8

PRESENCE AND PERSONHOOD

Are you a person with awareness or the

Awareness that perceives a person?

There is a single coin that can show itself as absolute or relative. What notices which side is up in any given moment? That which neither divides nor defines itself as background or foreground is awake to both. What is it? Can you taste it? Can you touch it? Something is simply and deeply present. Whom does this Presence belong to?

Presence is nowhere that you are not, and you are nowhere that Presence is not. What seems to be somewhere else is actually attention that has moved to the thinking mind, but Presence has not disappeared. In sensing what is timelessly awake and aware in the midst of all time-bound experiences, we experience Presence. When we see, hear, touch, or taste anything innocently, as it is, without the conditioned voice-over of our inner narrator, we experience Presence. Yet freedom does not require getting rid of all conditioning—that would be impossible. It lies in discovering what we are beyond our identification with personhood.

PRESENCE IS AWARENESS UNHOOKED FROM THOUGHT

Presence is awareness of the moment unhooked from our thoughts, judgments, and interpretations based on separation. Experientially it is a moment of oneness. It is not a quality created by a body-mind or owned by a person. In fact, Presence perceives the layers of clothing we appear to wear over our true Self. Presence cannot be seen; it is the seeing and the knowing of experience. Presence is the openness that contains no resistance, no efforting to be somewhere else or to hold on to a separate identity. The sense of “I am” appears inside Presence. Since Presence is the knowing of itself as all appearances, this sense of oneness also moves as love—love for its own expression of being called “person.”

Being is fluid, dynamic, and an expression of the play of Consciousness. We could see our Self in terms of a trinity: There is the absolute, unchanging, formless, timeless dimension that is always at peace. There is the form (a person, thought, or feeling form) that manifests both the timeless dimension of Consciousness and its expression as being and time. And there is the Holy Spirit, breath, or energy that moves life in and out of its infinite forms from moment to moment. However, what appears to be three is not.

Although Presence is what you are, thought tries to practice it. Although Being is what you are, ego efforts to be. While Presence is clear seeing and intimate experiencing without the veils of conditioned mind, it sees the movements of conditioned mind. Presence is conscious of itself as Being and is experienced as nonseparation, a quiet peacefulness, love, and intimacy. Its intimacy comes from the fact that true Presence cannot separate itself from any moment, any experience, action, or manifestation of Totality. Intimacy may seem to imply two, but true intimacy knows no separation.

If the Heart of Awareness, our true Self, is always intimate with the moment, why don’t we experience it? Being awake means being present for this moment, for this experience, for this feeling, for this interaction, for this birdsong, for this sip of tea. Enlightenment is here/now, but from the perspective of belief in a separate person, the seeker often seems oblivious to the moment when the mind is wandering off, thinking, judging, or fantasizing, living in a world of concepts, interpretations, ideas, memories, projections. Indeed, that is the experience of the “person” who is identified with his or her mental or emotional activity. We have all had the experience of suddenly waking up from a daydream to realize that our mind has been “somewhere else.” But where were You?

What You are is here, but attention moves. And so practices may be engaged in to try to develop mindfulness or presence to the moment we are in. But can we notice that something is already present before we try to become present?

From the perspective of consciousness identified with the body-mind as “person,” its light so often shines on mental activity (the experience of being somewhere else) because that is where the attention of identified consciousness has been conditioned to find itself. The “person” finds his or her identity in an idea of a self—the body-mind’s form, thoughts, emotions, sensations, and memories. Yet these continually change. What has been present to all the changing seasons of your life?

From the perspective of our timeless Presence, the Heart of Awareness that does not come and go, it is simply here now, open and present to your inner or outer environment, to your responses as you read. And, while intimate with the moment, what is simply awake is not actually affected by any illusions of “who” or “what” may be imagined in the dream of separation. From this perspective, all is simply happening in, and as an expression of, what has no name, claims no identity, and yet is continually awake and simply being. Presence is what we are.

WHO PRACTICES PRESENCE?

Many seekers effort to “be present” in the moment, or at least they imagine that they should be practicing such a thing. When we talk about being present, we are usually referring to an attitude of attention and openness in the moment, a quality that is natural and inherent in our aware being. It is fine to imagine you are practicing being open and awake in the moment or practicing mindfulness of your breath, your actions, your thoughts, your feelings, but who is practicing such a thing? And when you do not feel present, what notices that your mind is engaged in memory, projection, fantasy, or judgment? Presence is the knowing of your experience.

Presence is the awareness that knows you are reading these words, that the body is seated, that your belly is full or empty. Presence refuses nothing and holds on to nothing. That is its freedom. An illusion called the “separate self” cannot create Presence; it is Presence that sees your ideas of personhood. Our human experience is actually a play of Presence and personhood. It is Presence that pulls the seeker toward Presence. It is not your action that invites Spirit or God into your life; Spirit has invited your expression into its life. Spirit is Presence.

The “I” whom you imagine is practicing presence appears to be a body plus a conditioned mind that is efforting to keep attention on the moment or action at hand. When we follow thoughts that appear to stick like Velcro one onto another onto another, we experience thinking and claim a self as the “thinker.” Attention moves, and Presence, or awareness, is now illuminating our mind activity. A moment before we may have been experiencing the flow of life, the flower in front of us, a carrot we were chopping, the movement of our breath, or a moment of deep peace in meditation. Then the thinking mind begins to pull consciousness and its attention to itself. Habitual thought becomes a powerful magnet.

ATTENTION MOVES; PRESENCE REMAINS

While Presence has not gone anywhere, we experience attention moving and the fascination and pull of thoughts, especially the ones that relate to the life, travails, and triumphs of a “me.” All of these thoughts are seen by that which is present to its own life and expressions. The light of awareness notices the shifts of attention and is now present to our running inner dialogue, our daydreaming, judging, and fascination with our thinking. However, we do not experience Presence—the Infinite aware of itself—when we are living in a virtual world of the mind’s thoughts identified with personhood.

All of life’s movements—from an experience of a peaceful or focused mind, to a carrot or a flower, to traffic noise or an agitated meditator who cannot remain “present”—are objects in awareness, the awake Presence that has never disappeared. But because it is what we are, it cannot itself be made into an object. The I-thought cannot “find” Presence; Presence has shown us the thought and reveals itself to be much deeper than thought.

Turning Attention toward the Source

Come into the sense of Now, quietly present to your innermost Self.

Invite your attention deep inside, beyond the concepts covering your naked, open awareness.

Bypass all remembered definitions of your self, even for a moment, and come inside your Heart.

Come deeper than any ideas or feelings, deeper even than the Silence that appears to be nothing. What perceives this nothing, this emptiness?

Come inside—beyond your body, your mind, your emotions—to what is Unborn. From this Source comes Presence. A person does not “acquire” pure Presence. It is your natural, empty state of being. Presence is intimate with the moment.

Sense this Presence as what is free; the person is not free. Our freedom is freedom from the person.

We are neither denying nor devaluing the experience of our body-mind. The body holds great wisdom; we can honor its resilience as well as its fragility. But in this moment we are exploring our deepest and truest essence, the truth of the experiencer.

Turn your attention toward your innermost silent Source; feel its Presence. Let yourself return again and again to this felt sense.

You are living as the form and functioning of the Divine—perhaps not consciously yet, but you may discover the vastness when you stop to notice that silence, stillness, and Presence are already here in your own experience. You imagine you must find ways to connect to that which you seek, but you may never have questioned who imagines him- or herself separate. You simply proceed in your efforts to connect with what you imagine is outside of yourself, separate from who you are. This is the action of identified consciousness.

If you were to relax completely, making no effort, not even thinking—for that, too, requires effort of the mind—all there would be would be Presence. Of course, you do not imagine that you could stop thinking or find Presence without efforting to do so. The first part is correct: “you” cannot stop your thinking. Ego’s attempt to end thinking is more ego. The truth about the second is this: nothing that requires efforting can be who you truly are. How can it require effort to simply be who/what you are?

EGO DOES NOT WANT TO STOP BEING THE “DOER”

The ego wants to have something to do. Without doing, it fears its life would end. My friend, that is the point. When the ego gives up thinking it is the doer and rests in/as its true nature, there is no longer any perceived separation from that which you have been seeking. If you investigate deeply your desire to do something, you will very likely find that you do not want to stop being the doer. The very idea engenders great fear. You imagine your life would fall apart without a separate “you” as doer at the helm. You imagine infinite Being or eternal Presence might be able to take care of the birds, the meadow grasses, and the movement of clouds in the sky, but not your life. You believe your life is separate from nature, separate from its Being.

You do not want to stop imagining yourself as the doer because you do not want your illusory self to die. When you have totally identified with a separate consciousness, the idea of losing that sense of separation can be terrifying. You may imagine that your bills won’t get paid or the children taken care of if you did not take yourself to be the doer, but really you are afraid of losing your most cherished illusion: that of being a self in control of its destiny. However, when there is awakening from the dream of separation, the understanding appears that there has never been a separate doer for a single moment. It was all an illusion. Doing happens. It is not that life does not unfold in all of its richness or complexity. At issue is not doing versus nondoing, an active life versus a passive one. It is the question of who/what is the doer.

WHO WILL WIN THE OSCAR?

            The waking state is a film starring the ego,

            directed by karma, and produced by Maya.1

            H. W. L. POONJA

Each year in Hollywood, California, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominates actors in a vast array of roles for best performances. Movie buffs watch the award ceremonies with various degrees of excitement, anticipation, boredom, and differing opinions of who should win the Oscar. There is great interest in what attendees at the ceremony are wearing, what jewelry adorns the women, what cut of tuxedos the men choose, how much cleavage shows on certain actresses. There are comments about hairdos and escorts, views about the degree of sincerity in any given acceptance speech, and judgments about the quality of acting that did or did not get awarded an Oscar nomination or win. People who watch films have very distinct opinions about which stories, actors, directors have “arrived” and which have not.

The spiritual seeker is actually quite similar. She looks around at the spiritual supermarket, full of teachers, gurus, books, YouTube videos, and tips on how to “achieve” enlightenment, and she makes judgments about which ones are winners and which ones are losers. Of course, a winner to one person may seem a loser to another. Indeed, the seeker looks around at the vast array of actors playing various roles in life and imagines there will be a winner and a loser. Most especially, the seeker makes judgments about what she must do in order to be a winner. She looks at a beggar on the street and sees a “person” who has failed, looks at a sage and sees a “person” who has attained spiritual success. Seekers often fail to notice the roles they themselves are playing in the film of their own life, the scripts they have memorized and repeat over and over about a self and the world and who that self is. The focus of the spiritual ego is on how to win the Oscar called “enlightenment.”

Tell me, in the great movie of life, whom do you imagine will win the Oscar? Perhaps you imagine the prize will go to the one playing the role of Enlightened One, Radiating-Truth-to-the-Masses, with an honorable mention for the I’ve-Been-Meditating-for-Years-When-Will-I-Ever-Wake-Up Spiritual Seeker. Perhaps there are a few votes for Ms. Perfection, Has-It-All-Together, or Mr. Righteous, I-Alone-Know-What-Is-Right-for-the-World. What becomes of those playing the roles of Ms. Sad and Lonely, No-One-Will-Ever-Love-Me, or Mr. Important, Horn-Honking-Angry-Victim-of-Other-People’s-Incompetence, or those cast as Fearful-in-a-Dying-Body? Whom do you imagine you are? Whom do you imagine wakes up? What if all the roles are played by the same One?

The spiritual ego is looking for a prize. And the seeker imagines he can tell who has achieved such an honor and who has not. He can tell by whether the person wears robes or beads or has lots of disciples or can perform great siddhis (powers). The seeker imagines she can tell by whether her own mind goes blank in the person’s presence or she finds herself in bliss. The seeker-after-enlightenment imagines that anyone who has received the Oscar will be omniscient, or will have powerful shakti (energy) or the ability to heal the sick and raise the dead, or will never become ill and never react emotionally to any situation.

There is a way in which sages know one another, but it has nothing to do with any of the outward signs mentioned above that the spiritual seeker imagines are indicators of enlightenment. And many of these sages live very quiet lives, tending to a shop, playing music, working with the dying, or living simply in remote areas. There are also sages who are public figures. But not one of those persons, whether imagined to be enlightened or imagined not to be, is separate from that which is living itself always and everywhere. And that is also living you.

THE DREAM OF THE WAKING STATE

The dream of the waking state is that we are separate persons, separate from what we seek. Yet, who is dreaming such a dream? Spiritual ambition says there is someplace to go and someone to arrive there, waiting to win the Oscar of enlightenment. Self-realization says there is no place to get to and no one to arrive.

In the words of Ramana Maharshi:

            The thought, “I have not seen,” the expectation to see, and

            the desire of getting something are all the workings of the ego. . . .

            That which IS is always here. Even now you are That.

            You are not apart from it.2

Seekers often imagine that if they knew the sage’s experience, they could somehow figure out how to manipulate their own thinking or behavior in order to create the same experience. However, it is when you stop trying to match your experience to another’s and begin to investigate your own that seeking begins in earnest. No one else can eat your food for you, digest it for you, or use it to maintain your bodily functions. Likewise, no one else can desire truth or taste it or digest it for you. Truth can only be discovered for yourself.

Without the light of Awareness you would not know a single thing, remember a single experience, or even be able to claim yourself as a separate “person.” Nor could you contemplate the possibility that your life of separation could be an illusion. Without air, water, soil, sun, food, heart, lungs, brain, blood, you could not sustain your being for a single moment. Wholeness does not divide itself into parts. Only language and thought make it seem so.

THE ONE IN MANY COSTUMES

When there is awakening from the dream of separation, we realize that this entire universe and everything in it are manifestations or “disguises” of the One. Sometimes even we, or someone we know very well, might be unrecognizable, depending on the costume of the moment. My son performed in many plays during his high school and college days. I remember being really concerned during the first act of one of the collegiate Shakespeare productions he was in. He did not appear on stage even though he was supposed to be playing one of the main characters in that act. I worried that he must have become ill at the last moment. I later discovered he had been performing all along. His makeup, gait, and speech were so different from normal that I had not recognized my own son.

Likewise, in the play of Consciousness, we may not recognize our Self in our many costumes, gaits, and varieties of speech. We do not recognize the Self within ourselves, and therefore do not see the Self anywhere else either. However, once the Self drops its disguise as our separate “self,” we will see nothing but the Self everywhere. Consciousness is playing all the roles, including those of seeker and the sought. Some moments the Divine appears to play hide-and-seek, hiding and then revealing, but always the dreamer and the dreamed arise as a single unfolding.

DREAMING

In dreaming, our bodies for all intents and purposes remain unmoving, and yet years could go by, many actions could take place, and life and death could appear to be “realities”—“realities” that can happen in an instant of dreaming. Sometimes we are relieved to wake up and find out it was “only a dream.” Sometimes we want the dream to continue because it seemed so lovely. When you awaken, you realize that the dream was a production of your own consciousness. It was a movie of your own making that took on, for a time, a sense of reality.

The creation of our dreams is similar to how our mind creates its experience of its world. Even in waking life, several people observing the exact same event will have different views of its “reality.” In the larger context, we might say the universe is the dream thought of God or Consciousness. Every moment, form, cell of the body, molecule, atom, particle, nonparticle, pattern, or energy that exists could not be known without Presence, which is itself the knowing. There is nothing that is that could be separated from its Being.

Our very life is a divine happening, a both gross and subtle vibration of Consciousness that condenses into form and appears within the light of Awareness or Presence. That same Presence illuminates our world through the instruments of perception.

EGO DOES NOT SEE

To awaken from the dream of our so-called waking life is the same as awakening from a night dream, except in this case the “I” who knows its own dream is not a separate consciousness, not a separate “I.” It is the only Consciousness there is, knowing itself within itself, and is not the ego’s idea of its separate “I.” Our true Self—that which is awake in us—is actually universal and impersonal, although also intimate with the experience we imagine is personal. The pronoun I actually refers to something vaster and more mysterious that is simply looking out from one of its infinite viewing points. Each individual expression is unique, yet we share one essence, one ground. Our ego, the thought called “I,” does not see, but YOU do. YOU are not a thought. YOU are the true “I,” the one playing all the roles, creating out of itself the moment-to-moment unfolding of the experience you call life.

THE ARCHETYPE OF PERSONHOOD

As human beings, we are deeply conditioned and identified with the archetype of personhood. We believe each individual person is defined by a body and mind that are absolutely separate from the rest of life or nature. The person considers himself either the victor or the victim of life rather than its expression. But just as the hand is distinct from the heart or the liver, having different functions in one body, each one of us is an expression of a single body—in this case, the body of Being, of Totality. Being is always “becoming” as person, but Presence is what is timelessly awake.

Within your sense of being a person, look deeply, and you may find a natural sense of Presence. The person will say, “In meditation, I was resting in awareness, but now I am not.” You are the Self; you are Presence. You are already here. You are already at peace, already at rest. What is popping up and down is a phantom. The illusory self is a thought-based memory that seemingly freezes experiences in time, rather than opening to the flowing current of life happening now in the Presence we truly are.

IF I AM NOT A SEPARATE PERSON, WHO AM I?

When identified consciousness imagines waking up and discovering his life is a dream, the person imagines this would be demeaning or devaluing to life. “If all of life is a dream, why be here? What’s the point? If we are just little robots created and moved by Totality or God, why bother?” This is the view of separation. You take yourself to be separate and then imagine “you” are moved about without regard to “your” feelings, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams. You want no part of a life you do not imagine “you” can control. But who is the “you”? Sooner or later we discover that the ego is not in control, but our Being is quite powerful. Presence is actually a much greater power than thought.

Presence is all there is. I am this body and all other bodies; yet no body, no moment, no “disaster” binds my Presence. Wake up and know yourself to BE who you ARE! As Presence, we may experience infinite compassion, love, light, awareness, acceptance, wisdom, being, peace. If you were to discover this as your truest Self, do you imagine you would feel demeaned, devalued, or afraid? It is only our ego, our sense of separation, that imagines our worth and safety require separation. If you knew who/what you truly are was never born and can never die except in a dream, would you still have the same fears?

DEATH AND THE INSTINCT TO SURVIVE

Now, the body-mind of a human being has an instinct for survival, as do other forms of life, and this instinct works equally in the body-mind of an individual in whom the understanding of no separation has appeared. But when it is time for the form to die, the sage will accept death as part of the journey of Presence that truly has no end. The form may die, but what you ARE does not. This is not a belief in “life after death” for an imagined separate “self”; it is a knowing that who/what you are now is what continues with no beginning and no end. In truth, nothing dies; life simply transforms itself.

HAPPINESS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF PERSONHOOD

Just on the other side of personhood is happiness. Yes, happiness, peace, contentment, love. When we are no longer holding tightly to being a separate person, we can flow with how life is moving back and forth, one moment experiencing itself as a person, with all the attributes we know and think of as ourselves, and in another moment experiencing ourselves as a mystery beyond the thinking mind that is simply noticing the show, the play of existence. And whether Consciousness experiences itself as seemingly limited or unlimited, whether the coin is coming up heads or tails, absolute or relative, there is Presence, present to the moment as it is. As Presence, we experience our unconditioned, timeless Being. As “person,” we are humbled in such Presence. Yet to experience the freedom and uncaused happiness of our true Self, our psychological identity and fascination with the “person” will eventually be surrendered into the Presence of Being.