Valentine's Day:
Presents or Presence?
by Diana and Richard Daffner
 It's that time of year, when romance reigns supreme. Candlelit restaurant dinners, candy, cards, gifts, flowers. Endless expressions of love.
I'm all in favor of celebrating love, shouting aloud our passion and devotion to one another. I love romantic dinners, cards, flowers, presents. (Pass on the candy, please!) However, what I most treasure as a gift, not just on Valentine's Day, but every day, is the gift of my beloved's presence.
What does that word, presence, mean? At one level it simply means physical nearness. Sitting together watching TV or at a theater, walking along a beach, feeling the closeness of my beloved's body and knowing that we are a unit, that we belong together. The tenderness of loving comfort that such nearness brings is often envied by those who dance alone. Yet for those who do have a partner, sometimes this endearing level of comfort allows us to mask and ignore an underlying, gnawing sense of separateness, of not really being known or touched at all. We find ourselves sacrificing ecstasy for contentment, relinquishing dreams of rapture for the comfortable stability of familiarity.
There are other levels of presence that can provide even greater joy, deeper intimacy and more nourishing spiritual bonding. Consciously or unconsciously, all humans crave this deeper level of presence. We yearn to be truly seen and heard. A caring and compassionate therapist or counselor often fulfills this need for many of us. Someone who listens to our emotional self-discovery, who focuses exclusively on us. When we stand before others in an AA meeting, the undeviating attention allows us to speak about ourselves honestly and from the depth of our being.
This power of being in the present moment is experienced in spiritual and wisdom circles. Drawing on ancient custom, we each speak in turn, passing a 'talking stick' (maybe better called a 'listening stick') that ensures that others in the circle are indeed listening to our words, our personal expressions of self. When we trust that we are being listened to, we can learn to drop our public face and reveal our inner soul.
Even alone, we can experience the power of revealing ourselves by imagining or sensing our spiritual guide, guardian angel or our own higher self. We can speak to them, and their willing presence, attentive and unwavering, will allow us to say what needs to be said. As the old cliché reminds us, when we share our pain with another, it lessens, and when we share our joy, it doubles...
>>> Click to Continue Reading "Presents or Presence"© Copyright Diana and Richard Daffner. This article was originally
published at our website, SoulfulLiving.com, in Feb. 2001,
as part of Soulful Living's "Soul of Love" Issue.
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