The Present & Your Presence, One & The Same
Hey, fellow pilgrim. welcome to the present! It is all that is appearing right here and right now. It is all the sights, sounds, smells, sensations, thoughts and feelings, and everything else, that make up this moment. It is the totality of this moment-to-moment experience of what is – it is all there is – the knowing of experience.
And hey, welcome to the sense of your presence! It is that sense of being, of aliveness, of existence, that you can feel within and all around the body. It is the knowledge that says ‘I am, I am, I am’, that arises before the ‘I am this and that’, the name and form and everything else that makes up the person that you take yourself to be. You cannot be the ‘I am this and that’ without the simple sense of presence – it comes first – and it is not the knowledge of any particular person being present, it is conscious presence, the knowing of being – the most familiar thing you know: the knowing of experience.
Ah yes, you can feel the sense of your existence within and around the body, but you also feel this sense throughout the present moment – it is the present moment, the sense of your being in which this immersive first-person perspective play of being a person in a world appears. Absolutely everything – the totality – is your presence.
When you abide in being, you are abiding as the present. You are knowing the body and the mind and everything else – the entire show – to be nothing but the present moment, the awareness of being, consciousness only. The present moment and the sense of your presence – consciousness – are one and the same – and you are the knowing of this experience.