Agency in Presence

Agency is will in action by means of energies. One of the most significant, but largely overlooked, manifestations of agency is its central role in presence, which is will as a node in the field of conscious energy. Our will is who we are: the driver of our agency, the experiencer within all experience, the one who is present in presence, the actor in any action. The most direct way to understand this in practice is by a careful look at attention itself.

When I look to see who or what I am, to find the core of who I am, I am led to attention. That in me which directs my attention feels like who I am. Attention focuses consciousness, the display screen showing all the inner and outer objects of perception: the whole visual field, the sounds, tastes, smells, body impressions, thoughts and mental images, emotions, and the rest. All that is brought to and displayed on the field of awareness, consciousness. Which part of that field I pay attention to determines what I perceive. Where I look is what I see. What I listen to is what I hear. That in me that hears what I hear and sees what I see is who I am, what I am. I direct my attention and perceive what I have directed it toward. I choose where to shine the light of my attention. The I that chooses is my will, my agency. That I that I am directs my attention and perceives what is there.

Consciousness is the whole field of what could be perceived, but is not who I am. Consciousness is not the actor, but rather the field of action, the field of pure awareness itself. To find ourselves, to be ourselves, we must come into this core actor, this power to choose. In the case of presence, it is the power to choose to be present, to be here, to be aware of the contents of this moment.

All of that holds true notwithstanding states of passive or receptive attention, where we relax, stop directing our attention, and let it be drawn to whatever rises to prominence, to salience, in the field of consciousness. Or when we are not necessarily relaxed and something intrudes on consciousness and grabs our attention. In these states, passive attention funnels the objects of perception back to me as the passive perceiver, the passive agent, the passive experiencer of my experience. In the passive state, consciousness has receded into the background and perceptions are at the level of the senses and isolated. In a receptive state of presence, consciousness is prominent and what is received is fully in context. In either case, will is still there as my core, but in a passive or receptive mode.

Note that this discussion is not about how the brain perceives, which is not at all passive. Cognitive science holds that, for efficiency, our perceiving brain operates as an active, predictive, error-correcting system that, in real time, updates its model of the world to minimize mismatches between the model and our senses. Here, though, we are not exploring the brain, but rather the user of the brain.

Active presence is the state of choosing to direct our attention. Receptive presence is the state of paying attention without directing it. An example of receptive presence is allowing our attention to go wide, open to the whole field of consciousness without focusing on anything. States involving passive attention would generally not be called presence, because the core of presence is missing.

At the core of presence is our I, our will, our agency. What happens when we rise into presence in a state of higher agency, when we transcend our personal perspective? In those moments, we no longer have the feeling that I am present, that this is my presence, my body, my awareness. All that self-referencing has lost its hold on us and we just are. Thoughts and feelings of I and my may still arise, but they no longer convince us, they do not commandeer us. We see them as passing thoughts or feelings, while we abide in presence, we abide in just being here. Our context has grown into the all-inclusive, loving whole beyond ourselves. This makes us part of the one who is the agent of this greater whole, the whole that includes all humanity, all life, this entire planet. In this state of pure presence, which has no boundaries, we see from and as that whole. This is the next rung on the ladder of agency.

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