A Practice for Being Present

I want to talk with you today about being simple and give you a practice that will help you be more present and enjoy life more.

Simple is not something the ego generally aspires to, since it implies less of something—less stimulation, fewer things, less activity—less of what the ego likes. “Simple” seems like a loss or lack of something, and the ego is programmed to want more, to go for more.

That’s the ego’s point of view, but the ego doesn’t see clearly. It doesn’t see the whole picture, and it doesn’t know the pleasures and joys of less, the joy of being simple. So, that’s what I want to point out today, because joy often resides in less, particularly in less mental stimulation and less activity, not in more thinking and doing, as the ego assumes. That’s what I mean by simple.

Because joy is inherent in life, in every moment, joy exists even in the simplest moments, when not much is going on. I would even argue, and am arguing, that joy is more present, or at least more available, in simple moments than when a lot is going on.

Joy is the experience and expression of your true nature, which is why it is always available. Who you are—your true nature—is always here (how could it not be?). So, joy, love, peace, acceptance, compassion, and wisdom must always be here, or at least available. And that’s true.

These are part and parcel of the gift of life. Life comes wrapped in these gifts. Life is inseparable from the experience of the joy, love, and peace of your true nature. However, these subtle, inner experiences are often covered over, or obscured, by the illusory world spun by the voice in your head and by too much ego-driven activity.

It’s as if you live in two worlds: the world described by the voice in your head, which is the voice of the ego and conditioning, and reality: how life really is. The world described by the voice in your head seems complicated, scary, tense, and problematic, and it is consequently full of drama and negative emotions. Reality, on the other hand, is simple. It’s not scary, not tense, not problematic, and free of drama.

What makes reality simple is that it is uncomplicated by thoughts and negative emotions. Unlike the mind’s virtual reality, reality is primarily a sensory experience and a deeper knowing of what to do or say and when to move or speak. Reality is also where you can experience your true self and the gifts it has to offer, which are not available in or through the mental realm.

You can’t get to reality and its gifts—love, peace, and joy—by thinking. And, paradoxically, you can’t access wisdom, which comes through the intuition, through the mind either. You can only get to reality and these gifts by dropping out of the mind and its world of imaginations, beliefs, opinions, dreams, desires, fears. The exception to this is that you can experience joy, peace, or love by thinking about a loved one or a time when you felt joy, peace, and love. However, most of your thoughts are not about love but about negative experiences and feelings, and that’s the problem.

If you are willing to be simple, you can experience reality and its gifts, including wisdom. Willingness is key because that’s often all that stands in the way: Most people aren’t willing to stop thinking and doing and just be long enough to experience the joy, love, and peace of just being.

By being simple, it’s true that you lose something: What you lose is your false self and, along with it, your fears, your problems, and the desires you suffer over. In losing the false self, you gain so much more! But unless you spend some time just being, you won’t realize how much can be gained from just being.

To reap the benefits of just being, you often have to stop all doing and involvement with thoughts for more than a few minutes. The catch is that most people aren’t able to remain detached from their minds even this long. Most people have been “practicing” being engaged with their thoughts all their life, and they haven’t learned how to disengage from them and stay disengaged for extended periods. This, of course, is what meditation teaches you.

I’m going to share a practice with you that will help you experience the simple joy of your true self. It is essentially a practice for becoming more present and experiencing Presence. It will take about ten minutes to do this on your own before you reap the benefits. It’s something you can do anywhere and anytime. Here are the instructions, so let’s do this now together.

With your eyes open, choose an object to focus on. It could be a tree or anything of nature or something manmade that you find beautiful or attractive for some reason, perhaps just because of its color.

What’s important is that you are choosing it; you are choosing to give your attention to it. This is an act of love, to choose to give your attention to something. Can you feel that? Can you feel that that choice comes from attraction to and love of that object? Just sit with that subtle feeling of love briefly. (pause) Notice what this feeling of love is like and where you feel it in your body. (pause)

What is it that is attracted to and loves something? That is your divine self. It loves everything. And in any moment, you can become aware of what its particular focus is in that moment—what it’s loving in that moment. This is always happening: Your divine self is focusing on and loving something. But usually this subtle experience is quashed or not noticed because you’re giving your attention to some thought, something in the mental realm.

It’s fine to give your attention and love to your thoughts. You (your ego) are free to do that. But giving your attention and love to thoughts exclusively leaves out so much, particularly your real, here-and-now experience and all the joy, love, and peace that has to offer. The point of the practice I’m introducing you to today is to help you be in real life in a way that brings you more joy, love, and peace.

To return to the practice... Again, bring your attention to the object you’ve chosen and experience the subtle flow of love flowing to it. Notice the pleasure your being has in attending to that object and flow of love. This flow of love is pleasurable. Most people feel this pleasure in the center of their chest, in the spiritual Heart.

Now ask yourself: “Who or what is this ‘you’ that made this choice? How did it land on that object? Who or what did that?” (pause) This is a great mystery. This mysterious chooser is who you really are. It moves and chooses without thought preceding that movement or choice.

Now, just to experiment, allow your attention to move freely. Don’t force it or try to hold it anywhere. Just allow it to move as it will and just notice that. It might land on something else in your visual field, or it might land on a sound or a sensation. Notice how quickly your attention, or Awareness, lands on one thing after another. It moves around so rapidly that it can be difficult to keep track of everything it’s taking in. Just notice this for a few moments. (pause)

This natural and pleasurable movement of attention from one thing to the next—a touching lightly on one thing after another—is what your true self, your being, is always doing when you’re at rest and even when you aren’t. But it’s especially easy to see that this is going on when you are at rest. As a kind of meditation, you can watch your attention move from a sound to a sensation to a sight to a thought to an intuition to another sound, and so on. You are simply noticing whatever you are aware of but not getting stuck anywhere.

You (or your ego) might be saying, “What’s the big deal”? And your ego would be right that this is no big deal to the ego because there’s nothing in this for the ego, and your ego surely won’t encourage you to spend time noticing the subtle movement of Awareness in life, which is essentially what you are doing in most types of meditation.

But doing this is a big deal in terms of realizing the deeper nature of life and of who you really are. And most of you, I’m sure, are quite interested in that. The ability to notice life from this deeper Awareness rather than through the lens of the ego is the key to joy, peace, love, and wisdom. Tuning in to this simple experience of looking and sensing what Awareness with a capital “A” is taking in, in any moment is the experience of your divine self, and there’s great, although subtle, joy in this experience. This is also the doorway to the intuitions and wisdom that will help guide your life.

Becoming aware of what Awareness is taking in is a new way of being in life. Your being has been doing this all along, but usually without enough awareness on your part to impact you. If you practice being in life this way, this will eventually become how you are in life. You will discover that you have never needed all the thoughts that run through your mind. They have only complicated your life unnecessarily, not improved it in any way.

Begin living in a new way. This is the way human beings will relate to life in the future. It is where humanity is headed in its evolution. You can be the forerunners, the ones who help everyone else evolve in this direction. Thank you for being here. I am with you always.