Presence is what remains when thoughts are absent, when emotions are like a peaceful lake under a blue sky, and when you are aware of being aware, it is the light of pure consciousness.
Presence is just a word, a reference for the mind, it was my choice to call it that way, but you must feel totally free to call it as you want, you don’t even need to name it at all, it is up to you.
Words are just shells, pointers, they evoke a reality but are not the reality, they are just a convenient way to create a ladder in the mind. That ladder will eventually collapse, and the essence of what the words evoke will appear to the silent presence of WHAT IS when all mental constructs have collapsed.
Spiritual teachers insist that Presence cannot be understood with the mind, this can initially be very frustrating for the seeker who might conceive Presence as an unreachable and overly complex abstraction that can only be perceived by the selected few, nothing can be further from the truth.
The first thing I would like to tell you is that the reality behind Presence is simple. When you will be in Presence you will laugh and say to yourself, “I can’t believe it was so simple, it was always there, I just did not notice it.”
So why can’t Presence be understood by the mind ? simply because mind and thoughts are objects contained in Presence. Presence is that to which the mind appears, and not just the mind as we will see later on.
The witnessed cannot put the witness in a box, because the witness, Presence, does not have identifiable limits or attributes like objects have, as soon as it is framed it is lost. Only Presence can know Presence.
In programming language, we could, by analogy, say that Presence perceives itself very much like a recursive function works, it calls itself from inside itself and never leave its own scope. If you are a programmer, you could rightfully ask me “Where is the initial function call coming from?”, this event is triggered by the cessation of identification to forms, body, mind and emotions.
Can you see the sharks ?
You have probably heard of “The Magic eye” phenomenon in the 90s. Some people can see the 3D effect very quickly, and it can take a lot longer for others. It is just an analogy, but what is happening to consciousness when it “perceives” Presence, is very similar to what happens to someone who sees “The magic eye” effect. It is obvious for those who can see it, but it is very hard to explain with words to someone who is still struggling to see it.
Presence is simple once you approach it through beingness not thinking. I will develop that point in more details later.
For now, just remember that it is simple to stand in Presence because it is essentially what you are, it is your natural state of being.
Calwen
Presence can be seen as the boundless and permanent container of impermanence. Objects fall and rise in Presence which has no beginning nor an end, it is eternal and infinite.
