With an experience of Presence comes meaning.
Presence can seem like nothing. But it is an experience of Selfhood at a high level. It is an experience of the highest levels of who you truly are. With an experience of Presence comes an experience of meaning.
When the experience of Presence is disrupted in someone’s experience, there is a loss of a sense of meaning. The person identifies with some part of the human experience but finds it shallow. And I do not care what someone does after that tragic mistake. Nothing they might do makes up for it.
A sense of meaninglessness is devastating to the human psyche. A 2019 survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports on the mental health of high school students. The survey found that 15% of Black female high school students attempted suicide in the year leading up to the survey. What a sad phenomenon!
Mental health experts speculate on what is behind this trend, and many factors lead to the results of this survey. They point to the source of trauma experienced by the young women involved.
There can be trauma at many levels. The most impactful is the damage that is done to the innocent awareness of one’s own higher Presence. Whatever leads to the trauma, the loss of an experience of Presence creates a void that makes it feel like life isn’t worth living. It is the loss of the experience of the higher levels of Selfhood that is so devastating.
I am not attempting to criticize or judge anyone for the state in which they find themselves. My objective is to point to the solution. For anyone who has lost a sense of their own meaning, I say, Find the higher Presence of Yourself. Seek the Presence.
It is to be sought within ourselves, and if we do that, we end up being on a mission to seek it within other people—to see it within other people and to recognize it.
All good things come from that. All goodness comes out of human relationships when there is a seeking of the Presence, an acknowledgment of the Presence of Selfhood, and an awareness of the innate meaning of the other person and ourselves. That is the firm foundation for any kind of relationship, whether it is personal, business, romantic, or any other type of relationship.
We might think of Love as having great meaning, and certainly, it can. But before you look for Love, look for Presence. And do not go looking for Love without Presence. The power of Presence is Love. Love is born out of Presence.
Are you seeking Love from another person before you are interested in their Presence? In who they are? It does not work. Not that you cannot have a momentary buzz off that kind of Love. But Love without Presence is a personality affair. It isn’t everlasting Love.
True Love is based on Selfhood. It is a Love based on Presence—honoring the Presence of another and honoring your own Presence. It is an invocation of Presence together with another person. There is fulfillment! There is the seed of everything wonderful in a human life. So much is born out of that.
Love is the power born from Presence. So, when we invoke Presence, we are invoking power. We are invoking Love.
In the world in which we live, there is self-active power. This is humanly generated power without reference to Presence. It is an attempt to have authority as someone who doesn’t know themselves.
Generally speaking, the more people assert self-active power, the more it rubs us the wrong way. It does not feel right or good to be around somebody trying to wield a power not born out of Higher Presence and a Higher Love. Perhaps that person has some big idea of what they want to happen and perhaps some kind of power trip, and they are attempting to inflict that on the world. Perhaps they think that by doing so, they will gain a sense of meaning as an influential person. That is the story of the tyrant.
We are meant to have power, but what kind of power? The power we are meant to possess is the power of Creation that comes from the Creator Self that we are. It is the power to run this body, to begin with. And according to how we are tuned in to the Creator Self, so is the energy in the body.
Something happens when we tune in. Something happens when we invoke the truth of who we are. That does not mean we do not need to eat right and exercise and all the other practical things that are important for health. But the human body loves it when consciousness tunes in to what is higher, and then the power of Love begins to move in the body at a different vibrational rate.
The power of Love is behind the vibration that moves in our collective field of consciousness and energy, whether we are thinking about a relationship with one other person or a group of people. Every group of people is meant to have the power of Love vibrating through their energy field and through their consciousness.
Generally speaking, when people think about the impact of spirituality in life, they don’t understand how it might work. What they see is the world working the way it is, with the consciousness of most people the way it is. And then they see all that is at play in our world that seems to be the ultimate determinants of how we live—technology, government, money, the media, and more. It looks like the levers of power are all at that level. When it comes to spirituality, they think: That is irrelevant in the world the way it is. It might make me a little bit happier. It might be a palliative remedy to help us endure the world as it is. But it won’t really change anything.
What is not seen is the means by which authentic spirituality changes the world.
Let’s trace the process through, starting with the individual. For someone who invokes Higher Self and Higher Power, the vibration of that Love is entering their consciousness. It is reverberating through their energy field, so something different is happening for them. Something changes in the way they function. Their consciousness changes.
Take the field of health. You might say the critical thing is an exercise regime. Exercise regimes are essential. But what makes a person choose that? What motivates a person? What gives them an awareness of the significance of exercise and of all the other things that are important to their health at a physical level? Their function relative to those things is set in motion by consciousness, is it not? So when consciousness changes, all those practical things change too. A person then chooses to exercise. They choose to eat a healthy diet. They avail themselves of the practical opportunities before them. It is not that diet, exercise, sleep, and many other things are unimportant to personal health. It is just that a person doesn’t employ those practical steps without a shift of consciousness.
The same thing is true relative to the world in which we live. You, opening up to the Presence of Higher Self, are not going to stop the bombs in Ukraine today. And still, if you open up to Higher Selfhood and Higher Power, that reverberates through heart and mind and through your energy field. It is changing not only your own field of consciousness and energy but also the field we share as human beings.
The power that changes consciousness is not at the same level as the power that runs a car or an electric power plant. It is the kind of power that changes consciousness. And when consciousness shifts, the practical ways that people behave shift.
What greater power is there to change consciousness than the power of a Higher Love? This is the power of Creation that is intrinsic to how we are made.
And still, I say, seek first the Presence, because if you find the Presence, you will find the power.
Wisdom is in this picture. Wisdom is opening up to cosmic intelligence and then expressing it as a human being. When a person seeks power self-actively, they ignore cosmic intelligence. That would only get in the way of the power they seek to assert.
They try to have power without wisdom. Power on that basis is self-destructing and world-destructing. We are called upon to bring the power of Love as who we are and to allow the flow of wisdom to activate our human mind, so that we can become intelligent. On this basis, we begin to understand the pattern of Creation that we are a part of—not imposing some pattern that we have come up with that has nothing to do with the unfolding pattern of life.
The ancient Hebrew name for Presence made manifest in the world of human awareness is Shekinah. Shekinah is the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells.
That evidence in human experience is The Fire That Burns, which is the Power of Love; The Light That Glows, which is Wisdom; and The Cloud of Glory, which is the energy of flourishing life that manifests when we live in the Presence.
Let us invoke Shekinah now, inviting Shekinah into the world.
The Presence of the One who dwells.
The Fire That Burns
The Light That Glows
The Cloud of Glory
Sometimes the experience of meaning seems to depend on someone else’s Presence, and when that person is no longer there, life seems meaningless. I am pondering the Presence of my grandmother long ago. She passed away when I was 14. Grief is natural, but I remember that my sense of meaning seemed lost. When her Presence was gone, so was mine.
After school I would often climb up the mountain-side, to places higher up, to get a greater view, perhaps a larger vision? Was I searching for the Higher Presence of Myself? The following year some new girls came to our school. They shared my love for the mountains, but our friendship was most of all in the experience of Presence. That is what I would call it today.
Much has been spoken of, recently, about mental health issues, especially around the Covid-Pandemic. The Dalai Llama has also addressed this and stated that anxiety and depression are linked to the sense of, “me, me, me”. I think it is the obsession, particularly with so much social media, with the outer persona coming to grief with its own projection. This impedes the exploration of that which is the true inner-self.
One of my sons had been dealing with depression and anxiety. It is perplexing. However, he has a much more sound sense of himself these days and I am very excited by what is manifesting in his world. I am profoundly thankful for this and for what is opening up with our conversation with David.
Definitely raising some deep psychological issues here. Appreciated this thought: “It is to be sought within ourselves, and if we do that, we end up being on a mission to seek it within other people—to see it within other people and to recognize it.” In trying to Know Thyself, we need the mirror of others. Edgar Cayce used to remind people that we are always “meeting ourselves” in our relationships with others. Somehow they’re like mirrors, reflecting back to us our own selves. We especially learn from others what is acceptable behavior for us — we learn if something is “criminal behavior” if we do something that lands us in jail. I learn from the rejection of the female sex when the advance I’ve put forward is objectionable. We continually mold and refine our thoughts and behavior to either align with others, or to please them, or to be a rebel and disassociate from them.
Which brings to mind the benefits of taking truths such as you’re presenting in these Pulse articles, and discussing them in small groups. It has to do with the fact that we’re all unique and bring different perspectives. We need to learn from others, to be exposed to different perspectives than the ones we currently have. Another great article David — thank you, keep those thoughts coming.
How clearly you have described our essential spiritual work, David: to allow the Power of Presence to flow into my consciousness and from there into the consciousness of the creative field that I share with all humankind. The tyrants of the world who thrive on the self-activity of the mind must ultimately yield to the creative power of Love, Wisdom and Life that Shekinah brings.
David, How wonderful to see how self-centered power is destructive without the ‘Presence’. Forgive them Father as they know not what they do.’