06/18/2026
"The individual absorbs knowledge, but Truth absorbs the individual."
- Manly P. Hall
THE DISENTANGLEMENT OF PRESENCE
To begin the path of self realisation, one must first recognise what one is not. The common error is to confuse the Self with what is merely possessed. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, and experiences arise and pass through us, yet they cannot be identical with what we are. Their transience betrays their nature. They are objects of Awareness, not the ground of Awareness itself. Because they can be observed, they cannot be the observer.
The first act of wisdom, then, is a disentanglement from the vessel, the body and mind through which experience appears, which so convincingly presents itself as “I.” We are urged to step back from this illusory identification and abide instead in the deeper reality of Presence, the unconditioned I AM, which mystics across traditions have named Brahman, or simply the Now.
Yet the Now resists definition. It cannot be grasped, circumscribed, or captured by thought, for any attempt to pin it down transforms it into an object and thus falsifies it. The Now is not an “it” at all, but a living actuality that shines whether form arises within it or remains absent. Paradoxically, its reality is often revealed by the sense of its absence, as silence reveals itself by contrast to sound. In this way, Presence is not something one has. It is what one is. To mistake what one has for what one is is to confuse the reflection in the mirror with the living face itself.
When the mind turns from its distractions and recognises its own I amness, Presence becomes palpable. This recognition is not achieved by personal effort but by a simple stillness of attention, a resting without focus in the immediacy of Being. Over time, immersion in Presence deepens. At first one seems to be in it. Then one realises one is it. Distinctions between true and false, real and unreal, dissolve into the luminous immediacy of what simply is.
Thus the “I,” freed from mistaken identification with vessel and circumstance, is released from the personal sense into its impersonal reality. The Self that once clung to possessions and conditions now knows itself as Presence alone, timeless, undivided, ungraspable.
This transformation is less a matter of doing than of abiding. One discovers the right openness of heart, a confluence of thought, feeling, and Awareness, and rests there until resting becomes natural. In this abiding, Presence ceases to be a concept and becomes a living actuality. First thought, then felt. First felt, then known. First known, then AM.
The discovery does not alter the play of life in any outward sense, yet inwardly it alters everything. One comes upon a Presence within and as oneself that had always been there, unnoticed, until the veil of misidentification is lifted. Nothing changes, and yet all is changed. The seeker awakens as the very ground upon which both change and changelessness unfold.
Love Tracy
