of presencing their lives, their own destiny, and their own inner guidance is a gift of body awareness. When the client becomes adept at somatic awareness it is a profound start in the direction of spiritual awakening. It is perplexing that we can struggle for years to feel peace and love inside, but as long as we are dominated by our mind’s thoughts it seems impossible to let go of a constant state of anxiousness. And yet the simple act of paying attention to the body sensations brings us directly into presence, and lack of fear. This is one of the gifts we can offer our clients. It is ironic and amazing that the body, just like all the other forms in our lives, is impermanent and yet it can bring us directly into an awareness of the eternal now! I have even used this technique with dying clients who seem to undergo a profound inner transformation!
Real supervision is a fine art that requires deep listening, into the presence. This form of listening is quite rare and must be carefully cultivated. Listening to another with full attention requires that we drop beneath our own thoughts and judgments. You can test this out be observing your own mind as you are listening to a friend, a client or a colleague. You will find your mind anticipating, projecting, making up stories, distracting, and looking for solutions. We rarely admit to ourselves or to others that this is happening. If you observe the body language of persons who are having a conversation, you can notice the revealing choreography that accompanies the conversation; eyes out-of-focus, attention to cell phone or wrist watch, body turned away, foot tapping, yawning, and watching other persons or activities. All of these internal and external dynamics seem to happen whenever we listen. But there is another way.
Most bodyworkers are self employed and independent of corporate structures. Most are self directed and responsible mainly to themselves. How can we look at supervision as a benefit for self-employed practitioners and their clients? We must start from a different premise; practitioners are accountable to themselves and their clients.
Presencing Source 