Being Present
While we were working we used to have meetings once a week. I used to tell them about work. I'd say, you have to have your mind on what you're doing at all times until you finish a job or you will get hurt. Carelessness is what hurts people. makes accidents. As long as you're working at something that is real dangerous any time you go think about something else you sure will get hurt. You can move any heavy object like house or ware house or fish wheel, but you got to have your mind on it. - Goodwin Semaken, Sr., Eskimo/ Indian Elder
Yukon Territory, Alaska
Attention, presence, and noticing are all a part of living in the present. How often we try to do things with half a mind or half a heart! How often we believe that only a piece of us should suffice. We attempt to have intimate relationships in form only, and not in presence.
When we are not present to our situation, we set ourselves up to be injured, whether physically, emotionally, socially, or spiritually. Spiritual injury is progressive. It may not show as much as physical injury, and it is cumulative.
** My lack of presence is an insult to those I love. Including myself. **
Anne Wilson Schaef, Native Wisdom for White Minds, Ballantine: 1995.