How to Be More Present

Do you ever feel like you want be more present in your life... but no matter how hard you try, you keep "falling out of presence?"

Maybe you want to not get distracted by a bunch of non-essential things. Or maybe you'd like to be able to "stay with yourself" while you're with others and not get pulled around by others' agendas. Or, maybe you need to show up with more presence for your business, or for the people you love.

In this short training video, I talk about what presence is, and I explain how people misuse the word “presence." I also talk about why it's so hard to stay present and what you can do to stabilize it.

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Transcription

0:06
All right. Hello, everyone. We're live. Thank you for joining me. And today we're going to talk about presence. Speaking of meditation, though. So, um, what I'd love to do actually is this is my first time ever going live. And I would love to hear from you in the chat. So do you want to just say, hey, in the chat, that would be amazing. I'm sort of learning about different social media, live platforms. So like, obviously, YouTube, Instagram, and it looks like on YouTube, Steve, Hey, what's up, dude? How's it gone? So, what I'm learning right now on YouTube is that you can't see. Oh, Larry, that makes me so happy you're here. What I can't see is the names of the people that are here. On Instagram, you can see like, who's joining and who's not right now, I can just see that there are eight people here. So. Alright. Cool. So I think I'll just go ahead and dive in. Let's see.

So we're going to talk about today is this concept of presence, John. And this is a topic that I've been studying for a really long time and exploring not just through books, but also through practice. And I just meditated right before this to kind of prepare. But what I'd like to do today is talk about what presence is and what it isn't. And then talk about what you get, when your presence, what you lose when you're not presence, and kind of how to cultivate presence, why it's so hard to stay presence, throughout your day to day life. Like you can meditate five minutes and then you stop. And then your friend says something to you, and immediately you're triggered. So why is that? Why is it so hard to stay present? So let's see, I'm just checking in here with myself.

2:39
So I want to talk about first, what presents What presents presence is. Presence, as far as I understand it, is a quality of welcoming attention to whatever is arising in your experience, both externally and internally. I'm gonna unpack that. But what I'd like to do the foreign impact that is talked about how I hear the word presence being misused a lot. So in our culture, right now, of Instagram selfies, and there's kind of like a pop mindfulness thing going on, that I see, I see people posting on Instagram that is so present today. People say things like oh, so present present today, you know, I was like, Really, I was really present with my mom today, or had a really present conversation with my friend. And a lot of times, maybe I'm just being judgmental, maybe I don't actually know what they mean. But it seems as though what they're what they're using presents to me is that they had a good time is that they, they they experienced a level of connection with the person they were speaking to, or the mood was good vibe was good. And what I want to clarify up front is that what presence is not is your mood. Presence is not about the content of your experience, or about the flavor of your experience. Okay, it's a it's a neutral kind of term about your capacity to be with whatever is here, whatever is arising in your experience. So for instance, there you were in that conversation with your friends, and you were feeling connected, and you were present to that and you're present to your friends. So it doesn't mean stress free or happy. In other words, what I'm saying is, you can be equally presents with a positive experience as a negative experience quote unquote. You can you can be present with the death of a friend or the birth of a child. You can be equally present with you know, a birthday wish or stomach ache. And so that's my point, it doesn't have anything to do with the content of your experience, presence is about the quality of attention that you're bringing to the experience that you're having. Right now. Another way to think about presence is I've been studying parts work. So you might be familiar with something called internal family systems, or a cousin of that called focusing with a capital F, which is a kind of therapeutic modality, really codified by going in Jean Eugene, gendlin, gendlin. Anyway, the idea in parts work is that you have your self self with a capital S. And then you have parts. So parts of you like, for instance, if you've ever seen the movie Inside Out, which is a masterpiece, in my opinion, the Pixar masterpiece, and it's basically like, it's about a 10 year old girl who runs away from home, and she has these characters in her head. And there are five characters, characters are called joy, sadness, disgust, fear, and anger. And there's a control panel in her brain. And at any one moments, one, or a couple of them are in control. And the idea in parts work is that you have these parts of you. And they're not as simple as joy, sadness, disgust, in world parts work. But the idea is that there's something else available there, which is you with a capital Y, you are the container of that entire experience, you're the person who can have relationship with each of those little characters in you. And so when we talk about prisons, in the context of parts work, what we're talking about, is the quality of the relationship between you and part. So for example. So for example, right before I got on screen, maybe 10 minutes ago, I was thinking about, have I prepared enough for this first live session, I was getting worried, I was thinking, I'm going to run out of content. I had all these worries in my head. And they arose without my conscious control. That's how thoughts are, that's how thoughts work. They arise without your conscious control. The choice that I had, and which I was lucky to make, and that moment was to become present to those thoughts, or present with those thoughts. In other words, in the in the world of parts work, you might say, there was a part of me, that was worried.

7:37
And then I Josh, with a capital J came in and said, Oh, yeah, I see you're worried. And I really hear that. So Josh, capital J, is relating to this part that is worried. And saying, yeah, really hear that. And then the part that is worried having been heard, that's basically, the posture of it is like, Oh, wow, thank you very much. And then Amazingly, the worry sort of dissipates, and it's like, the worried part kind of begins to trust, okay, Josh is here. Cool, that's gonna be everything's gonna be cool. Even if I forget what to say, even if I don't have enough content, everything's gonna be cool. Because Josh with a capital J is here. So Joshua, the capital J, and parts work is called self in presence, capital S, capital P self in presence. And so there you are present, because you're here and present with the parts that are expressing whatever they have the concerns I have. So those are two kind of working ideas of presences, the sense of the neutral being with an M, this parts work thing. And I want to bring in one other framework that might be useful to talk about presence, that is, in the Enneagram, which you know, me, you know, I'm obsessed with the Enneagram learning it, teaching it for many years now. And in the Enneagram, there's this idea of the levels of development. So the levels of development. Basically, in the Enneagram, you have these nine personality types, but the type, your type, or a type and the Enneagram is not a list of character traits. It's not a it's not a set of behaviors. It is a vertical kind of chute of possible attitudes and behaviors that exists at different levels of health or development as it's called. And the way that the levels of development work is that the higher level you are means that you have more capacity for presence. capacity for presence means that you're more able to be with intimately and deeply and totally whatever is arising You experience. So a high level of development in the Enneagram doesn't mean, for instance, like if I'm a very, very healthy type four, it doesn't mean that I don't get sad or I don't get moody. It just means that whatever arises in my experience I can be present with. So a classic way of saying it says I can have emotions without being emotions. Okay, cool. So that's levels of development. It's a really subtle concept. And there's probably more that I'll unpack on that on another video in the future, but moving on for now. Okay. So let's talk about what you get, are actually, what I'd like to do now is say, what I want to talk about one thing that's very interesting about when you don't have presents, and this is something that I think, isn't talked about very often. But it's so important to understand this so important. It's why it's why it's why in my very first ever live video, I decided to talk about presence. Because it's so foundational to me, presence is the foundational concept of any inner work system. It's, it's foundational to spirituality, it's foundational to the Gurdjieff work is foundational to any gram, it's foundational to hearts work, the more present you are capable of being with whatever's arising. Basically, the more healthy you are, and there's a lot to say about what you get from presents. But when you're not present, what happens when you're not present? What you lose is your will, what you lose is your will, let me say what I mean by that, when you're not present. What happens is you run your organism runs based on its own automaticity, you have your habits, you have your patterns, those patterns are totally unique to you. Some people's patterns look really productive, and are productive. Some people's patterns look really moody and are really moody, some people's patterns, patterns, paint the whole spectrum of the human rainbow, there's, there are all different kinds of patterns. And without being present to them, you have no choice. But to simply go along with your pattern, your pattern has its own momentum, and it carries you because it is basically the largest inertial body in your organism and your system. And it just carries you. So when I say when I say you lose your will, what I mean by that is that

12:40
if your patterns are running you, you aren't, you're not sort of in control of you. You're not leading yourself, your patterns are leading you. And you can't commit to anything for any length of time, longer than a couple of minutes. Because what happens is if for instance, if if you try to say, Okay, I'm going to I'm going to decide, I'm going to commit to working out three days a week and I make a plan, I say I'm gonna do it, I can set the intention. And it's like my mind in that moment says, Great, I'm going to do that. But you don't stand a chance. Because if your pattern is don't do that, if you're, if you're if if basically you're making a wish upon a star, that you are going to wake up tomorrow and have a level of discipline that you've never had in your life. And through sheer force of will make that happen for yourself, it's very, very, very unlikely to happen. And the reason is, because you're not the one in control, something else is running you. And that is the totality of your patterns and habits. And basically the Amalgamated personality that has formed you up until this moment, what presidents is and does is allows you to sort of take that pattern and then sort of like take it off the walls of your consciousness or like, actually, here's a way to here's what I think of it, it's kind of like your patterns are the food coloring, that flavors or colors, the water that would otherwise be clear in your consciousness and then having a presence practice cultivating presence is like being able to extract from the water, the food coloring, so you can have the concentrated food coloring separate from the clarity that is you. And so you can take that pattern and then see it like let's pretend it's blue coloring you can take it and then look at it as an object of consciousness and distinguish it from who you really are. And from that place, you have a lot more choice. You see, you have will you have the capacity for will in that case. And without that opens clear by now. Wills not really possible So one of the things about presence too, is

15:09
I want to introduce a word. And the word is. What's up, Adam, thanks for being on board for the metaphor. I want to introduce a word, the word is self remembering, self remembering. The word comes from the Gurdjieff work Gurdjieff. By the way, Gurdjieff. Just so you know, is the guy, he's been up, he's an Armenian mystic who brought the Enneagram from the east to the west. And he didn't teach the Enneagram of personality types. But the ending of a personality types was sort of born from an kind of belongs as an outgrowth of his school of inner work. And there's a central concept in his school called self remembering. So yes, what's up, Alex? So self remembering. One of the things that Gurdjieff said to his students was, your fundamental problem is that you don't remember yourselves. You don't remember yourself, you don't remember who you are. So in the food coloring analogy, pretend who you are, is the clear water. And who you aren't, is the blue food coloring. But if the blue food coloring is just all up in you, then that's what you think you are. It's not who you are. But it's we think you are. You see, and presence, cultivating presence, is what allows you to actually finally make that distinction. One of the reasons the food coloring metaphors, I think, so profound, is because it's not like something was just in the background, like an object on the shelf, and then I just could bring it out in front of me, it's like something that was that permeated me that that I took to be myself that I identified with that was actually merged with me, quote, unquote, me tap on me, is it me? It's not me. And so presence is this, this, this gift that allows us to distinguish between what is me and what isn't me. Let me make us personal. So I want to talk about one way that I really personally struggle with self remembering. So one thing that I've been working with a lot recently in my life is the sense of staying with myself, quote, unquote, when I'm with other people, what I noticed is that when I'm in the presence of other people, I have a very porous, nervous system. It's like the energies and the flavors and the agendas and desires of other people. They just sort of get in side here. And it's very difficult when I'm with other people to distinguish, what is it that I want to do versus what is it the other person wants to do? What's mine? And what's theirs? Where do I end? What are the other person's again, the word self remembering, by the way, is really, really useful. And I think maybe has a little more clarity in that context, literally self remembering, as opposed to getting lost in the confusion between self and other self remembering. And I want to give you an example. So I spent three months in a cabin in the woods this summer, and I was alone for the vast majority of the time. And there's a whole thing about the cabin in the woods. There's a whole story about why I decided to go actually related to this, it was a sense of I wanted to I want a time alone, so I could clarify what was mine. And so I could listen for the inner whisper of vocation to to let him Let come through me will want it to come through me. It was very difficult when I was in the presence of other people to distinguish that because I kept saying yes to people's plans or invitations and and it was just noisy, not just because I was living in New York City, and there were car horns of all time. But just socially, it's very noisy. It was noisy inside me. So I had to go and I want to go away. And anyway, so there I found myself in the woods, and it was fucking awesome. It was the best thing I've ever done for myself. And I'm gonna talk about it in a lot more depth in another video. But what I want to bring up right now is related to this idea of self remembering is there it was for the first month and it was so amazing. It was I woke up every day just with a sense of what wants to happen now. Everything that I did was coming from me it was like the most radical month of self remembering that I've ever had. And it was like every moment what I wanted to know what what I wanted to know. And there was there were very, very few outside influences on me

20:11
about as few as I probably as I possibly could, could have had. And it was amazing. And what I thought was I thought I was building a muscle. For I thought I thought it was basically I was getting a taste of this. I was like, okay, cool. Now I've gotten a taste of this. Now I've gotten a taste of what it's like to live from the inside out, basically, to live from the front standpoint that I determined my life, not what not sort of other people. And a month went by, and then my friend whose cabin I was staying in, basically, let me just give you a quick I was in a cabin here. And then my friend that my two friends, they live in this house that was like right on the same property. And so as my friends, Brian, Rachel, Rachel had been there for like a week, but we were sort of like, not really hanging out that much. I was mostly staying by myself. And then Brian came to visit for one weekend. And he was doing this thing where he, once a week would do a cheat day for his meals. And so we went shopping, and he was buying whatever, like apple pie and ice cream and stuff like that. And I had been for the last month eating so healthy, like the healthiest I've ever eaten. I was cooking everyday for myself. And just so you have a sense of it. Like the I went, I did a Costco trip right before the cabin. So I had all these materials, and it was just very healthy through there. Then my friend Brian gets gets there. And without even without even questioning it. I just found myself going to the grocery store with him, and loading up my cart with a bunch of sugary ship food. And then eating it and way over eating that night. And then the next morning waking up and feeling like feeling like shit. And realizing that I had lost myself, I had actually forgotten myself. It was a moment of the opposite of self remembering. I forgot myself, you follow me. And what was really interesting about there's, there's so much to unpack about that experience. But what I realized is that one of my most fundamental addictions is to socializing is to being with other people. And what I also realized was that it was kind of like, the ante to the table or, you know, table stakes, to be in relationship with someone else. What I realized is that, for me somewhere, like deep in myself, is my subconscious mind was this rule that in order to hang out with someone, I had to basically go along, I had to merge into their world, because they wouldn't want to participate in mine, I have to I have to be in their world, they don't want to be mine. And what so do you see how subtle this is like, without even questioning it, I found myself at the grocery store. And he's loading his shopping cart with ice cream. And I found myself doing the same thing. And even that language, actually, I found myself doing the same thing is kind of the most accurate way I can say it, because it's it's as if it wasn't a choice, because my pattern was running me follow. So I also want to admit that here I'm talking about presence. And it's, it's really important if you're going to be if you're going to try to be present your life, to have a practice in which you are cultivating presence. And guess what, I didn't have a practice a case I didn't have a consistent practice, I should say, when I was in the woods, and I lost it, I lost it, it's possible to lose, you can gain it, you can lose it, you can get it, you can lose it. So that's what I'm talking about. So presence is this quality that would allow that would have allowed me to be self honoring and self remembering in that moment. And to make a very actually want to just say it sounds like an easy choice there. I'm at the grocery store. He's putting ice cream in his cart, and I just go get an apple and set because that's what I want. Without presents, I couldn't do that. Your version of that is going to be very different from mine, or maybe relate to what I just said. But I imagine there's some special uniqueness to the way that you experience what happens when you forget yourself. When you remember yourself and what is available to you when you do remember self and how much more self honoring that you feel So I want to talk about one other thing here. And that is,

25:09
I want to sort of disentangle two concepts. And that is presence and effectiveness. Or you might call it presence in high performance. So one of the things that I see happening a lot in the world of mindfulness is our city, the industry, mindfulness, is the kind of selling of presents as a means to be more effective in your life. First of all, it can be true, it can be true, but it's more complicated than that. This is a really nuanced topic. So let's take let's take an obvious example. So let's take let's let's talk about Michael Jordan. So Michael Jordan, very effective human being at his in his domain. Not a very present person. It doesn't seem to me I don't, I've never met him. And I've never talked to him. But it seems to me that he did have a lot of presence in his life. And if you watch the last dance, which is the documentary about him, what is amazing, amazing about that, I mean, other than everything about that documentary, one of the things that's incredible is how driven by obsession he was and how he found himself, like, basically, taking offense, and then getting energized and taking offense at very, very small slights that were sort of imagined, like a reporter would say to him, like, it would insinuate that another basketball player on the other team had said something that was like, just like slightly disrespectful towards him. And he would, he would spin on it until game day, and then he would, and then he would drop 60 points in the game. Driven by that. Now, that's very effective, certainly very effective in the game of basketball. But it wasn't very present, do you see wasn't very present. And this is kind of actually I'm gonna just sends my way towards this point. Because I feel that I feel that this is a really important distinction, because I think we, we, we lionize in our culture, that sort of effectiveness, but it came at a profound cost to him. And my choice I choose in my life presents over obsessiveness. Because I'm a lot happier, and not just happier, but I'm better for myself and I'm better able to serve the people in my life and the mission. The reason I'm here the reason I'm here in the world, which is to bring more presence and awareness and vertical wisdom and maturity growth. So maybe another way to put this is that patterns and habits of the human personality are I guess you could, you can almost imagine a plot of them on a spectrum of effectiveness. Some people's patterns, make them very resistant to being high performing. For instance, some people's patterns, and even I relate to this incident a certain extent, are so so some people's patterns are to be so trapped in the in their inner echo chamber of thoughts and feelings, that it's impossible to exit for long enough to like, there's no way for a person who has the inner echo chamber to become a Michael Jordan. Unless they've got presence. Do you follow me, because their pattern is taking them away from effectiveness for Michael Jordan, for a person who's obsessed with a particular thing, and then has a particular proclivity for competition and for taking offense at certain things that drives competition. This is the funny thing. Presents might have even made him less effective at basketball. They might have, in fact, probably would have. But I, I think it would have increased his quality of life, I think. So I don't know, heartache. That's mine. That's my opinion. Anyway, there's a lot more to be explored on this topic. And I'm kind of just getting my feet wet on it. But it's been kind of spinning in my head for a minute, so I wanted to share here. So, alright, I'm just gonna check my notes here.

30:06
Yeah, so let's talk about let's talk about

30:16
cultivating presence. It's like well about what it means to cultivate presence. So.

30:29
So one thing that's really important understand about human beings is that we are embodied physical organisms that have consciousness running through them. Or you might even say it's the other way around, depending on your orientation spiritually, doesn't matter to me. Point is that you have a body. And what's interesting about this idea of becoming a person who has presence or cultivating presence is that it's not a thing that you can decide, we already talked about will like, for instance, if you wanted to make the decision, right now, I'm going to be I'm going to be more presence. In my next conversation with, I don't know my sister. That's not a decision that you can make. If you're not present, if you're not, if you're not making it from presence, you follow me, because a different part of you is trying is forcing you to make that decision or trying to make you that make you make that decision. Let me say this a different way. When people say a lot is that I want to have intention, I want to approach my life with more intention. And I want to show up, I have the intention to show up in my next conversation with my boss or my co founder or whatever, with more presence. And what they really mean by that is they would like to have more equanimity, understanding, compassion, wisdom, while they're there in that conversation, that's a fantastical, fully supportive. What I'm talking about is that the intention to do that isn't really how it isn't enough, it's not gonna get you there, it might get you there for one conversation, or the first five minutes the conversation. But as soon as that person says something that's triggering for you, and you get rushed, with all of the, the emotions and feelings that arise without your conscious control, and you don't have the capacity to be present, and all that it overwhelms you, then you've lost it, you follow me. So, what people are meaning by the word intention, I think, is it's this kind of hope. It's like, I'm going to by sheer force of insight, and will contain myself, in this in the moment of a conversation, to remain calm and steady and stable, and my highest self. And it doesn't work that way, because your mind made the decision, but your body wasn't on board. It's kind of like, boxers will say, you know, everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face. And then you fall back to the level of your training. And the level of your training resides in your body. So I personally experienced this a lot with even just like if you're a musician, or if you are if you've practiced a craft, for a long time, music, music isn't particularly interesting. Subject in this in this case, so I'm going to make an analogy. So there I am practicing, say, like a new lick on the piano. And then I would go perform it. I used to be a professional piano player and play the piano bars. And so I practice a song, or let's say it was a song that I had that I that I could already play, but I wanted to improve the way I put one. There are songs that I learned when I was a very, very young sort of beginning piano player, that when I like, I don't know, four years into my gig, I decided it would be a good idea to complexify and sort of fill out the way that I played the song. And I would practice and then I would go play at night. And if I made one mistake, there's a lot going on on stage. I'm paying attention to the audience. I'm paying attention to the way that I'm presenting myself and paying attention to my partner and drummer. And I'm also paying attention to my fingers and what's happening on the piano. And if I made one mistake, it was like, my brain got overloaded, and then I regressed. I regressed to the previous way that I used to play the song in that moment didn't end. So it required a lot of practice until my body had it as a habit to play the song in the new way. If you follow me, so presence. presence becomes over time through practice. And only through prayer only through consistent practice, the habitual way of being that you show up with in your relationships and in your life. Press This doesn't work as a as a wish or as an intention.

35:04
Presence really only works when you cultivate it over time. That's why the word cultivate is often used with presence. When people talk about in the mindfulness world, cultivating presence, like a gardener over time growing something. And the way that we there's a lot of ways to do it. Meditation is a fantastic practice, there's a lot of, there's a lot of other practices, I'm not going to talk fully about all the practices that are available, there are so many things you can do for cultivating presence, yoga, meditation, focusing therapy in certain kinds of therapy. Anyway, martial arts, there's a lot, there's a lot of ways to cultivate presence.

35:50
Yeah, but the idea is anyway, the idea is that it has to incorporate your entire being your entire team. So if you're still with me, thank you so much, I really appreciate it. It's kind of fun to just talk about this topic that I really care about that I've been studying that I that I try to live in my daily life. Just share with you also, it's like kind of fun to see that there's still nine people here. So if you still here and you want to give me a shout out in the comments, I'd love that. We're almost at the end here. I think I'm almost out of material and for today. So I'm going to come to a close shortly. Unless there any questions, you have any questions, you can drop that in the chat. And I would be happy to spend some extra time and answer some questions. So I'm going to just pause and see if anything shows up. Take your time.

36:52
Thanks, John, I'm glad you showed up. Thank you.

37:04
John said, I've enjoyed being present here, which doesn't mean I'm just feeling good. Good.

37:30
Think I'll talk about one other one other thing, and then maybe we'll wrap. So presence in the world of the Enneagram, which I'm not going to fully go into the other time. But in the world of the Enneagram we talk about being present in three centers of intelligence, the body, the heart and the mind. And in the Enneagram world, we talked about how it's possible to be present in one center, but not in the others. Okay, this is a very, very deep concept, but this is in a certain way. It's like what I was what I was just describing to you. You can have a moment of clarity in your mind, kind of a moment of clarity, and then an insight illuminates you. And there you are, present and spacious. Like and you find yourself there in your mind. And then you have an intention arises to do something. But if you're not also present with your in your body, and your heart, then your whole organ, your whole being isn't fully online following. So one thing that I let's see, how do I put this

38:49
becoming a person of presence

38:56
is about growing forward into a new way of being that incorporates the body, the heart and the mind. Where in a given moment, you're present with your sensations your body, right, like right now you're having a bodily experience. You're sitting in a chair or you're walking in your kitchen, or sound is sitting your eardrums, there's a bodily experience happening. Maybe you're hungry, maybe you're tired. Something's happening there in your body. You're also having a experience in your heart, you're having an experience, you're having feelings right now, feelings don't turn off. You can stop paying attention to them, but they don't turn off. They're always they're available to be aware of to be present with and you also have thoughts. Thoughts happening in your mind without your conscious control, just always rising or rising or rising. They're also available to be present with you see and This is, let's see, this is a, this is a really new topic. And I would like to do another video on it at some point to fully go into it. But the idea is that it's possible to be present with all three of wands. And that is kind of like a checkpoint, in a certain sense on your journey, to becoming a fully realized being is to have the awareness of all three at the same time.

40:33
But for now, I think what I like to just so we'll call it a seat plans, and we'll talk about that another time. But the will unpack and more. But yeah, so here, what I think the point that I'm really liking to wanting to drive home is what you get from presents, is yourself back, you get yourself back, when you're not present, you're not the one showing up your patterns are. Period. That's how it is how it is. And when you begin to cultivate presence, then you begin to strengthen the the part of you that is you, you begin to remember yourself. And over time, as you cultivate presence, you begin to embody forth a new way of being whose habit is to be present, as opposed to slide into the unconscious pattern, or patterns that have unconsciously build your life up to that point. So can you see why that's a big fucking deal? Like, it's a big deal. It's a huge deal. It's like, otherwise, you're not you, you're not really you're not really in the driver's seat of your own organism. Something else is driving you, a part of you. You know, not necessarily something from the outside. But it's not fully you, it's not really you really who you are. I personally believe this is where things get juicy. I personally believe that we need we need more presence in our business and our politics and our parenting and our to build a wise and present society. In our teaching. I think a lot about like, how what would it take for society to become wise? Why is a mature presence as a fundamental stuff, awareness of presence and what presence is what presence means how to be presence, what you get with presence. I also think that presence is necessary. Well, it's complicated, but I think it's a really, I think it's an important ingredient on the road to saving our world from environmental catastrophe presents, buildings, be the building up presents with whatever arises in us as a result of contemplating that the massiveness of that issue. And the ability to be present with what arises in us when we contemplate and then choose what to do about it. Think anything's like it, things like it. So I think all most of the existential problems that face our world and our species, require presence require people who are present to be able to navigate them with wisdom. So I would love to talk more about that, but I think I think I'm good for today. So I think we'll, we'll we'll stop here. And I am looking forward to doing this a lot more often. I really appreciate means a lot to me that you guys came today. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. Snapple, Larry, John Adam Stark. Really, really appreciate it. Also, hi, mom, dad and I are here to like you. And Alright, I hope you enjoyed this and you got something out of it. And I'd love if you want to continue the conversation or if you had any other questions that came up from this, leave them in the chat or email me afterwards. I would love to know what else you'd like for me to cover any other topics in future videos. I'm gonna be doing this more often. So thank you very much, and have a good evening. Bye

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