Introduce Your Attention to the Acquired Taste of Your Simple Presence
A practice to begin feeling at home in this body and mind.
So, it may seem like so much “gets in the way” of dwelling in your simple presence.
And we can wonder, do you need everything and everyone else to disappear from your mind in order to dwell in your presence?
The answer to that is a big fat “No.”
So in this training we are here to establish that fact.
What you are, actually are, as presence may seem elusive at first. So the first thing we can do is something easier: establish what we are not.
All it takes is a few moments of just leaving things aside. Thoughts, feelings in the body, they can all be happening, but in this meditation we are looking to find our position as something else closer and nearer than all that, and experiencing thoughts and bodily sensations as outer, farther, from where we really are as presence.
Now this may be different than we have been taught in the past, which is why I want to introduce this idea as a basic training, even though you could also call it advanced. It’s important that in little, modest ways we start to notice that where we are seeing and knowing things from is not exactly the same as what we are knowing.
If there is a feeling in the hand, for instance, you—“the one who knows this”—is perceiving that from somewhere else, which feels closer to you, more intimate. If there is a thought, you are the one who recognized that it happened.
It is important to give this subtle, simple practice a try, right away, as a “basic training” and start to recognize and enjoy your presence now. Why wait?!!
