The gift of presence

Being open to the wonder of every moment without straining, without making it into a big thing by calling it a ’spiritual practice’ and making it something to strive for and do perfectly is a big challenge for me. Just letting go and being in the moment, open and relaxed, is not something that comes to me easily. But the course of my life these last few months has made it easier to see a way.

I have written before about the things that I identify with being taken away one by one because of my illness and the unpredictability of life that brings with it. As well as a challenge, that is a process of liberation. If I am no longer a teacher, for example, I no longer have to carry that identity and the stress of doing the work and doing it well. I can relax the parts of me that were holding up that identity. When it comes down to it, I have let go of many parts of my ego-identity and I can allow myself to simply be.

When I do so, I feel empty. Empty as if unburdened. And at the very bottom of my emptiness there is the presence of my Goddess. She is present at the very chore of me. As she once said: she is my bones, my very foundation. And when I manage to let go of even the habits of effort and strain, her presence is what I find. This is the place where effortless wonder takes me.

In order to be open to the wonder of all things, you need to be present. It’s such a cliché, really: ‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a dream, today is a gift – that’s why it’s called the present.’ But really it is true. When I manage to effortlessly be in the present, moment to moment, I receive the presence of my Goddess as a gift. It comes as the shimmer of jewels in the bottom of an empty chalice.

And the beauty of it is that this is a present that can be shared. When I am effortlessly present with another being, I give them the blessing of my presence. This weekend my husband and I are with my father-in-law who broke his ankle last week. He has voiced his appreciation, so it’s easy to recognise the blessing of my presence here. But I also believe that such unburdened, effortless presence is a blessing to all things. A blessing to the Oak on the Common, to the frost on the grass, to a friend and the cup of tea we share.

The less effort I put in, the more powerful such presence feels, filled with the gift of the Goddess. The gift I can give each day is to share her presence with my world.