I found today’s blog in a shop window. ‘Give Presence’, the sign said. How clever I thought. In the gifting season of the year, the greatest gift of all is the gift of our presence, on all levels. Whether it is being present in a conversation, being present with our meditation, being present while driving – what does ‘being present’ or ‘giving presence’ mean?
It’s simply ‘being with’. Not half being with, not almost being with, but fully being with. We can’t do this all the time, but we surely must have good doses of it throughout the day.
In our spiritual practice presence is essential. In Bhakti the goal is to be fully present in our relationship with Krishna. Fully present especially when we are directly serving Him – chanting on beads, singing in kirtan, studying the teachings, serving the Deity. It seems so easy but it’s often not. And here’s why.
We are spiritual in origin but we are covered by layers of material nature. First by the outer body and then by the subtle body (mind, intelligence, and false ego). This material nature, called maya or ‘that which is not’, is such a powerful illusion that it takes all our energy to remove ourselves from it. It’s like swimming upstream. It’s difficult to distinguish the body from the soul.
So when we come to our chanting or offering prayers we need to consciously work at being present. First we still our body and call it to be quiet. It could be how we sit, or where we chant, or how we breath. Then we face the mind and that’s where the real work begins. We basically live in our mind and it’s restless. Arjuna in the Gita calls the mind “restless, turbulent, and more difficult to control than the wind.”
Those of us who meditate every day know this. The mind can visit the world while we sit in one place. The mind can be totally thinking of other things while we chant Krishna’s name. We will travel down the labyrinthine ways of our mind endlessly, being more present in our mind than the spiritual practice at hand.
So when we talk of presence we speak of mindfulness, or bringing the mind to the present moment. For a devotee of Krishna, mindfulness means bringing the mind to Krishna. It means leaving this world behind and placing ourselves in Krishna’s world. It means filling our mind with the beauty and truth of that sweet Lord. It means controlling the mind by filling the mind with Krishna, leaving no space for anything else.
To be fully present, to give presence in Krishna consciousness, is to love. It is to love and be loved and to be absorbed in that exchange with Krishna. To be so fully caught in it that nothing can distract us from drawing our mind o the object of our love, like rivers moving to the sea. We can experience this to some extent in this world – a mother to her child, or new young lovers to one another. Bhakti invites us to enter that feeling with Krishna. To get there we have to practice first, while in the end it will be spontaneous – a love that cannot be stopped. A mind full of love.
Give presence this season. Give presence every day. Give presence to the most important person in your life, Krishna. It is the best gift you can give yourself and others.
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