Presence is Sacred

Conscience is not just a matter of feeling guilty for, regretting, or preventing our misdeeds. Conscience is also the sacred impulse that attunes us to the higher will, the Will of the One. Through seeing the truth of how and what we are, we enter a process of purification. We resist being a slave to our likes and dislikes. At times we notice and forgo acting from self-centeredness, even thinking from self-centeredness. We begin to shed the impediments to a clear channel of conscience, principally our egoism, which usurps the place of the higher will that we could be the bearers of. Along the way, we transcend the many reactions and impulses driven by our ego, as well as the world view that solely has us, our small self, at its center.

Slowly but surely, that inner work brings us face to face with the purifying light of our own conscience, with our thread of higher will. In that process, we may find two principal characteristics of the higher shining most brightly: love and purpose.

The more obvious is love. When we begin to open to the One Will that is in everything, including us, we find that we are surrounded and pervaded by the One. That pervasive reality is not indifferent. Rather than say that we are surrounded by the One, we could more accurately see that we are embraced by It. That universal, personal, and ever-present embrace of and in the One is love. It feels like home. It feels like we are no longer alone, no longer locked within ourselves. Our separateness, both inner and outer, melts within this embrace.

The other major characteristic is purpose, though at first that is not quite as obvious. Like love, purpose pervades everything, pervades us. When we feel purposeless, life loses its meaning and seems empty. To be purposeless is to be divorced from the Real. Will is purpose, and the One Will is the source of purpose, the Divine fountain of purpose. The closer we come toward awareness of the One Will, the more we feel its nature is purpose. It is not easy to conceive or imagine pure purpose prior to any specific aim. Normally we think: my purpose is to do or be X, where X defines that purpose. But the One Will, the Divine Purpose, seems more like a benign river of intention without a specific aim. Or if we are brought yet closer, it is a torrent of purpose.

We can find a more accessible approach to this in our will to be present, our will to be. This is not the will to be something or someone. It is purely the will to be, just be, and it takes place in our core in the present moment. That pure will-to-be comes into us from the One Will. The overarching purpose behind and within everything does make itself known to us, through the promptings of conscience. But those do not always appear to be in play. Presence, however, is always in play. And presence is an immediate way that the One Will, the one Purpose, finds a place in us, as our will-to-be.

When you empty yourself into presence and are truly present, in and from your core, you thereby make room for that singular Purpose to be present, to be the One Who is present. That makes presence a sacred act, an act that enables the One to be. The One Will pervades all. When you are truly present, the whole world is present to you, through you, with you, within you, and you within it. No separation. No walls. One Sacred Presence.