The Life Changing Power of Presence

Presence is, simply, conscious contact with ourselves. Presence to ourselves—just showing up6—cultivates attention.

The practice of presence is integral to the capacity to be a creative agent in the moment—poised on the edge between the known reality and the emergent possibility. Presence is the meeting place between the inner life of a person and the outer life of action in the world.

Complete presence melts self-consciousness and self-doubt away. It lets us stand in our true essence without the need for approval or validation. When we are fully present, our awareness is glued to the moment. The complexity of our inner world is collapsed into one point of awareness. This lets us express ourselves fully.

Contracting our attention into the moment is hard, but it increases its potency, just as the brevity of words increases the potency of an idea, creating deeper grooves in the mind. If brevity is the soul of wit, then presence is the soul of experience. We cannot be fully ourselves until we are fully in the moment—attention nowhere but here.

If we are to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, then we will come to that belief by developing the capacity for a simple, clear, and uncluttered presence. Those who can be present with head, heart, and body at the same time will always encounter The Presence, whether they call it God or not.

Developing true presence has two purposes. The first is to make contact with everything that is beautiful, refreshing, and healing. We need that—we need the nourishment of a gorgeous sunset, a child’s smile, the song of a bird, the company of a friend. All of these things are precious, and we should be there to touch them. This is the first thing t

Presence is a concentrated quality of mind that lends itself to strength and stability.