subject: How Does Presence Deal with a Barking Dog? [print this page] What do you do with a constantly barking dog?
Not your dog, but a neighbor's.
And not one dog, butseven dogs owned between three different neighbors on different sides of your property, so that there's nowhere you can retreat to in your home to escape the barking.
You might take to wearing earmuffs, which is exactly what one man did.
The question of what to do about barking dogs arises not just because it's a common issue in people's lives. It actually happened recently to a person who is discovering what it means to be present in his life.
This person had the impression that to be present, you have to learn not to be affected by annoyances such as barking dogs or automobile alarms going off.
It's wonderful when we are able to not be affected by what many would find an extremely irritating noise. That's a huge step forward in a person's growth.
However to be a person who is present in our life isn't only about learning to tolerate things, but also a matter of learning toshow up in our life.
If you happen to be in a situation you can't change and a disturbing noise arises, that's one thing. You calm yourself, center yourself, so that the noise doesn't drive you crazy. You let it blow right past you like the wind.
Eckhart Tolle states in one of his books that it's an opportunity to become so present that the sound just passes by us.
This is different from an everyday living situation in which we are being forced to resort to something like earmuffs on a regular basis.
In such a situation,showing up may be what's called for.
A courteous request to a neighbor should be all it takes most of the time. But what if this doesn't bring the desired result?
In many communities there are laws about noise. A person who is coming from consciousness can calmly, not angrily, invoke those laws. The authorities exist to deal with such things as noise nuisances.
The real issue here is that presence isn't a passive state but a highly alive, alert, aware state.
If we are present, we show up in our life wherever we are asked to by the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Recall how, as it's portrayed in the movie, Gandhi came from peaceful presence in the way he dealt with the British imperial authorities. There was nothing passive, inactive, victimlike about his approach. On the contrary, he was proactive.
Martin Luther King, Jr was also far from passive but actively organized in order to trigger systemic social change.
If you watched Clint Eastwood's 2009 movie Invictus about Nelson Mandela, this highly present leader of South Africa came not from passivity but from an alive awareness of what his nation required at the time.
There is nothing resigned about presence. Just the opposite, it's a powerfully creative state that brings about real change in everyday life. But it comes frombeing, not from anxiousdoing fueled by our mental state.
Showing up with great presence is a huge part of what it means to live consciously.
How Does Presence Deal with a Barking Dog?
By: David Robert Ord
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