There is a lot of talk about presence these days. We come upon this word in all sorts of places.  Our collective consciousness seems to be moving in the direction of presence, as if in response to some deep and urgent need.

What does it mean to really embody the meaning of this word, and why is it so important to us at this time? 

To be fully present is to rest in the state of being. Right now our whole world has been swept up into a frenzy of doing, getting, and achieving. We are all participating in this global trance. Everyone talks about wanting to slow down, but most of us just keep running, hoping that if we run fast enough, sometime soon we’ll find the time to rest. 

According to the research of Raine Eisler, the woman who wrote “The Chalice and the Blade,” human beings were living in a state of presence up until about 8000 years ago. At that time we switched to what she calls a ‘domination society,’ a way of living based on control, fear, blame and punishment.  It looks like our 8000 year experiment with this way of life has shown us quite conclusively what the results are. We have lost touch with each other, with nature, and with the basic goodness at our core. Feeling the fragmentation, violence and loneliness that surround us, our hearts cry out for relief. This relief comes to us only when we return to authentic presence. 

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We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so we can open to the life that’s waiting for us. (Joseph Campbell)

In Zen Buddhist practice, when you meditate you sit and face the wall. One thing this does is confront you with your aloneness. A fundamental aspect of being a human being is that you are very much alone. You crawled down the birth canal by yourself, and no-one will go with you when you die. No-one else can breathe for you, meditate for you, think for you, eat for you. Coming to grips with our aloneness is an essential part of our evolution. Then we no longer look to others to take care of us. We discover resources and capacities inside ourselves that are deeply fulfilling and enduring.

The other side, which is just as true, is that we are not separate. We live as beings who are intimately connected to everything in the universe. Our capacity for ignoring this connection is one of the reasons for global warming and the environmental crisis. It’s becoming more and more obvious that we can no longer afford to live our lives as though we are small, separate, isolated beings. The price is too high. There are things we need to do that we cannot do alone.

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“You are not a walking mistake
You are not a problem to be solved.” (Adya Shanti)

I remember one session of ‘The Gift of Presence’ where we were exploring intention, and how it really works. I asked the participants to spend some time contemplating what their deepest and strongest intentions were. One woman in the course called me during the week to ask me more about it; so I encouraged her to throw caution to the winds and really see what was going on with intention in her life. She returned the following week with the brightness people carry when they have discovered something for themselves. “It’s so simple,” she told us. You can talk all you like about your grand intentions, but if you want to see what they really are, just watch what you actually do from morning “till night. Everything else is just fantasy.”

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“In times of change, the learners will inhabit the earth, while the knowers will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” (Fred Kofman)

Do you feel overwhelmed sometimes, by the ever increasing rate of change and complexity in today’s highly unstable world? There’s a joke about how ordering a cup of coffee today (de-café soy vanilla late) involves more choices that our grandparents made in a month!

The answer to our collective dilemma does not lie in the mind, which is already overloaded with vast amounts of information. It lies in the heart, the spiritual heart, the radiant core of our being. When last year’s tsunami moved across the Indian Ocean, there were scuba divers in the depths of the sea who emerged at the surface 30 min. later, totally unhurt. What a perfect metaphor for the difference between living in the silent depths of the heart, and being tossed about by the waves of the mind.

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