We have an essential need to be at peace. Part of that essential need to be at peace is to know that we are in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing, and to know it in such a fashion that nothing can come along and convince us that we are not. Have you ever thought to yourself “I’m doing the right thing at the right time” and someone said, “No, you’re not,” and everything fell apart?

To work at living in Presence, we need only bring our attention back into ourselves, quietly knowing we are aware of all that we are, and all that’s going on around us at the same time. With this awareness, we can actually see when there is a negative thought, a negative feeling, something that is telling us what we’ve got to do, to be, to get, to win — whatever it is — and at the moment that negative thought presents itself to us, we can refuse to fight with it. We don’t even need to replace it with anything. All we need to do is recognize that the reason it is troubling us is because we have become identified with it. And when we become the negative thought or the negative feeling, we become its dupe. We become that which is used by the darkness instead of allowing the living light in us to transform that darkness as it is intended to.

Here is a way to work: You can sit at lunch with people and work to stay present to yourself so that when you say the dumb thing, instead of going back over it and trying to figure out how you can be approved of next time so you won’t say the stupid thing, you drop it. You drop what divides you. But to drop what divides you, you have to be awake to it.

When we are awake to what divides us, we are doing the work of living in Presence. We are actually living in the moment, being at that moment what we were created to be… that which transforms the darkness into the light by letting the light reveal that darkness in us. We are in the right place, doing the right thing, for the right reasons. And only we can do that. As we do that, lo and behold, the gift of Presence is given to us, and to the people around us. When we actually understand what it means to be whole, to be awake, in that moment there is nothing that can happen to us that isn’t right, true, bright, and good.