Presence is far more powerful than all the unpresence in the world.
But it requires making contact with it for its power to operate. You can be really still and sit – you don’t have to worry about the thoughts. Presence is stronger than lack of presence, but you have to stay committed and be willing to be present and enter into it. You can sit and be unwilling to be present, like always adjusting yourself. Just do the best you can and be present with your sitting. At a certain point, you always make the best of it – learn to just BE with whatever it is. From that point you have greater leverage. Presence has solidity and unity to it which gives you leverage .
Sometimes you have to become present with what you don’t like to be able to change – that antsyness and lack of acceptance in unpresence, or the fact that you’re an asshole which is unpresence. Present is present; it’s to be with it however it is. Then you’re solid, still, present in a unitive place and that’s the only way you can get a handle on it. You first have to accept it and be present with it – the minute you’re willing to be present with the fact that you’re an asshole, there’s the opening to be outside it and a chance to do something different, to change it. We are so lost in what we just did that was wrong – as soon as you ‘re forgiven you’re outside it. You don’t have to be a victim, controlled by the past. You’re spinning and spinning, lost in what you did wrong and suddenly you’re forgiven. It’s a sudden induction into a state of presence. The moment of forgiveness is the freedom to change no matter how bad you’ve been; you need to be present or else you’ll be trapped and a prisoner of everything you’ve done wrong up to now. But there’s only that power in forgiveness if you’re present and infuse it deeply and you really enter and act forgiving or forgiven, there’s an incredible power to allow the person to be free, to change, no longer trapped by that reality. Once you’re different, the curse is removed; you’re free to not suffer from the weight of it’s effect anymore. Things aren’t undone but you’re free of the effects, no longer trapped by that reality.
