At the center of the awareness of our daily lives is the deeper reality, woven of the limitless substance of the truth of what we are. We can call it presence. Presence contains the fullness of this moment as experience in consciousness but also the livingness of what we are as sentient beings. Ultimately the “what we are” and the flavor of this moment includes the whole universe and beyond because we are not separate from that.

As we enter the silence of our being and start to follow the fullness of it as a total movement – ceasing to distinguish emotion, sensation, thought, sight, sound, etc., as separate phenomena – experience takes on the quality of a silent river or wind. This movement has energy, vibrancy and aliveness to it. In the midst of this river is the still “experiencing” that follows every detail of the movement. This experiencing or witnessing is a verb, not a noun or a subject.

This living presence is alert, relaxed and totally present. It holds the world with engagement and appreciation. Relationship is fundamental to it because the substance of presence is made of every factor of the environment. It is like looking into a mirror that reflects everything, not just the image, as living experience. We as sentient beings in essence are the aliveness of the world reflected in consciousness.

Presence includes the faculty of the heart. The heart is fundamental to gathering experience into a total movement. If we can wrap our heart around our experience, we can hold it in all ways.

Presence can be clouded if the heart is closed. If we pushing anything out of our experience or if the ego is caught in attachment or aversion, the heart as a sensing faculty can be narrowed down or completely shut. Hazrat Inayat Khan called the heart “the depth of the mind.” Where would we be without the depth of the mind?

Ultimately presence becomes available when we stop arguing with life, with our inner and outer world. Having a problem with something saps away our availability, our appreciation and our love for being present now in this moment.

Removing this thorn in our side – the idea that something is a problem, that something is wrong with this moment – may take a lifetime, but can only happen now. We have to see ourselves very clearly. We may resist believing that we can’t see ourselves, that we know the contents of our own mind fully. Yet, something is bugging us that is persistent and won’t yield or be ignored. The truth is rising up in us and wanting to be recognized, to be taken into account.

Accepting the truth in absolutely every area of life allows us to become intimate with ourselves and with the fullness of experience. Then presence deepens and turns into a vast ocean of being.

Words point to these things, but the reality is something way beyond words. Everyone who has struggled with life knows this. Holding our experience in a compassionate, exquisitely aware container of love is the beginning of presence, and also the end of it.