THE PRESENCE THAT IS ALREADY HERE
Presence is not an activity from the personhood.
The person-hood wants to accumulate practices, to make my life better, to make my life happier, to make my life easier, to make my life more spiritual.
But this attempt to become more present from the personhood is another attempt at acquisition for the self.
Falling into presence is the falling away of the personhood, the falling away of the mechanism that drives the personhood to accumulate more—to accumulate more knowledge, to accumulate more practices, to accumulate more skills, to accumulate more of something that “makes me feel better about myself.”
Only when that mechanism falls away can you know the true meaning of presence.
Presence reveals itself as the substance of life—as the substance of being-ness—when concern for the movie that appears as your life stops having the primary claim or hold on your attention.
When the commentary about what should or shouldn’t be happening—“I shouldn’t be feeling this restlessness,” or “I shouldn’t be feeling this fear,” or “I shouldn’t be feeling this shakiness,” or “I shouldn’t be feeling this vulnerability”—comes to an end, you feel as if you’re falling apart because you start falling into the unknown.
But it’s not really you that’s falling apart—it’s the ancient mechanism that upholds the personhood and wants to hold it all together by acquiring more practices, more spiritual knowledge, more things to do. When this mechanism starts to crumble, that’s a really good sign.
Welcome it—it’s a sign that presence is beginning to reveal itself. It’s no longer something far away in the distance that you have to search for—it’s right here under your nose. It’s actually even closer than that. It’s in you, as you.
Presence is the solution to all problems—you are no longer a problem to yourself, and life is no longer a problem to you. Aches and pains are not a problem, shakiness or intensity or vulnerability—none of that is a problem.
The whole movie—all the brushstrokes of life—can move in you and through you. None of it is rejected.
You start to experience the such-ness of life—just this.
The true happiness you seek is revealed as already here—and it has nothing to do with what you achieve or what you gain or what you know.
Presence has no commentary on the content of your life.
And without a commentary, there is only the mystery and majesty of being—the innate goodness of this alive moment.
Amoda Maa
page 103 ‘Falling Open in a World Falling Apart.'
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