Living in presence means you can’t pretend.
Actually that’s kind of the secret to everything. You can’t pretend, and if you want to live in presence, live in the present moment, live with your presence fully alive, it simply means that you can’t pretend.
You can’t come at it through your fixed belief systems, so I think the most important thing to understand is that living in presence, in a state of presence, means that the false has dropped away. The thing that was keeping you from being fully present has has fallen away. That thing that falls is very simple. It’s simply your clinging to false belief systems. You are clinging to stories that you’ve been told. Even stories, you’re telling yourself in your own brain. Right? Being “out of presence” is clinging to these stories rather than just simply living.
So we’re talking about the most ordinary way to live your life. Very very ordinary. All the stories of how life is terrible, or how this or that thing is going to happen, or all the things that happened in the past. All these stories are what pull you away.
How do you get there?
First of all, I think the most important thing is that you have to understand how ordinary and normal this state is. You’re not looking for anything special, and that’s the number one thing that goes wrong with people on the spiritual search. They’re looking for something special. They’re wanting to stand out.
But living in the present I mean… let’s just stop for one second and just be there.
There is nothing remarkable about it, and it’s always there. Say you’re running a marathon and you just stop. It’s there. Even while you were running the marathon it was there. Say you’re in a big argument or you’re angry, and you just stop. It’s there. Ordinariness. Simplicity is always there underneath all the complications.
So living in the present. You can’t pretend. Pretending is exactly the thing that you’re trying to stop doing. Don’t try to get there. Just stop.