"Being present" and "Presence" are not necessarily the same thing.

You can work at being present - meaning to bring attention to how you're being and what's truly happening in any given moment. Some might term this "mindfulness".

But that isn't the same as presence. In fact someone can still be being very busy in this state (of being present). They might even look still on the surface but there's an efforting underneath to hold in place what they (their ego) is perceiving as stillness and presence.

Presence is something that happens to you.

You cannot create it and to aim for it is to push it further beyond reach - because true presence is the Void of all things in the eternal background. To be in it, is to merge with the totality. Where there is someone aiming for this, it will always remain out of reach because in your consciousness you've already established the conditon of separation from it.

Instead the key is to align with soul in any given moment.

When allowed to, the soul will flow. It doesn't have to effort to do this - does the wind effort to blow?

Even when the soul is active and busy, it is still effortless - is a bee efforting?

What we need to do therefore (and this is the Openhand Approach), is to open out through tightness to centre in the flow of the soul. You do this by dropping into rightness of being in any given moment - like tuning a musical instrument. You give everything to what you recognise is the attuned chord of you.

That's when you start to recognise this peculiar state that simply and effortlessly arises in the background. Time disappears. Separation disappears. Doubt, fear, disbelief disappear. You are now being the eternal presence of the One.

Open 🙏