How can we understand this? As we discovered in the last chapter, time slows down the more we are being presence. When we are fully present in the presence, there is no time—no time passes. What does that mean in terms of our experience? Expressing this experience as “I am in timelessness, in the now; no time is passing for me” implies a still frame in which I am not moving. Does this mean that our experience doesn’t change? Does it mean that we don’t really have experiences and are just an unchanging blankness? – The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, ch. 14
To know presence means to recognize yourself as completely undefined by the past. To realize presence means that your experience of yourself is not determined by memory. If memory is determining your experience when there is presence, then your experience of presence is not complete. It still has veils over it, barriers against it; it is not pure, complete. To be presence is to recognize yourself as the presence in the present moment. So when I say that presence is self-existing, I mean it exists right now, right at this very second, and its nature has nothing to do with whatever has happened in the past. – Brilliancy: The Essence of Intelligence, ch. 3
This field of presence, which is a pure medium of consciousness, is the simplest and ultimate ground of the soul. This ground is not postulated but is discoverable in the process of any effective investigation; that is, if we investigate our experience of the soul and try to discover her final nature, her ultimate ground, if we become aware of what remains after all particular content and specific forms of experience are taken out or transcended, then we find this presence. This process is similar to the physicists’ preoccupation with the most elementary particles of matter; they are trying to find the ultimate building blocks of our physical universe. The presence of pure consciousness turns out to be the ultimate building block of our psychic life, the ultimate ground of our soul. It is not particles or strings, but a field, a homogeneous medium, pure consciousness that turns out to be the actual ontological dimension of the soul. – The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, Ch. 9
When I first became aware of presence, I felt a sense of fullness, aliveness, and groundedness. At that time, it was simply presence for me. That was the most I could differentiate: Essence is presence. That’s what I was aware of, and nobody had told me anything else before that; I had never read anywhere that presence could appear in different ways. So Essence, I found out, was presence—a fullness, an aliveness, a thereness, an I-am-ness. After a while, I would feel the experience of the presence changing. It’s true that it was presence, but once in a while it felt somehow different. One day the presence would feel strong and firm, while the next day it would perhaps feel soft, sweet, and melty. That was the beginning of discrimination.
And the recognition of what that difference meant brought the jolt of insight: “Oh, Essence appears in aspects.” That was the brilliant breakthrough. It was a big surprise for me, quite an eye-opener. This became a basic tenet of the Diamond Approach: Essence is not just presence but presence that presents itself in various qualities, various flavors. I could have stayed with just that, with the insight that presence appears in aspects. The exploration continued, however. At some point, I realized not only that presence has qualities and aspects, but that these arise at certain times and seem to challenge particular ego manifestations and deal with specific issues. – Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey, Ch. 27
For a long time you have to try to be present, because the tendency is to not be present. You have to use your will to counteract that tendency. But there comes a time when trying to be present becomes a barrier, because it has to happen naturally. And at that point, the more you try to be present, the more you separate yourself from your presence. Because presence itself doesn’t try to be present. So for a while, yes, you try, because your unconscious tendency is to not be present. You counteract that tendency with all kinds of measures until a time comes when you can will yourself to be present.
Then the next step is to see how you can be present without using your will, to let go of your attempt, your trying and have your presence still be there. Understanding is what’s needed here. You need to see that the attempt to be present has nothing to do with being vulnerable. Trying is using forceful, active will which is the opposite of vulnerability. That’s why methods that are oriented towards just developing will—trying and super-efforts and so on—block vulnerability. You can only go some of the way using those methods. But then you need to let go of that effort and allow vulnerability, allow the heart to open, and then you can be present without effort. – Diamond Heart Book Three: Being and the Meaning of Life, Ch. 13
Pure presence does not disappear totally when it differentiates itself into manifest forms, whether spiritual or physical. It remains as their eternal ground, their inner essence, giving them the sense of presence; it is their true being, their true ontological ground. A good analogy here is embryonic differentiation: as the original protoplasmic substance differentiates into the various kinds of cells, organs, and systems, this substance does not change from what it is, into these forms. It differentiates into the myriad forms, but remains as their ground, their final biological substance and nature. The developed embryo is a body with organs and systems, but it is all protoplasmic substance. – A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, Ch. 18
Presence can be experienced on many levels of subtlety and refinement. It can be experienced as the presence of light, the presence of consciousness, the presence of awareness, the presence of love, the presence of clear light, or the Presence that is the nonduality (coemergence) of consciousness (or light) and emptiness. – A. H. Almaas, The Point of Existence: Transformations of Narcissism in Self-Realization, pg. 467
Presence is the ultimate ground for confronting the judge because presence includes the knowledge that you exist without reference to any outside source. As long as you believe you need an image of yourself, a belief, an idea, or some information in your mind in order to exist, you will be at the mercy of the judge because it lives on ideas, beliefs, and images. However, the moment you recognize your own existence independent of any mental concept, the judge becomes simply words in your mind, no more significant than the label on your shirts or the length of your toenails. Labels and long toenails can be useful at certain moments and cause problems at others, but they have little relation to or impact on who you are and what it means to live your life. – Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, Ch. 25