People say, “I’m living in the now,” as if the now were a place you can reach and then stay.
But what if “now” is already too much—already a concept that only makes sense because we’re still under the spell of past and future?
This talk draws a careful line between an early, powerful recognition—consciousness as vast, unbound, luminous—and something even simpler than that: total presence, the unconditioned that doesn’t come and go, doesn’t need to be maintained, and doesn’t get tainted by whatever consciousness is doing.
It’s a pointing that refuses to give you a new landing place. It keeps removing the places the mind wants to stand.
What Is the Nature of Presence? What Is Nowness?
What is the nature of presence? What is the nature of nowness?
Sometimes it’s stated like “the now,” like “I’m living in the now.”
But it’s not a “the,” and it’s not an “it,” and it’s not a state.
It’s everything. All possibilities.
It’s so real that it doesn’t take form, but it’s so all-inclusive that it includes form—apparent form.
It doesn’t experience time, and yet the mental process that makes it seem as if time is occurring is perfectly accommodated.
So we don’t need to fight anything.
We don’t need to fight the illusion of time.
We don’t need to fight the illusion of self and other or separation.
We don’t need to fight the illusion of distance.
Just be willing to see that regardless of whether the appearance occurs—the appearance of distance, space, time—there’s something experientially, brightly alive, full on, always. Now.
Consciousness as Entry Point, Presence as Deeper Clarity
There’s a paradox in that the first way you find this usually is through thought or belief.
“Who am I?”
Looking at thoughts, and the way they interact with each other, and the way there’s something that seems to bind into those thoughts or believe them.
Then you start to orient toward that something—whatever that is—not a thought, but it kind of sticks to thoughts.
That whole inquiry process is really an inquiry into the nature of consciousness.
And I say “just” because the experience of consciousness as such is a revolutionary recognition.
It’s a transformation in the way you experience experience—moment to moment experience, life, yourself, consciousness, thought, and on and on.
But total presence—the totality of presence—is more than just that consciousness.
Although it doesn’t seem like it at first.
That consciousness can feel so all-encompassing—like a supreme experience, a fundamental experience.
And the shift makes it seem that way because you’ve experienced polarized or dualistic consciousness for years—most of your life.
So when that spell breaks and you experience a vast ocean of consciousness, it can feel like: how much clearer could it get than this?
You know it’s clearer than it was before. You know it’s more real than what you thought real was.
But what isn’t obvious is that there’s an insight clearer than that.
What reveals that insight is a willingness to continue to engage mystery—wonder—curiosity.
Not intellectual curiosity. Experiential curiosity.
With that, you start to attune to the nature of presence itself.
The entry point is consciousness. That’s the first big step.
But then you have access to the nature of presence itself, which isn’t perturbable in the way consciousness is.
Consciousness Can Be Unstable
This is key, and it’s one of the things the speaker says gets misconstrued in spiritual explanations and traditions.
He notes the Pali Canon talked about consciousness and described it as inherently unstable, which he agrees with.
You can practice unbound consciousness. You can enter that state of totality of being, the I AM sense.
But anyone who’s realized that I AM sense realizes it’s not stable in the way you want it to be.
It seems like it’s there, and then it seems like it’s not.
If it is a totality, then it can’t come and go, right?
So it has many qualities of total presence, but it’s not total presence yet.
Total Presence as the Unconditioned
So when he talks about total presence, he means the unborn, the unbound, the unconditioned.
And it’s impossible to talk about it in a positive sense—what it is.
It’s more meaningful and accurate to talk about what it isn’t.
It is not bound to any identity structure.
It is not conditioned by thought, not conditioned by mind.
And it’s not an “it,” but that which is not conditioned by mind is what he’s referring to.
All these descriptions are like antidotes to aspects of identity: identifying, selfing, worlding.
For instance, “now” is an antidote to time.
It helps break the spell of time and see that thoughts of past and future are not now.
If you look closely, clearly, in a relaxed, honest, open, attentive way, you will see you’re not going to find anything but now.
Because future and past really are thoughts.
Even one minute in the past is a thought—always.
When “Now” Becomes a Fixation
So you start to recognize: the only thing directly verifiable and not really subject to doubt is right now.
But again, that’s a rectification of the illusion of time—temporality.
It’s powerful pointing until it becomes something.
Until it becomes a background.
Until it becomes an idea of substantiality.
Until it becomes a goal, or a landing place.
Because at some point you’ll see there is no now either.
[Possible clarification needed: this points to “now” as a conceptual antidote to time; it’s not denying immediacy, but saying “now” becomes unnecessary when past/future are seen through.]
There can only be a now in reference to the illusion of past and future.
When those illusions drop, what does “now” even mean?
So this helps digest the non-temporal aspect of enlightenment.
Just because there is no past and no future does not mean there’s something called now.
The lack of that is what he calls total presence, clear presence, the unconditioned.
That which is unconditioned is neither in time nor out of time.
It has nothing to do with time.
And stating nowness can become a little extra. Unnecessary. A fixation.
When “No-Self” Becomes Another Position
Similarly, illusions of separation, space, form, perceptual distance—these also fall in a way that can compel opposite statements.
People do this with no-self (anatta).
No-self is a key insight, but the way you imagine “there being no one” is not the way it is.
You can’t imagine it. It’s not imaginable. The mind can’t come up with it.
And it’s more freeing than the mental image of “no one there.”
Even the statement “there is no one there,” which can be an important attunement, is also an antidote.
It’s an antidote to the deep instinct that there is someone and there are other ones.
But that instinct is a belief tied to dualistic constructs, and you will never find evidence for a dualistic construct.
So not only does separation go, and duality goes, and form goes, and space and time go—anything that sounds like their opposite also has to go.
Because that becomes another position.
Total Presence as Non-Fixation
This is total presence.
Total presence is totally non-fixated. Totally non-foundational.
Free.
Free of all doctrine. Free of all conventional designations. Free of all spiritual designations.
Free of even the most clever descriptions.
It’s totally free.
It’s so simple and so mundane that complex descriptions can help at certain points, but they can also get heady.
This is the beauty of total presence: unbound, unborn, undying, free.
It’s also free of any idea you have about what freedom is.
It’s deeply peaceful as well.
But it’s not conditional peace.
It’s not peace dependent on quiet or stillness.
It’s a peace that is profound, all-pervasive, and can even be found in pain, discomfort, confusion, emotional states.
Presence Accommodates Illusion Without Being Tainted
So what he wants to say is that this totality of presence that’s available is not just the absence of illusions.
It’s something all on its own that has nothing to do with illusions.
And strangely, it can also accommodate illusion.
It can accommodate all the strange things consciousness does, and it’s unmoved by it.
It’s not like the illusions of consciousness taint anything, leave a mark, or accumulate anything at all.
So yeah—this is total presence.
And it is your birthright.