Embracing Radical Presence

Sometimes things fall apart. But then sometimes they get to come together in a new way.

Not so long ago a friend of mine had an accident. All of a sudden, a big part of her life fell apart. She had to stop working, she needed help with the most basic daily tasks, she had to deal with huge amounts of pain and discomfort.

I stayed with her for a couple of weeks to help, and during that time we had some profound conversations on how to deal with a situation like this. Again and again it came down to a way of living that not many of us cultivate, namely...

Radical Presence

What does it mean? Perhaps it's different from person to person, but for me radical presence is acknowledging what we all know when we are on a spiritual path but rarely truly live; namely the fact that our past has passed away and has become stories, and that our future doesn’t exist, it’s all just stories and expectations as well.

While our Creator Self does know something about our possible future, and while we can engage in the co-creative process (e.g. through Joyful Manifestation), on the human level we really don’t know what will happen the next hour, not to mention the next month or year.

We don’t even know if we’ll be around to experience it. But we prefer to live as if we do know it. Because it feels safe, because it enables us to build things and have goals, because it gives us a sense of meaning and purpose. Which in itself is great!

Still, we cannot know the future. Anything can happen, and that might sound sort of sad and futile, but that’s actually not my experience. Quite the contrary...

Why? Because when we connect deeply with the nature of our reality and with our own nature, and live mind-fully and heart-fully as much as we can, we discover the joy that is part of it all.

But Is It Even Possible?

In our rather materialistic and goal-oriented culture, choosing to live with presence and thus letting go of the attachment to a specific future, is a radical choice to make. It can feel like the structures and rhythms of the life we knew and lived day by day are somehow falling apart. For me, considering this new path led to many questions:

What about my creative work as an author? What about the Joy Keepers Network that I’m co-leading? How about the friendships and the collaborations that I’m part of? How about all my daily practices including those that relate to my health?

How can I engage in any of the above without relating to the future? Is it even possible?

Asking myself these questions left me at first confused, mentally and emotionally. But then I remembered something...

What I Learned In Japan

Last year I participated in a group pilgrimage on the Shikoku island. It was an amazing experience in countless ways, but the one aspect of it that came to mind now was something that I didn’t think too much about back then because I was so immersed in living it...

During the pilgrimage, everything was being arranged for us. I knew what to do, moment to moment. To get up, eat breakfast, start walking, keep walking until we reached our next destination, which was always a temple. There to perform some simple rituals (bow, purify, light a candle, burn some incense) and either recite the Heart Sutra (as did most pilgrims) or just sit in meditation or contemplation. Then, walk some more, until the next temple. At some point the day’s pilgrimage was over and we would arrive at our next temple or hotel, had a hot bath, dinner and then, because I was so tired, it was pretty much straight to bed from there. And then the next day it started all over again, one step and one experience at a time.

Here's the thing: while simple it wasn’t always easy, not for me anyhow. Sometimes the walk was a long difficult climb, sometimes an even more difficult descend, and mostly over distances that were longer than I wanted them to be.

What I learned very quickly was that if I engaged in thoughts about our next goal, the walk would only get harder. Also, there was no going back.

How To Live Like A Pilgrim

It occurred to me that it might be possible to live my daily life in a similar way. And that such simplicity would not be a sacrifice but that it would, in fact, allow for more fullness. And so I started practicing.

As it turned out, living with radical presence doesn’t require too many changes with regards to what I do during the day! But it calls for a different way and a different motivation to do it than what I’m used to. Here’s how my daily living looks now:

I get up in the morning, then I engage in whatever tasks feel meaningful, i.e. the tasks that I have committed to and/or that I in that moment feel drawn to. It can be writing, it can be my daily practice in nature, it can be whatever work is needed for the Joy Keepers Network, it can be meetings with partners or friends, it can be reading books... These are all my "walking the path" experiences. In between these I stop for periods of meditation (morning, afternoon and night.) These are my “arriving at a temple” experiences.

A Different Awareness

Actually, my days have the same content as before, but I live in a rather different awareness. Now it’s not about the future--it’s about being fully present to what I do, one step at a time.

As an example, my focus right now is writing. Yes, the inspiration and the intention is to create an article for you. But I cannot be sure it will result in an actual article. And, if you read it now, it did!

There’s something subtle at play here...

And, we're all different. If this approach is too radical for you, just take some of it and see how it can enhance your life in ways that are right for you.

Certainly, most of us will benefit from learning...

How Joy Can Tame Your Monkey-Mind

One of the aspects of this approach that many people will benefit from is the focus on being here and now rather than getting lost in thinking. I don’t know how about you, but I do have a fairly active monkey mind that comes in the way or my presence regularly. I get distracted, my mind starts wandering, sometimes getting stuck in a memory, but mostly playing with future scenarios of my life…

Fortunately there is a wonderful simple tool to bring me back to presence, and that’s the Mindfulness Bell. It's a free app that you can set to ring a bell (or any sound you want) at regular intervals.

Whenever the bell rings, I ask myself these 4 questions:

• What am I doing right now?

• Why am I doing it?

• Am I present to what is?

• Is there joy?

I find these questions tremendously helpful, both in terms of awareness and awakening and as a powerful way to reconnect with joyful presence.

Because this, perhaps, is the greatest potential in living with radical presence: It makes life so much more fulfilling, free, and joyful!

We had a beautiful and profound conversation about just that here at Soulivity TV:

Even though living with radical presence and joy is an individual choice, there are many others than you can share the journey and the experience with!