Promoting a Trinitarian vision of deification and contemplative prayer
Once we see with clarity the relative nature of all the forms appearing and disappearing in this physical world we live in, we no longer feel the need to insist that they be in any way different than what they are. We now learn to accept the temporary, ephemeral nature of the relative world and we see no problem with it … So an awakening to the absolute level of reality is also an awakening to the relative level. All anxiety is basically caused by our wanting reality to be other than it is.
Francis Dale Bennett, I Am That I Am
Acceptance is the antidote to all that troubles us. Presence reveals our problems as false constructions of the ego.
Open our eyes to the Power of Presence, O God. Remove the suffering that comes when we resist the Present Moment.
The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present … Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment … Your entire education has deprived you of the capacity for contentment because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.
Akṣapāda. Tao of Alan Watts: 444 Expressions of Zen
The Kingdom of God is not just around the corner, it is already here. It appears when our preoccupation with past and future gives way to Presence.
Grant us the gift of Presence, O God. Show us that Presence is a participation in Your Kingdom within us
Remove your mind from what your senses grasp, and contemplate within your own form as light: thus will you see the vision of being. Plunge into thought until you find its bottom – once that fades away, there is the true way of being. Look: the mind is nothing but thought, and the foundation of every thought is that of the self – is there anything else to the mind aside from this thought of the self? …You are That! The divine Self and you, in truth you are that … in this vision is the vision of God.
Shri Ramana Maharshi in Abhishiktananda, In the Bosom of the Father
Looking at our mind’s activity is not the same thing as thinking. It is discovering ourselves in the Light of Presence.
Show us ourselves in the Light of Presence, O God. Show us that our self-transcendence is Your Presence within us.
The ‘Way Within’ is a journey to this moment, to ‘now’. It’s a journey journey of no distance but once taken all of Space and time will be yours in the eternal present. There is no future only the creation of this moment, and all moments are now. When you are present in Awareness, you’re not present as ‘me’ you’re present as ‘I’ and for the ‘I’ there are no wants and the only desire is to be open to what ‘is’.
James Capra, The Way Within
In pure subjectivity, there is no agenda, only virginal, non-judgmental Receptivity. This total Openness is the Power of Presence within us.
Awaken us to the Immediacy of Your Presence, O God. Help us understand that our Openness to Being is Your Presence within us.
In your everyday life, you can practice [presence] by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself. For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present … Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence … Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your Consciousness grows stronger.
Eckhart Tolle, Practicing the Power of Now
A Pause in thinking always brings Relief. This is the Peace of God and the Joy of Presence.
Fill us with Your Joy, O God. Put an end to our analysis, and, in Presence, reveal the ‘Peace that passes all understanding’ (cf. Phil. 4:7).
If you think you can bargain with God, offering your good works and best intentions in the hope of some reward, think again … Try this instead: desire nothing and become like the unbounded Nothing, which is neither here nor there. Only then, in the Now of this Nothing, will you find only God who wants your works of love as an act of praise, and not your bargaining for some reward beyond this great Nothing.
Jon M. Sweeney, Meister Eckhart’s Book of Secrets
In ourselves we are Nothing, since all Being comes from God. We have nothing to offer to God other than what God has given us.
Evacuate us of ego, O Lord, so that in our personal Nothingness, we can radiate Your Presence.
God is himself the goodness that is incapable of anger, for he is nothing but goodness. Our soul is one-ed with him, and he is unchangeable goodness. There can be neither anger nor forgiveness between God and our soul. For the goodness of God has made our soul so completely one with him that there can be absolutely nothing separating us.
Mirabai Starr, Showings of Julian of Norwich
There is no ‘forgiveness’ in God because there is no ‘anger’ in God. ‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God’ (cf. 1 Jn. 4:16).
Help us find You in a place beyond anger and forgiveness, O God. Help us find You in the Space of Presence where our every Now is filled with the Infinity of Your Love.
All we know of the mind, body and world is our experience of them, and experience is utterly dependent on the presence of our self, whatever that may be. Nobody has ever or could ever experience a mind, body or world without their own self first being present … It is obviously ‘I’ that knows that I am. The ‘I’ that I am is the very same ‘I’ that knows or is aware that I am. So, Awareness or knowing is another inherent quality of our self, and it is our self, ‘I’, that knows it is both present and aware.
Rupert Spira, Presence
The mystery of ‘self’ is prior to our Awareness of it. Our ‘self’ is hidden, as it were, in the Mystery of Presence (cf. Col. 3:3).
Thank You for sharing Your own Self-Presence with us, O God. Show us that in Presence, we also know You as the One who makes Presence possible.
What does it mean to love? It means to see a person, a situation, a thing as it really is, not as you imagine it to be … Seeing is the most arduous thing that a human can undertake, for it calls for a disciplined, alert mind. But most people would much rather lapse into mental laziness than take the trouble to see each person, each thing in its Present Moment of freshness.
Anthony de Mello, Awareness
‘That which is’ presents itself afresh in every moment. The Beauty, Goodness and Truth of Being is arresting if we have the Presence to behold it.
Grant us a never-ending Intuition of Being, O God. Help us experience Reality as a Sacrament of Your Presence.
A saint is capable of loving created things and enjoying the use of them and dealing with them in a perfectly simple, natural manner, making no formal references to God, drawing no attention to his own piety, and acting without any artificial rigidity at all. His gentleness and his sweetness are not pressed through his pores by the crushing restraint of a spiritual strait-jacket …
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Those who truly know God have no need to use the word ‘God’ to communicate their Joy. It is evident in the Mindfulness with which they live the Present Moment.
Free us from artificiality in our relationship with You, O God. Remove our religious straight-jackets so we can practice Presence in all our affairs
During the time of your meditation there must be in your mind no thoughts, no words, no imaginations … [Then] we begin to experience the deep unity we all possess in our own being. [Then there] begins to build up a resonance between you and all creatures and all creation and a unity between you and your Creator.
John Main, The Gethsemane Talks
It is always possible to plunge more deeply into Stillness. There we experience the Power of Presence.
Let our whole lives be about cultivating Presence, O God. The Joy, Peace, and Love we feel in Presence is a foretaste of Your eternal Kingdom.