attuned, embodied presence is the most precious thing in existence.
what is attuned, embodied presence (hereafter, referred to as simply: presence)? for me, it is something that is impossible to explain in words yet transparent when felt in experience.
presence is self-evident in the way a mother responds to her baby’s cry, listening to it and immediately knowing that they need a diaper change or to be rocked. it is revealed when two best friends share a knowing glance at a party, both instantly feeling a touch more at ease. it’s the state of clarity and ease one feels after meditation retreat, the crispness of reality, the quietness that pervades experience.
presence is undeniable in the moment of meeting your lover’s eyes. how time slows, the rest of the world quiets and blurs. how in that moment, your thoughts fade and you feel the soft drum of your heart in your chest. experience feels light and easeful, somehow more real
presence is contradictory in that it’s both a skill that we can train, and a state that babies offer effortlessly as soon as they’re born.
presence is the practice of meeting ourselves and one another. it asks us to remain in contact with our bodies, our vessels that transmute billions of bits of sensory data into intelligent, informed response. it asks us to remain in contact with direct reality, to surrender our preconceptions, judgements, and narratives in favor of the visceral experience unfolding right before our very eyes. it asks us to be with fear without shirking from it, to feel pleasure without getting attached to it, to welcome grief without succumbing to it.
presence asks us to unlearn all the ways we try to control the world, in order to meet it in the perfection it already is.
attuned, embodied presence is deeply human. in fact, it is pre-human. it is primordial.
when we offer the gift of our presence to ourselves and each other, we live in devotion. we live with cognizance of our interconnectedness. how so much more brings us together than could ever tear us apart. presence dissolves the illusion of separation.
attuned, embodied presence is the most precious thing in existence.