The Acquired Taste of Presence
El gusto adquirido de la presencia
A student asks why presence seems to disappear and reappear if it is truly omnipresent, and the teacher explores the difference between the present moment and the practice of being present.
The Acquired Taste of Presence
A student asks why presence seems to disappear and reappear if it is truly omnipresent, and the teacher explores the difference between the present moment and the practice of being present.
It's surprising, and that's exactly what I was exploring. At one point I was looking at how, I think it's the arrogance. I had ideas about what had to happen, about how it had to happen, about all of that.
That's exactly it. You have that belief.
And so that could be a perfect correct remembering. Correct remembering is something that was always pointed out: when we have a recognition of something that's true and real, we don't go back to the previous understanding. We don't reinterpret that experience differently a minute later, or a day later, or a year later.
Correct remembering in practice
So correct remembering would mean that in another moment, when you're experiencing something similar and you see and believe in the ideas that some big shift has to happen, and has to happen in this particular way, you remember correctly that you've already seen through that. You've already seen that it's not true. And so you bring that back and look at the experience from that same perspective.
This is going to be a way in which you'll be blowing your own mind, because your mind is going to come back with habitual beliefs. They're totally there. You can see them. They're activated. But now you know they're a belief, if you remember correctly. You can be pulled into it and start believing it again, or you can remember: "That's the same kind of story, the same narrative, and that's a belief. And there's the arrogance that I think I know how this has to go."
Just keep looking at that. Stay with it. As you do, you stop energizing that belief, and there's no way it can win if you just stay with it and see its unreality, because you're depriving it of its energy source, which is you believing it. This applies to everything: to relationships, to everything that we struggle with.
I have a question. I'm not sure when teachers talk about presence. Some teachers talk about it as if it's something that requires effort, something you have to do. And then others talk of it as something that's there all the time, which seems to be a post-realization step or something. What happens when you get distracted in thoughts, or even when you're dreaming in your sleep? Why does it seem as if nothing's there? You disappear and then you reappear, and sometimes you don't even remember what you were lost in. If presence is something so omnipresent, why does it feel as if you disappear?
Different meanings of "presence"
There are different ways to use that word, and they refer to slightly different things. One thing is to be present, another is the present moment, and another is what presence is. These are related but distinct.
The present moment is something that's always there. The gaps you're describing, where it seems like you go away and then come back and there's a gap you don't remember, are exactly that: there isn't memory. But in the gaps there is still presence, still the present moment, still awareness. That's something that can, in a sense, be discovered. And somehow the mysterious part is that where there used to be no memory, there still can be in some way. I'm not entirely sure how that works.
Being present versus the present moment
But then there is another aspect, which has to do with being present. When you're daydreaming or lost in your mind, when you're identified with a lot of thinking and the focus of your attention is in the world of thought, we can say you are less present, because we are living in a reality that includes much more: bodily sensation and external raw perception. The more of that is coming in, the more we are moving into presence. We become more aligned with the present moment, more open to it. But it's also that what we are has become less small and constricted. The belief in what we are has become more inclusive.
That shift can happen really quickly, but in general we establish it gradually. In daily life, we spend more and more time being what we are as a being, rather than doing thinking. That's when somebody is more present, and that's what a meditation teacher might be guiding you toward. If you look at the mind and include the sensation of the breath, for example, it's going to move the identification out of thinking and into body sensation, which is going to be more presence.
But the present moment is always there. It's just going to take different forms. Sometimes it takes the form of a lot of thinking and a lot of blocking out body sensation and sense perception.
Some teachers will focus directly and only on realizing that all there is, is the present moment. Others will work more toward gradually developing presence.
Selling the value of the present moment
The author of The Power of Now talks about both quite a lot, but he focuses more on slowly progressing toward developing presence. That teaching has more of the flavor of an acquired taste. And what I think he's done really well is that he's very inspirational. The name of that book is very motivational. "The Power of Now." There's power. I want the power. He's held it that way: he's selling the value of the present moment, which is what I was talking about in the meditation. That's partly why he's become such a significant teacher. He's very inspirational in the sense of, "This is where the value is. The value is in the present moment. And there's not just value, there's power." The power is well-being, it's freedom. It's not negative power. But he's inspiring people to prioritize exploring the present moment.
And that's exactly what people need who have never gotten into meditation or spirituality, or who have but haven't progressed. What one needs is some trail or path that's going to help you discover the value in the present moment, so that you will face what it requires to acquire the taste of resting and living in it.
The acquired taste
There's a natural progression. At some point you discover the taste of it, the pleasure. It's like maté, the Argentinian tea. It's very bitter and very unpleasant for most people who first taste it. Or a child drinking wine or coffee: "Why would I ever want to drink this?" But after a certain process of getting used to it, leaving aside any addictive qualities, there is an enjoyment in that same flavor.
The present moment has that aspect too. At first it makes us tense, makes us anxious. You sit still and you hate it. You need to go through a process. And what that teacher does well is inspire people to take the chance to explore the value there. He sells something that's real, and he sells it well.
So it seems to be this natural process: from "I am the one who has to learn how to be present," to gradually recognizing that I am actually present in this. You are present, and then you are presence.
Yes. And then you basically realize you could not ever have not been that. You were just focusing on not being that.
The effort of sustaining what's false
That's why there's suffering: you are constantly trying to believe in a reality that's false, so it takes a lot of effort and struggle. It's like trying to believe the earth is flat. That community is really struggling. It's just never going to work. There's a documentary on Netflix where they film the whole effort: all the funding, all the people. They bring in the most rational scientists who believe in a flat earth, and they do this experiment. The experiment proves they're wrong. That's the end of the documentary, and you see the man looking at the result, unable to accept it. But it's all this effort to convince the world, and they're really struggling because all they're trying to do is sustain something that's just not true.
That's what we are doing. That's the nature of the struggle.
The reversal
This was quite a mind-blowing moment for me at the beginning of this year. I was looking back at when I was daydreaming and in my mind, my whole life, and thinking: it's so much effort and so much work and focus to try to pull away from that. And this year, it was the reverse. I was trying to create all the thinking I could, all the contraction I could, so I could lose the sense of presence. And it was completely pointless. There was just more thinking, but nothing was changing.
I can, in a sense, be more thinking-oriented or more embodied. I can have a practice where I'm moving toward more embodiment, keeping the body-mind in shape. But at the core of my experience and my being, none of that changes my experience in any fundamental sense.
Stress without suffering
For example, if I have a ten-hour day of work on a screen with meetings, and then I meet my partner, she usually has had a similar day, so we're both in a similar place. But what happens is, if I'm present and she's not, she's going to feel that. And I'm not suffering it. I can tell her, "Yes, I'm kind of tired, a bit more in the whole world of work," but it just doesn't have the effect anymore of pulling me away from being in peace, from what I experience as presence.
It happened this week. I had a super stressful day, and at the end of the day I was telling her about it. She said, "That sounds very stressful. I could give you a massage." I said thank you, laid down, and she started giving me a massage. She said, "There's absolutely no tension in your body. I've never felt you this way." I told her, "I'm totally fine." She said, "But I thought you were stressed." And I said, "Yes, I am. But it's not the same."
There's just something that doesn't pull me away from that anymore. When I experience stress now, it's not what it was before. When I experience being deep in the world of mind, it's not like it was before. What's happening at the level of body and mind has become always secondary to the reality that is simply presence. I can even intentionally push into that stress as an exploration, and still it doesn't become the inner experience. I'm using approximate words here, "inner" and "outer" and so on. But the deeper sense is always this presence.