In the deepest recesses of ourselves there is a most familiar quietude. It has been there through all our seeking and craving, as well as all the other events of our lives.
It is a point of peace, a silent witnessing awareness that is fundamentally unperturbed no matter what happens.
Right here, right now
Steeping in this awareness, one is at ease in the present, fully welcoming what comes and fully releasing what goes – feeling alive throughout. This awareness is not something far away and in another time. It is already occurring right here and right now.
For instance, while watching a movie, we may swirl in a sea of emotions – fearful, romantic, humorous, or tragic. If the story is especially potent, we might feel all of these emotions in a single film. Yet no matter how swept away we might be by the movie or how gripped by the emotions of the experience, there is within us a quiet witnessing awareness that knows perfectly well that we are sitting in the theatre all the while. If that were not so, we would surely flee the room as soon as any frightening situation occurred on the screen. We would run for our lives upon seeing the first weapon or firestorm coming at us, were it not for some part of our awareness knowing that the visions on the screen are not our most fundamental reality.
No need to find what is not lost
In a similar way, there is a field of silent awareness containing all the events of our days. Although we may sometimes be gripped by emotion or lost in a particular story, there is throughout each of our dramas a deeper reality of silent presence. This is a silence of the heart rather than an imposed cessation of speech or activity. It is a silence that is, we could say, the background of all activity. We don't need to find it because it is not lost.
If this is so, why is there so much searching and craving? Seeking is compelling because it produces a way for the mind to have a job. It seems that we are almost genetically programmed toward relentless mental occupation with desire and avoidance, a desperate squirming out of now. Perhaps nature has demanded that we keep on the move in order to stay alive, but this is becoming detrimental to life. We have evolutionarily outgrown the usefulness of being in a prevailing state of fear and greed in order to compete and survive. We can no longer afford it. It is driving us to disaster.
Nevertheless, it is strange how much we resist the inherent peace and quiet that is always possible. Perhaps this is because resting in simple presence is so foreign to a lifelong habit of mental complication, and we may have confused complication with a sense of aliveness. We might assume that having no particular mental project would result in boredom. Or we may be overwhelmed by how vast and free life suddenly feels when our minds are not on the hunt. As the prisoner who, upon being released, quickly finds a way to land himself back in jail, or the bird who resists the flight out when its cage door is opened, we are sometimes daunted by freedom and retreat into the cramped but familiar closet of a busy mind.
Yet in awakened awareness the mind acclimatizes itself to an expansion in silence. It gets used to letting neurotic thoughts drift and fade into nothingness, and it gradually loses interest in them even as they continue to arise. Disinterest in neurotic thoughts limits their power. What becomes more interesting is the open expanse of awareness through which all thoughts and everything else emerge and dissolve. And because this is ongoing, the perception of it can sneak up on you at any moment. Right now, as you read these words, you might sense the seamless field of presence in which you, the words, and all the things around you are floating.
Coming home
This silent witnessing awareness brings with it a quality of brilliance, alert yet at ease. It is not the brilliance of thought but the brilliance of pure perception, an impersonal intelligence. It pays no particular attention to thoughts that would tempt it from its tranquillity but doesn't mind that they come and go. There is no sense that something more is needed for contentment, and therefore a deep contentment prevails.
And suddenly the search is over. We have nowhere we need to go because all is in its place as is, ourselves included. We have nothing we need do to belong here because we feel no separation from existence. We still, more than ever, enjoy and passionately care about life, but we are no longer the beggar at its door, looking for love instead of being love. We realise that what we really wanted was not something that comes from seeking but that which comes from being found. We are as the prodigal son in Jesus' parable. After long wandering, being lost and depraved, and looking in all the wrong places for happiness, we finally come home. And just as the father embraced his wayward son and laid a feast in his honour, we are welcomed home into our own shining presence every time.
From Passionate Presence, copyright by Catherine Ingram 2003, published in the UK by HarperCollins.
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