The Indwelling Presence

I recently rediscovered some of the magic I found a few years ago when I first began meditating. A couple of months ago, I started re-reading Eckhart Tolle's book "The Power of Now". That book was an early inspiration for me, so I thought I'd go back to it and see if it could help me again. Early on in the book, Eckhart talks about a feeling of presence. Somehow, the words he used invited me to open a gate inside myself that I didn't realize was closed. As I focused on this 'presence', I felt something well up in me - a powerful sense of being, of aliveness. In its early stages, it often feels like tingling in my fingers and toes that slowly spreads to the rest of my body. But sometimes it rushes in quickly, like it did a few weeks ago. Focusing on the idea of a deep, indwelling 'presence' seems to be what did it for me that time.

In that state, everything starts to make more sense. Everything feels more connected and joyful. And everything seems more beautiful and radiant. I think maybe everything is always radiating, but I'm usually too distracted to notice. But somehow, by tapping into this presence inside of me, I was able to tear aside a curtain that was obscuring the depth of beauty in the reality all around me. And everything just glowed.

For about a week after my initial experience with it a couple months ago, I was able to tap into that presence in ordinary moments throughout the day. I didn't have to have my eyes closed. I didn't have to focus on my breathing. I didn't have to be meditating in any conventional sense - in fact, I think meditation, as I usually understand it, would be a distraction. I just opened to it, and I became intensely aware, intensely present, and intensely alive.

Meditation isn't what opened this experience to me. Not exactly. Meditation was more like a practice, or exercise of a muscle, that paved the way for the experience. In meditation, I focus on the breath, and I begin to distance my conscious awareness from the mental chatter in my mind. I begin to see clearly that I am not my thoughts or my emotions. I am deeper than them. They only feel like me when I allow them to sweep me up and make me feel lost inside of them. Meditation allows me to practice stepping outside of them and seeing them for what they are - ephemeral experiences that arise and fall like waves in the ocean. None of them stay for long unless I empower them. When I just watch them, they come and go like anything else in life.

When I meditate, I often use some object (typically the breath, but it could be something else) as a point of focus. But unless I let go of that object, I'm still stuck in a mental choke hold. The experience I'm describing requires an openness that goes beyond mental conceptions. Meditation by itself didn't unlock the experience for me. But armed with the practice of meditation, somehow all it took was a trigger for me to open up and fall out of myself. That's what it feels like happened, and yet, I think the 'self' I fell out of was just another ephemeral illusion. I fell into an ocean that is both my true self and larger than myself. I came home.

I think this is true meditation. I might start with an object, but when I let go of all mental constructs, I can fully wake up. And then my entire life becomes meditation. I meditate as I sit quietly, but I also meditate as I engage in conversations and activities. I start to live every aspect of my life fully awake.

For about a week, I could enter that state whenever I wanted. Then it faded. Kind of like it did a few years ago. I guess that makes me a spiritual yo-yo. Maybe that's ok. Ups and downs are part of life, right? Last week, I found the magic again with the help of Jack Kornfield, another one of my early inspirations. His book "A Path With Heart" was hugely transformational for me. In the last couple of weeks, I have been listening to some of his audio recordings, inspired by a sense that he has something I need. It's not so much what he says, but his presence, his love, his generosity of heart that I soak up while I listen to him. A few days ago, inspired by one of his podcasts, I had an incredible experience that felt every bit as powerful as my early magical experiences years ago. In some ways, it was more profound than the experiences I describe above from a couple of months ago. My wife noticed how happy I was that morning and most of the day. It lifted her up too. And by dinner time that day, I was depressed. 😊

It's funny now, but at the time, it was pretty frustrating. I experienced a massive emotional or spiritual swing in a 12-hour period, and there was nothing I could do about it. Thankfully, the next day was up again. I can't avoid the down times, so I try to accept them. And they are often wonderful catalysts for growth. While they're not pleasant, I believe it's possible to maintain a deep peace and equanimity in the midst of them that allows us to face our darkness with gentle curiosity and loving kindness.

I've had a concept growing in my mind recently, inspired by the ever-changing nature of reality, that maybe I have often used my spiritual experiences throughout life to fix what I perceive to be wrong in my life so that I can get back to living my life the way I want. But what I usually perceive to be my 'life' is not a static thing to come back to. Nor is my desired lifestyle necessarily a happy one. My perspective is somehow backwards. I sense a shift may be possible in which I begin to live from my spiritual nature and treat my physical life as a place I'm only visiting for a few years. I think I can begin to view the magical state as my true home, and my indwelling presence as my true life, while my physical body is just something I rent once in a while.

Perhaps with practice, the magical state I have described can become my 'normal' state. And my previously normal state of mental obscurity will become a thing of the past, remembered as something like a dream from which I have awoken.