The Practice of Radical Presence

Bashar offers a deep teaching on the practice of being fully present in the Now, explaining that the present moment is the only point of power and providing techniques for anchoring awareness in the immediate experience of existence.

I want to speak with you today about presence — about the radical, complete experience of being fully here, fully now, with the totality of your awareness. Because for most of you, most of the time, you are not actually present in your experience. You are running mental simulations of other times and other places. You are reliving the past or rehearsing the future. And in doing so, you are missing the only moment in which your power to create your reality actually exists.

Understand this: the present moment is not simply the moment that happens to be occurring now. It is the only point in your entire existence where the creative process is actually happening. The past exists as a set of beliefs you are carrying into this moment. The future exists as a set of expectations you are projecting from this moment. All of it — all of your creative power, all of your ability to choose, all of your capacity to shift your vibration — exists exclusively in the now.

Here is why this matters practically. When you spend most of your mental energy in the past or the future, you are spending most of your creative energy on things over which you have no actual influence at this moment. You cannot change what has already happened. You cannot directly control what has not yet happened. All you can control is the frequency you choose to hold right now, in this moment. And that choice — made now — is what determines which version of the past you are choosing to have had, and which version of the future you are choosing to step into.

Let me offer you a practice for cultivating genuine presence. First: bring your awareness to the immediate sensory experience of this moment. Not your thoughts about your experience — the experience itself. The physical sensations in your body right now. The sounds present in your environment right now. The quality of the light, the temperature of the air. These sense impressions are doorways into the present moment, because they can only be perceived now.

Second: when you notice your mind has drifted into past or future, do not judge it. Simply notice, and gently return your attention to the immediate experience. Each time you do this is an act of choosing presence over automaticity — it is a moment of genuine freedom.

Third: practice what I call full-body listening. Not just with your ears and eyes, but with your entire body, your energy field, your emotional sensitivity. Let yourself be fully permeable to the experience of this moment. You will find that when you are truly present, life has a vividness, a richness, a quality of aliveness that simply is not available in the simulated worlds of past and future.