Mindfulness and Presence Can Sound Similar. Here's How They Differ.
And when to use which practice
As a writer and editor, I often feel frustration at the limitations of language. Most words have multiple meanings, and confusion arises when we think a word means one thing, yet the writer actually intended something else. As I often say, the word “forest” is far removed from the experience of walking through a forest.
This can be particularly confusing when the same words are pointers to a single, universal teaching. Most of the teachers I’ve listened to say, “When I use certain words, those don’t necessarily mean what other teachers mean when they use those words.” Communication, IMO, would be so much more effective if we all offered operational definitions.
What follows are my interpretations, not The Absolute Definitive Answer. Beneath the words is an experience; the words are pointers to the experience. Your intellect will understand this on one level, but if you can settle into your heart, you may find a completely different meaning.
Beneath the words is an experience; the words are pointers to the experience.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is generally defined as being aware of one’s body, thoughts and feelings in the moment they’re happening, aka the present moment. (This is where the confusion begins, I think.)
An example of mindfulness would be walking in the forest and being aware of the sensations in your legs as they rise and fall, the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, of the scent of pine mingling with decaying wood. It’s not a matter of thinking, “I now can smell rotting wood. Check. I now feel my legs. Check. My right leg is moving. Check.” It’s a silent, somatic experience, which is why it’s so difficult to write about.
Mindfulness also includes being aware of ruminating thoughts looping through the mind, and of the feelings those thoughts bring forth in the body.
One of the core aspects of mindfulness is that it’s not about stopping the mind. It’s about witnessing one’s thoughts and emotions, learning to see thought patterns that stir up emotional storms, and gradually becoming dis-identified with the thoughts, so that even when those same patterns repeat, they don’t trigger the same emotional responses.
Mindfulness helps us learn how to hold space for difficult thoughts, emotions and patterns that arise in us, without becoming identified with them.
Capital-P Presence
Eckhart Tolle defines Presence (which he capitalizes to avoid confusion with the dictionary definition) as “a state of consciousness that transcends thought,” or “rising above thought.” Experientially, Presence is being so somatically aware of and attuned to external sensations in a given moment that the mind’s activity ceases altogether.
Presence is a way to train the mind to serve the heart. That’s how I phrase it; Tolle’s definition is (in part) that Presence teaches us to use the mind as a tool that one can put down when it’s not needed.
Neither Presence nor mindfulness are about repressing, burying or denying feelings. That doesn’t work, and it often creates a rebound in which those thoughts and feelings come back ten times as strong. This is why ‘toxic positivity’ is so dangerous (and why spiritual bypassing doesn’t work).
Appreciation is important, but if it's at the exclusion of acknowledging what we're feeling, it's just new-age claptrap, religious dogma cloaked in a chakra-colored costume.
To go back to the forest metaphor, Presence is being so attentive to sensory stimuli— the breeze on face and arms, the feeling of the breath moving in and out of the body, noticing the array of feathers on a bird—that there is no room left for thought.
How Mindfulness and Presence Differ
You can’t have Presence without mindfulness, but you can have mindfulness without Presence. Mindfulness makes it possible to be aware of what you’re doing and to also be aware of multiple streams of thoughts looping through the mind.
Well, actually, it’s more like serial attention. The human brain can only focus on one thing at a time; what we call “multitasking” is not only inefficient, but also, a misnomer: It’s rapidly shifting serial attention.
Both practices are ultimately about dis-identifying from thoughts/the mind, and both are ways of teaching that our thoughts are as ephemeral as anything else. Both are pointers to the unknowns of our existence, the only sure thing being that these bodies and minds are not the totality of who we are. (And even in saying that, I might be full of shit 😉)
I’m glad that mindfulness has gone mainstream because, holy crap, is it desperately needed, not only on an individual level, but also on cultural levels.
Presence is more helpful than mindfulness during extreme challenges
Neither mindfulness or Presence is intended to be a means to an end. Just the opposite: Both involve radical acceptance of the facts of each moment.
Not surprisingly, then, in times of really significant—like, survival-level—challenges, I haven’t found mindfulness helpful in shifting emotional pain.
For example, I experienced involuntary hunger off and on for several years. When the nutritional basics aren’t there, the brain can’t function well; in turn, emotional regulation becomes almost impossible. At the time, I was (mindfully) aware that my brain wasn’t working because I hadn’t had sufficient food. Yet because I couldn’t do anything to change that situation, my off-the-rail emotions kept careening.
When I came into fierce Presence, though, it briefly—literally a split-second—relieved the emotional distress.
Of course, neither mindfulness or Presence are about taking away the pain. The purpose of learning to observe thoughts and learning how to question them is to become aware of how the mind creates the pain we experience.
However, this assumes the practitioner is not dangling from the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy. When an individual is facing survival-level challenges, though—or any other pain that feels impossible to hold, yet from which there is no escape—Presence offers a split-second of space. And another. And another, for as long as we remember to stay Present.
Working with thoughts vs. stopping thoughts
Again, emotional relief is not the point of Presence; it’s to be a side benefit. Presence itself is a portal to a transformative state.
Many mindfulness and meditation teachers seem to see stopping the mind as a kind of cheating, that learning to observe thoughts and sit with the pain is more noble than stopping it. After all, pain is an inevitable part of life.
For some people who have experienced immense trauma, compounded emotional losses, or who are living on the margins, “sitting with” can be either impossible (see the hunger piece above) or retraumatizing. Yes, sitting with our emotions is ideal, but it also presumes a certain amount of stability and privilege.
How to work with mindfulness and Presence
As I write this, mindfulness helps me see the thoughts whirling in my mind: Why bother writing this? Who else cares? What business do I have writing about this? And mindfulness also helps me see that those are just thoughts. That doesn’t make them true.
Presence, on the other hand, stops the mind and allows words to flow through me without my interference. As a bonus, those nagging thoughts above subside, too.
If everything in your life is relatively smooth, if you have a roof over your head and food in your fridge, if you’re physically safe with your partner and in your living situation, you’re not dealing with substance addictions, then practicing mindfulness is immensely helpful. I would also recommend practicing Presence during these relatively calm times, because sooner or later, something will happen to send your emotional life off the rails, and that practice will have made all the difference.