Well here we sit among the measurement of time known as a year: it is 2019 in fact.
So; What does presence mean in this year? This moment?This life?
Presence (a shortened version of the term “telepresence”) is a psychological state or subjective perception in which all of an individual’s current experience is generated by and/or filtered through human means, interpretation and experience. Experience is defined as a person’s observation of and/or interaction with objects, entities, and/or events in her/his environment; perception, the result of perceiving, is defined as a meaningful interpretation of experience.
Great Jim, that’s a head full but what is presence? To some degree without fail presence is all of the above – Attention, experience and perception. Presence is a property of an individual and varies across people and time; it is not a property of a technology or something we can easily carry in our pockets. Presence is a experience in which one not only lives, but learns and grows which we could easily coin as ‘learning.”
Presence is a multi-dimensional concept; i.e., there are different types of presence. Little is currently known concerning which types exist but several (in many cases nonorthogonal or overlapping) dimensions have been proposed by different scholars. These types and discussions go far beyond the context of my writings but we can always reflect upon the buddhas concept of presence – Our problem is that we fail to see life as it is – empty of pain, suffering, misery, richness, poorness. Empty of such small human definitions. Life as we see and experience it simply is and on some level large or small is interconnected, interdependent, interwoven. But we wrongly consider that things (including the human self) possess their own inherent nature.
We think it is something to reach for to attain when in reality we are and can simply be – Presence
Peace and Love, Jim
