Presence Behind Experience and Absence

Plotinus said, ‘Withdraw into yourself and look, and if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue – he chisels away’. We withdraw our attention from experience content and look at what remains. We neither reject nor suppress any element of experience; we simply withdraw our attention. With nothing to hold on to, attention subsides into being, revealing not a beautiful form but a beautiful presence – still, silent, at peace. If we distilled the spiritual practices from all traditions over 3,000 years into concise terms, they would be ‘awareness of being’, then simply ‘being’, then ‘be’ – and finally ‘I’. Don’t rest in the absence of experience; rest in the presence that lies behind both experience and its absence. The silence behind the silence is the presence of being. If it were to give itself a name, it would call itself ‘I’ – the primordial sound that expands into language.

From event 21 March - 28 April, 2025 Seven-Day Retreat at Garrison Institute, 21–28 March 2025

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