Monday Meditation — On Presence
Dear Becoming Ones,
This morning, I am practicing the courage to be here.
Not productive.
Not rehearsed.
Not already leaning toward what comes next.
Just here.
Presence is not an achievement. It is not something we master or monetize. Presence is a return—again and again—to the ordinary miracle of being alive in this body, on this patch of earth, in this breath. Presence asks very little of us, and that is precisely why it can feel so hard. We are trained to anticipate, to brace, to scroll past ourselves. We are taught that attention must be earned. But presence whispers otherwise.
Presence says: nothing needs to be added for you to belong to this moment.
Try this, gently—no force, no fixing:
Feel the weight of your body where it is supported.
Notice the breath without correcting it.
Name, silently, three things you can see.
Two things you can hear.
One sensation you can feel.
This is not an escape from the world. It is an arrival. In a time of accelerated harm, presence becomes a quiet refusal—a refusal to disappear, to numb, to be split from ourselves. Presence is how we stay human together. It is how care begins, not in abstraction, but in the fidelity of attention.
I am learning that presence does not promise comfort. It promises companionship. It meets us in grief and in gratitude, in uncertainty and in small joys. Presence is the ground on which repair becomes imaginable. It is the soil where another possible world quietly roots.
As you move into this week, I offer this blessing:
May you notice when you leave yourself—and return without shame.
May your breath become a doorway, not a demand.
May you trust that being here is already enough.
A gentle question to carry:
Where, today, can I practice staying—with myself, with another, with what is real?
With you in the practice,
-RCE+
