Recommended text: I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This is a very direct approach to the Presence we speak of.

Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality.
To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not.
Discover all that you are not -- body, feelings thoughts, time, space, this or that -- nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.
The clearer you understand on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realise that you are the limitless being.


Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Holy Instant

Perhaps you have heard of the book "A Course in Miracles." It has received significant attention in recent years. Tolle refers to it as, "One of the few channeled works he loves." I have to say that I also have found a great amount of Truth within its pages.

One of the primary tenants of Tolle's teaching is the present, or the now, as a portal to God consciousness. This same teaching is widely present within The Course. The Course refers to the now as "The Holy Instant."

This is part of what is has to say...

"The holy instant is this instant and every instant. The one you want it to be it is. The one you would not have it be is lost to you. You must decide when it is. Delay it not. For beyond the past and future, where you will not find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance. Yet you cannot bring it into glad awareness while you do not want it, for it holds the whole release from littleness"

Another exerpt...

"Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more. Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is of time. Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free and wholly without condemnation. From this holy instant wherein holiness was born again you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change with time."

So yet again, this timeless, eternal, present moment, is suggested as the gateway to the ultimate, the portal to freedom, and the realization of one's true nature.

For more information about The Course, you can visit the home page http://www.acim.org/

Making Friends witht the Present

"Once you have reached a certain level of consciousness, (and if you are reading this, you almost certainly have), you are able to decide what kind of relationship you want to have with the present moment. Do I want the present moment to be my friend or my enemy? The present moment is inseprable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of relatioship you want to have with life. Once you have decided you want the present moment to be your friend, it is up to you to make the first move: Become friendly toward it, weclome it no matter in what disguise it comes, and soon you will see the results. Life becomes friendly toward you; people become helpful, circumstances cooperative. Once decision changes your entire reality. But that one decision you have to make again and again and again-until it becomes natural to life in such a way" ( A New Earth p 201.)