Into What Is

We often describe Presence as something we practice.

It is, after all, the most people thing we can do. To take what already is and practice is-ing with it.

We might meditate or focus on our breath. If we’ve done it enough, we might notice our thoughts or even notice that we’re noticing. We might ground ourselves in the sensations of the body and for a few moments, we might even find ourselves present.

But presence, on its own, is only a moment – and moments slip by us like the leaf carried downstream.

Embodiment is what gives presence a shape, a vessel. A way for us to recognize what the field of presence feels like.

It is the way the thread of awareness begins to move through our choices, our relationships, our words, and even our silence. It is a knowing we reacquaint ourselves with. It is how we begin to arrive at right now and the quiet difference between knowing and what it feels to simply recognize being.

Knowing says, I understand.

Embodiment says, I AM the understanding.

We can read every book on compassion and still speak harshly to ourselves.

We can understand that our worth is inherent and still spend years chasing proof that we’re relevant.

We can recognize an old pattern the moment it appears and still find ourselves deep in its trenches.

Understanding opens the door.

Embodiment walks us through it.

It is wonderfully unremarkable.

Embodiment has no heralders of its arrival. More often, it reveals itself in ordinary moments.

We answer an email without feeling defensive.

We recognize someone else’s disappointment without making it our own responsibility.

We rest without guilt or shame.

We notice fear and choose not to let it make our decisions.

With embodiment, nothing dramatic has happened.

Yet everything has changed.

The truth we once reached for has quietly become the place from which we live.

Perhaps this is why transformation can be so difficult to recognize while it is happening. We are often waiting for a breakthrough while life is offering us a thousand small opportunities to stand in what we already know.

Presence is not the destination.

It is the doorway.

Embodiment is what happens when we stop visiting that doorway and begin building our lives on the other side of it.

When we embody presence we no longer need to remember who we are.

We realize that we have never not known.