Well my friends, here we are at Part 5 of my little mini series. As it happens, it’s also the final part.

It’s been a fascinating trip, this little journey we’ve shared. Reflecting on the set of vows usually made by nuns and monks, and how my way of living fits with these undertakings. How well do I live these vows? As a philosophy directing my life, do they work?

Let’s get on shall we? The final vow is Presence, which is the new interpretation on the vow of Stability taken when a person makes a life commitment to a particular place and or community. Obviously for one who moves as much as I do, presence is probably the appropriate concept to take its place

Presence

Just now I was thinking that by far the easiest of the topics we’re looking at here, is Presence. Yet at the same time it is the absolute hardest to write about – even worse to think about.

Why easy? Well, because in a very real sense there is nothing we can say about presence or the present. Of course I could spend the rest of my life reading books, studying, and even writing about it myself; how to live here and now. But all the time the obvious would be staring me in the face.

How can we be anything but present? How is it possible to be anywhere but here? And surely it’s always now? A thing called ‘the past’ doesn’t exist except in memory, and the future? Well, where is it? it doesn’t exist. Never will. I know it’s kind of common to hear things like ‘We’re living in the future’, but are we really? Of course not. So, end of story right there I guess.

Except that it’s not, is it? This is where it gets to be the hardest topic to talk about. It seems none of us – us humans anyway – can get our heads around the aforesaid obvious fact of life: we are always here, and it is always now. Why is this so?

Well, speaking only for myself, you understand, I think about it too much. I seem to have convinced myself (courtesy of my ever-busy mind) that there is a way to learn to be present; a how to guide, that I can read or invent myself that will finally allow me to put myself into the present, in the here and now.

And all Along I am sitting here, thinking and writing about how to be present or put another way, how to sit in this spot right now.Do you see where this is going? If I’m not here and it isn’t now, then where am I? And when is it?

Sorry, but I have no answers. Even asking the questions is denying the obvious: I am here, it is now. The trouble is my mind isn’t at all ever content and happy with the present, regardless of how I might feel about it.

In that case, can I say that in my way of living I am committed to presence? To be in the present? Well, speaking for me personally – whoever that me is – perhaps the better question might be: Do I fully realise that I can only be here and now because that’s all there is?

To that I would have to say definitely not. My mind is continually on the run between the deep past and the unreal and unknowable future and all points in between. And my mind loves repeat journeys too!

So how do I intend to come to that place of the realisation of presence? Well, before we go on, you can’t actually intend to be present. Intention is about …

Enough!!!! Enough mind stuff. Please

The truth is, there is nothing for me to DO. I am here; it is now. That’s all there is.

Except one more thing to do: I just have to wake up