Encounters with the sacred that radiate from the core of the ordinary embolden you to cultivate stillness and simple awareness. In the midst of a world that is begging you to distract yourself, this is no easy practice. Yet you keep showing up. You are indomitable. You are thirsty for wonder.

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.

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.