Inside Presence
Over the past few months, I have had conversations with several people who are in the question of “How do I show up to this uncertain and unsettling time?” I am in reflection around this same question. I wonder about what is mine to do – and more importantly to be. At this dawn of a new year, I find myself apprehensive and concerned. I want to find a way to bring meaning and grace to this world I love…
Dancing with these questions, I find myself drawn to the mystical teachers of all faith traditions. Rumi is one of my favorites. One of his poems is entitled A Single Brushstroke Down (In Arabic, the word Allah begins with a strong downward mark). The words to this poem open me up and give me direction:
Light dawns, and any talk of proof
resembles a blind man’s cane at sunrise.
Remember the passage,
We are with you wherever you are.
Come back to that.
When did we ever leave it?
No matter we’re in a prison of forgetting
or enjoying the banquet of wisdom,
we are always inside presence.
Drunkenly asleep, tenderly awake,
clouded with grief, laughing like lightning,
angry at war, quiet in gratitude, we are nothing
in this many-mooded world of weather
but a single brushstroke down,
speaking of presence.
“We are always inside presence.” Always. No matter what’s happening. No matter the changing nature of our moods – or the world around us. “We are always inside presence.” Always. And our purpose, as spiritual beings, is to be the “single brushstroke down” that gives voice to that presence.
In the messiness and uncertainty of life, my deepest desire is to consciously live inside presence. To allow every thought I think, every decision I make, to arise out of presence. I know that from this perspective, my actions will be infused with love, wisdom, grace, generosity, and peace. And from this perspective, I gift these qualities to the world.
It sounds so simple – and it is not easy. How easily we fall into the prison of forgetting. How easily we can be engulfed in the illusion of separation. But every time we return to presence, we become the brushstroke down giving form to that presence.
Living inside presence is a constant choice of surrender. It is acknowledging what arises in our life experiences, in our moods, in our consciousness, without getting hooked, and without becoming identified with any of it.
Thich Nhat Hahn says: “To be empty is to be full of everything, except a separate sense of self.” It is about letting go of all the little identities formed by our attachments and living inside presence.
My answer to all the questions about how to show up… what is mine to do… how to interact with the circumstances of this world… is to surrender… and moment by moment to live inside presence.
Namaste.
May 2025 be a year of sacred remembering for all of us.