Words are funny animals that can shape-shift as our consciousness shifts. I've been considering the ideas behind the word "presence". One of the most beautiful ideas I've read in a while, from Eat, Pray, Love was that we often describe God as a presence. We can only experience that presence in the present.
In theatre, we often talk about stage presence, which is an elusive feeling for the actor. It requires supreme presence of mind; staying in the present and not wandering off mentally to the end of the play for example. Juliet cannot know she will die in the monument or she will never truly fall in love with Romeo.
It is the moments when an actor is "present" onstage that there is magic, Grace intervenes and beautiful things happen onstage. It is as if God has playing on the stage.
What is the present? It is an infinite moment of being. If we can connect to a presence of mind, suddenly our consciousness shifts to our body in space. We have connected to one physic place in TIME, suddenly our awareness of SPACE is clear. I cannot help but feel my heart beating, my legs rooted in the ground, my breath easing in and out, if my mind is kept present. It is this feeling of connecting to the physical world through a mental dedication of 'presence' that ironically is superimposed by the feeling of "presence" of a more-than-physical energy. It is bizarre but beautiful to me that through connection physically, an internal tuning in, that suddenly I feel more than just a sum of physical mechanics as scientific humanism would love to have me be.
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