When we prioritise presence, we find our true home. No longer clinging to the past or reaching for the future we inhabit this moment fully, embodied and alive, but when we emphasise the future or dwell on the past, when we fixate on thought or fuse with emotion, we lose this connection. We feel this loss in our bodies and our hearts and it shows up in our lives – through our relationships, our circumstances, and our work. This loss is a loss of contact with that which is most natural – our Essential Nature – the fullness that animates each and every form. 

This loss reverberates through our psyche and our soma and perpetuates itself when we imagine that the closing of this gap is a journey to be made. We search our memory banks for those moments we felt connected and desperately try to re-create this experience of “presence”. We project it into the future and imagine how great life will be when we finally arrive at this state called “presence”, and we set off on an endless journey to find this thing called “presence” – a journey that only perpetuates the illusion that presence is not present! Meanwhile, presence awaits …

Presence is not to be found in some future moment because presence is Who You Are – right Here, right Now. So who is this one who popped out of presence? Who is this one who got lost?! So glad you asked 😉

The false identity arises out of a misunderstanding – the misperception that you are separate from Source – that you are a person, an object, a body, “an isolated fragment”. This misunderstanding causes you to fixate your attention on form, on phenomena, since that’s where you find some sense of self. Whether that phenomena be thought, emotion, a person, place, or device (!), attention is no longer rooted in its formless essence. Your attention is merged with (and therefore you are identified with) the objects in your awareness. This fracturing of attention is the fragmentation of the self – the web of identity in which you find your attention caught.

Attention is simply focused awareness, so it’s not so much that you leave your Self, but more that your attention strays from its Source, which creates the illusory appearance of separation and disconnection.

When you believe and feel that you are separate from Source, your attention is easily captivated (distracted and consumed) by objects, because there’s this deep sense of something missing. You are missing your own subjectivity. This feeling of incompleteness is the core wound of the “someone” – of the false sense of self. This feeling of “not enough” births all kinds of seeking. I demand love from others while failing to love myself. I feel unworthy and try to fix that by pursuing outside approval. I get angry and then feel ashamed for expressing my rage. Each wound comes with a host of corresponding strategies that seek to fix, soothe, control, or suppress it.

When the attention is caught in these movements, it can be tricky to disentangle. Often these movements consist of multiple aspects of the identity all working with and against each other to ensure the survival and wellbeing of the organism. We manage to unmerge from one aspect but find ourselves immediately caught in another. We unmerge from being angry and then collapse into shame for losing our temper. We unmerge from worry and then instantly fuse with the one who desperately wants to fix it. Our attention is caught on the merry-go-round of identity – the web of the false sense of self.

Extricating attention from this psychic web is vital and foundational and unveils the presence that never left. Unmerging attention from these aspects of the identity is the revelation of our true nature, as the open space that the experience of separation arises in. That said, we need to be aware that the identity will inevitably turn this into another project, because the identity believes that to unmerge and disidentify is a journey that is made through time and space, when in fact this movement of attention is actually a stopping and not a doing. It’s a stepping outside of the matrix of identity into our timeless essence. The attention is not so much moving as it is relaxing its hold (on form). It’s a stopping rather than a forging forward, and it’s this stopping that dissolves the experience of separation and thus ends seeking.

It’s this stopping which reveals YOU as you always are – untouched and unbroken, whole and complete.