Morning,
Good afternoon,
Evening When I talk about this sense of presence,
This beingness It's not a dead and an inert something or nothing It's alive,
It's the very aliveness that we experience,
That's what it is Another word for it is aliveness And it's untroubled It doesn't worry,
The worry is of the mind That's the distinction That's why you could say that a dog doesn't worry because it lives in presence I'm just giving that example because it's more obvious than people Unless you know somebody who doesn't live in mind Then there'll be a sense of peacefulness about them Of ease So just to reiterate,
If you just joined,
This sense of presence is alive It's the very aliveness that we experience It's not dead,
It's not a nothing But it's also,
One way of looking at it It's also a jealous lover That if we don't spend time with it If we're more interested in the worrying mind,
The scurrying mind The mind that thinks,
Obsesses about the future and regrets the past Our attention just keeps going there,
It's like a lover If you've got a lover and your attention is going to somewhere else They're not going to reveal themselves,
They're going to get,
Well I'm not going to open myself to you We have to turn back We have to fall in love with this,
Become interested in this The only problem we have there,
It doesn't shout It doesn't wave itself,
I'm here It's the beginning of it,
So to speak It's that quietness That very aliveness that you're experiencing now That's just the tip of it,
That's just the surface of it But you can't fall in love with this by thinking about it That's giving you attention to this So what we do,
We just notice the thoughts There's nothing wrong with thinking And we just feel into the body Because we access,
So to speak,
Presence through the body,
The senses So there's five senses And then we have presence,
Pre-sense It's not by accident that it's called presence So we give our attention to just the actuality of our experience The movement of the breath Just feel it And then we get well-aired,
We get busy It's okay,
It's not a problem And we come back to the sense of presence Feeling into the hands or the face or the breath Listening to the traffic or the birds And we slowly,
Gradually fall in love with this Become intimate with it With your own experience We're not talking about anything else but your own present moment,
Immediate experience We overlook it That's how we spend decades,
Looking,
Seeking,
Never finding There's more seekers than finders But I'm telling you,
It's right here In the words of Francis Assisi,
It's actually what's doing the looking But we won't go too far down there But we're just enamoured with mind,
Fixate on it Couple of deep breaths And we drop down into the body And we start to experience what's here,
Feel the breath What's happening No drama Just return back to the body And treat it like a courtship Spending time with presence,
Becoming intimate with the body The sensations Don't look for big experiences Where are you now?
Just checking that you are relaxed There's no straining and striving Just take a deep breath and feel into the body Relax into it Like you would a warm bath And notice any pleasure or ease,
It's easy to miss it Not interested in anything grand Just each moment OK Bring this session to an end A little stretch if you need one And thank you all
