All efforts are toward Presence. All our efforts in therapy or self-help, or whatever are part of a larger effort, our reaching for Presence.
But what is Presence? It’s not an object so no words can really catch it. It’s more like the lived experience of right now, a now that we’re not escaping or wanting to escape, a dawning recognition that this is the right place and time, that we’re the right person and this is the moment to live. That we’re part of a shared endeavor that is going along perfectly
“All efforts are toward Presence” means that whatever we’re trying to do for ourselves or for others, it’s the best shot at service we can manage right now. It’s our highest expression, now.
Think of this as what we’re doing: We’re sitting with trusted companions of competence and experience who were all dedicated to the good of the whole, all sitting there wondering how Presence would emerge and how they could bend their talents to accomplishing it. That’s one way of saying what we’re practicing – even if some of the others don’t know it yet.
We’re not practicing perfectly of course. Of course not. This isn’t about our dreams of accomplishment and perfection, necessary as they are to sustain us. This isn’t about our saving ourselves, which we can’t do. Presence is before all that and all that happens in it. It’s the answer to prayers in the sense that the prayer is no longer necessary.
Presence is what we were praying for all along.
And it can’t be contained. It’s not more in the colorful image at the page top than in the darker image on the left – hidden Presence looking back at you.
Words, images and metaphors can make us think Presence is something concrete and fixed, defined. But beyond our wants and needs, Presence is there and everyone intuits it and dreams, secretly, of nothing else.
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