prisoner of Presence

the great escape routine

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[From a letter to a friend.]

For decades I had read, been taught, and believed that the Real, by definition, must be omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.  But I still believed it was something objective that I had to find, attain or ‘receive’.

What I had to do, I thought, was find where ‘it’ was hiding – or more to the point – why my perception couldn’t perceive ‘it’.  Which sounds easy, but dozens of years were spent traipsing around the spiritual circuit without getting one millimeter closer to my quarry.

It was a light-bulb moment for me when it sunk in that if the Real was totally accessible to me (and everyone), perhaps I should persistently ask myself

What’s the one thing I can’t get away from?  Ever?

And there it was – here it is.  Inescapably intimate.  Closer than my heartbeat.

Whenever protest or confusion arose, I’d just switch over to the Great Escape Routine again.  And laugh myself silly.

Well, you do have to laugh, don’t you?  Imagine.  All those years of seeking and sadhana, of surrender and self-inquiry, and here I am, prisoner of the Presence that I am.

Prisoner of the real dinkum Real.

~

no way in and no way out

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Vast Presence  is always perfectly still.

And yet – as happened today – when a child is injured outside one’s gate and lies screaming in shock and pain, there is action.  It is action unclouded by confusion, by conceptualization, by choice.  Action simply acts.  The child is held and comforted, first aid is applied.  She is protected until her mother arrives.

Vast Presence does nothing but be present.

Isn’t it curious that we strive to live in the moment when it’s impossible to find any-where or any-when else but the vastness of the Present, this very moment?  We are prisoners of this perfect Presence: there’s no need to seek it, and no possibility of escape!

~

See also – I’m prisoner of a presence