Reflections on life, truth, faith, love, introspection, and transformation.

Presence and Awareness

My concepts of presence and awareness are differentiated by time and structure.

Presence is the state of being in the present moment. This means observing that which is present through sensory input, feelings, thoughts, and intuition. Presence is merely the observation of what is present in the simplest way possible.

Awareness is the practice of imposing meaning of some form into presence. It might be data or story, but awareness begins to take the present moment and place it into some structure that makes sense of it. Awareness need not be a cognitive exercise. It can be the connection between sensory input and feeling, feeling and thought, sensory input and intuition, etc.

The sensation of my toes in the sand would be presence, while observing happiness due to the sensation would be awareness. Feeling that happiness would be presence, while observing how that happiness changes my mood would be awareness.

So in a sense presence is input and awareness is processing the input. Put another way, presence is the simplest form of awareness and awareness is the most complex form of presence. It's more of a gradient than a line in the sand.

Where do presence and awareness dance together in your life?