The antidote for Dissociation is not just integration; it’s also Presence.
Dissociation drives things away from each other, rejects them, avoids them. Presence accepts and allows. Presence sits next to things and lets them happen, not overridden by them but not ignoring them. Presence simply observes.
Presence is that force in your mind that watches without thinking, the raw awareness underlying everything you do. You can never quite get away from it, though some of us learn to escape Presence in parts and thus lose awareness while staying awake. For the rest of us, Presence underlies everything we do, whether we notice it or not.
Take a moment to breathe. Watch your thoughts, watch yourself reading this page. Your thoughts change, but you’re still here. The words on this page change, but you’re still here. You are not your thoughts.
Close your eyes for a moment, then reopen them. You are still here. You are not your perceptions.
You’ve felt many things in your life. Happy, sad, angry, scared, disgusted, jealous, hopeful… You have persisted across all of those feelings. You are not your feelings.
You have memories of your life. You did not always have these memories, and one day you might lose them. You forget things on a regular basis and store new things for the future. No matter how your memories change, you are still here. You are not your memories. You are not your life experiences.
What remains beneath it all? What’s always there despite the many changes of your life? Even in your dreams, something of you remains- what watches them happen? What persists across it all?
Even when you escape its watch through dissociation, Presence remains. That is the one chain connecting your life together regardless of what might change. You could lose everything about yourself, shred every memory, discard every trait or choice, and there would still be a Presence to watch it all happen.
Some would say: you are Presence. Everything else happens around it.