What is Presence?
The Presence arises when your essential nature, Consciousness, awakens to itself in this moment. Consciousness is beyond space and time, beyond life and death. It is omnipresent, everywhere and nowhere, it is the formless dimension from which all things arise. When you are present, you let go of the past and the future. You give up in the moment. There is no resistance to what is. Being present is not just about being aware of what is happening at the level of form, it is being aware of the very space in which all forms come and go.
Most people have had moments where they recognized the Presence, even if they didn’t call it that. Have you ever had the experience of watching a sunset? The world went still and all thoughts disappeared as you sat in awe of the beauty unfolding before you. Or maybe you’ve had the experience of running a race, skiing or biking and suddenly entered “The Zone” where you were one with everything and his movements were effortless. Or when you look into the eyes of a newborn baby or your beloved, have you ever felt that you melt into them until all sense of separation dissolves and you experience Oneness? In all these situations, the Presence emerged when you released yourself from identification with the thinking mind and surrendered to the direct experience of Now.
For most people, the Presence is something rare and fleeting. Instead of living in the Now, they listen to the incessant barrage of thoughts from the “thinking mind.” It constantly creates a story, judging, evaluating, and labeling as it locks on to a remembered past or imagined future. The cost of living in thoughts about the past and the future is missing from the only thing that is truly real- Life itself, the Present Moment. How can you awaken from this delusional dream of identification with the mind and discover the clarity and peace of present moment awareness?
true meditation
There are many forms of meditation that involve controlling the mind, trying to force it to be silent. If you have ever tried to meditate, you may have experienced the mind resisting this controlling agenda. Adyashanti, a self-realized master, observed during his 15 years of Zen meditation that he, too, was often at war with his mind. When he recognized the futility of fighting with the mind, he developed a powerful new approach which he calls “True Meditation”.
True Meditation is based on the understanding that Presence is your natural state. In essence, you are spacious Awareness. Consciousness resists nothing and accepts everything: thoughts, emotions, sensory perceptions, events, as they arise. True meditation honors this open receptivity. You learn to accept everything that is happening around you and within you exactly as it is right now. You don’t reject anything that comes up because the mind has a different idea about what meditation should look or feel like. You also don’t use any technique to create some kind of preconceived meditative state. There is no manipulation necessary. By aligning with your essential nature through unconditional acceptance of what is, spiritual wakefulness comes naturally.
Another aspect of True Meditation is meditative self-inquiry. Meditative self-inquiry is the introduction of a powerful spiritual question that resonates within you in such a way that it “points” to the Truth of who you are. It is not a question that serves to stimulate the mind, but rather draws attention to an area beyond thought, where the mind is bypassed and you, as Pure Consciousness, behold the Ultimate Truth. A couple of powerful questions to start with are: “What am I?” or “Who is the meditator?”
3 steps to inner peace
Presence is your true nature. However, today, most people live lost in the mental history of a separate “me”, defined by the past and the future; both are unreal and exist. only in the head. These 3 steps can be very helpful in moving from mind identification to present moment awareness.
FirstNotice when you are caught up in a mind-stream of incessant thought, creating a story about the past and the future, and losing touch with what is real: the present moment.
Secondremain open and allow a relaxed and unconditional acceptance of what is, both internally and externally, in each moment.
Third, use self-inquiry to deepen the emerging Presence. Possible questions include: “What am I?”, “What never changes?”, “Who or what tells me I’m not free?”
As you catch glimpses of your “true self” during your meditation sessions and recognize that you are not separate from the world “out there,” you will begin to notice this awareness spilling over into your life as a whole. You begin to realize that the world of forms: physical forms, thought forms, energy forms, emotional forms, is ultimately an elaborate dream dreamed by the eternal One Consciousness that you are. Suddenly, the world loses the terrifying and heavy quality it had when it was understood as an absolute reality. You start living from a place of inner peace and tranquility.