Presence is the whole atmosphere of a person or thing. . . . Presence is mainly the atmosphere of spirit that is behind them all and comes through them.
—John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes
Throughout these meditations, I refer to presence or being present. What does that really mean? John O’Donohue defines presence several times in his book Eternal Echoes. When he calls it “the atmosphere of spirit,” he is referring to life-force energy in the body. Throughout his teachings, Eckhart Tolle speaks of “aliveness in the body.” Presence is the life-force energy of spirit in the body, and when we feel it, claim it, and allow ourselves to be embraced by it, we can navigate the material world with much more grace, calm, and groundedness than if we are unaware of or estranged from it.
Connecting with presence is the most fundamental task in our commitment to becoming conscious. Without needing to have an impeccable definition of presence, we open to being embraced by it and allow ourselves to feel our life-force energy in the body, recognizing it as an indwelling spirit. We know we are experiencing presence when we are not caught in the endless feedback loop of thought. We take a deep breath, allow ourselves to feel the aliveness of the body, and then open to reverence for this aliveness that is separate from thought and ego. This allows us to retreat momentarily from the external situation and our thoughts about it. We breathe deeply, fall into presence, and surrender to what is.
What is presence? In Eternal Echoes, O’Donohue assures us, “Presence is something you sense and know, but cannot grasp. It engages us, but we can never capture its core; it remains somehow elusive.”
So when we “fall into presence,” it is not as if we have a clearly defined sense of it, but an intuitive, instinctive sense of it as our true home in the body. Presence, being, the sacred, spirit, the divine within—all are names for the something greater that is our core, our most authentic identity.
Connecting with presence is something we must practice. For all of our lives, we have been encouraged to focus our attention outward and be defined by the external world of thought and physical and mental forms. It takes time and commitment to revere presence and return to it, as if returning to an old friend.