presence

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind in itself is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are.

The Earth with its layers of land and water and air provides the space within which all living things are nurtured and the context within which humans attain their identity. If in the excitement of a secular technology reverence for the Earth has diminished in the past, especially in the western world, humans now experience a sudden shock at the devastation they have wrought on their own habitation. The ancient human-Earth relationship must be recovered in a new context, in its mystical as well as in its physical functioning. There is need for awareness that the mountains and rivers and all living things, the sky and its sun and moon and clouds all constitute a healing, sustaining sacred presence for humans which they need as much for their psychic integrity as for their physical nourishment. This presence whether experienced as Allah, as Atman, as Sunyata, or as the Buddha-nature or as Bodhisattva; whether as Tao or as the One or as the Divine Feminine, is the atmosphere in which humans breathe deepest and without which they eventually suffocate.

When we are able to make ourselves as still within as an untouched mountain lake, we have an exquisite reflection of all that is in and around us.

Being present is real work.

If we are to contribute to the changes so desperately needed in our agencies, communities, and societies, we must first and foremost develop the capacity to be present with all that arises, stay centered throughout, and be skilled at maintaining an integrated self.

The presence of advanced attention is the only thing that really changes us, and the benefits of receiving it are always extraordinary.

Sometimes it's a form of love to talk to somebody that you've nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

A present from the heart: I'm not here because I'm supposed to be here, or because I'm trapped here, but because I'd rather be with you than anywhere in the world.

Our consciousness does not need to be informed by formal religious awareness in order to be disposed and recptive to the divine disclosure. Our very nature as human beings is to be open and porous to deeper meaning. And the spiritual story of humankind, unfolding over the millennia, suggests that the divine life force (God) reveals itself with a prodigious generosity of presence, power, and cultural expression.

You know that our breathing is the inhaling and exhaling of air.  The organ that serves for this is the lungs that lie round the heart, so that the air passing through them thereby envelops the heart.  Thus breathing is a natural way to the heart.  And so, having collected your mind within you, lead it into the channel of breathing through which air reaches the heart and, together with this inhaled air, force your mind to descend into the heart and to remain there.