Discover the Bliss and Satisfaction of Presence and Being
Many people come to a spiritual path worn out or feeling like their life is an endless cycle of doing, doing, and doing with no space for simply being. Overwhelmed with full lives and endless demands for attention, a deep longing can arise for the simplicity of being, a sense of being more connected to the natural world both externally and internally.
What is this state of ‘being’ we seek?
I’ve never met a person seeking ‘being’ who didn’t know, to some degree, what they were seeking. At the very least, they knew quite a lot about the obstacles and what was in the way of ‘being.’
How’s this possible?
To have any sense of what being is means that we must have past experience with it or that it is still perceptible at a subtle level. Experientially, being is presence, presence is being.
This means that the consciousness itself is directly conscious and aware of the fact of its existence not through inference but by experiencing the existence directly, by being its existence. So…—to experience oneself as presence—is to experience oneself as a self-existing consciousness, as a consciousness whose presence is identical with its consciousness of its presence. Thus, the consciousness of the presence is the same thing as the presence; the awareness of the presence is not separate from being the presence. – Brilliancy: The Essence of Intelligence ch. 3
The Magic of Presence
Being present transforms every moment, at least it may appear so, but not really. When we are absorbed in our normal, everyday life and sense of self, our consciousness is far removed from the apprehension of presence and consciousness.
How far removed are we from presence and being?
Less than a nano, nanosecond, or a gazillionth of an inch. Presence and being underlie all of creation. They are the very fabric of manifestation. As the saying goes, they are closer than our breath, yet most lives are completely unaware of this true nature.
Our good fortune is…
…the practice of presence is easy to remember, to relearn. It takes effort, awareness, attention, and dedication, but it’s not rocket science. It’s very simple. In fact, it is so simple that it is one of the great challenges to the constructed self, the ego self. The practice of presence requires that horror of horrors to ego life – settling down, entering a silence, relaxing into soft astonishment.
In the Diamond Approach, one of our basic exercises that supports remembering presence and being is Sensing, Looking, and Listening.
Each of us experiences presence and being, but many, if not most, of these experiences go unnoticed and are not recognized for what they truly are. Most are thrown into the heap of – that was nice, that was pleasurable, that was interesting, that was weird…
Presence and being—this timeless state of alert aliveness—strips away fantasies about past and future, anchoring us in electrifying now-ness. Each instant overflows with beauty. Despite society’s obsession with goals and gains, presence and being itself is the treasure. The wellspring within, a sanctuary untouched by churning chaos. Stillness is not passive; it crackles with alert aliveness. Presence and being are you. The world becomes a technicolor wonderland once freed from abstraction. Tangible, vivid, real. Drink the nectar of the present. Tend the flame of presence and being until it rages into an ecstatic bonfire. Burn away all that is not this timeless moment. Presence and being are freedom.
If you are one of the seekers feeling the call to be more present and more available to a life rich with being, then perhaps the Diamond Approach can offer some basic practices and insights to support the emergence and remembering of presence and being.