A few days ago I got a message from my editor in Spain that a reporter wanted to do an article on my book ‘About Presence’, that I just launched in Barcelona at the beginning of March, and that she wanted a short summary of it.
It is of course an impossible job to explain all the nuances of the philosophy behind my book in a few sentences, but even so, this is what I came up with, and I thought it would be nice to share it with you.
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We all want our life to be happy – filled with peace, well-being, fulfillment, meaning. We all want to get rid of the suffering that is robbing us of these things. We intuit that there is a solution to that suffering, but our mistake – our big mistake – is that we look for it in the wrong place: outside of ourselves, in the things from the world, in what is continually changing. We look for it in relationships, in money, in comfort, in power, in security, in experience, in knowledge, in enjoyments, etc.We want to find happiness in the world but because of its changing nature, of its ungraspable nature, this happiness eludes us.
We can find the solution to suffering if we look for it in ourselves, in presence, in Being.
This presence starts by paying attention to this moment, instead of being always in thought, always in the space of past and future.
But then, even if we understand the need to be more connected to the present moment, we see that it is very difficult to do so.
Even if we try, we rarely succeed.
And so, the realization that a particular lifestyle is necessary dawns in our hearts.
The present moment is always available, always at hand, always here, but our mind, the instrument we have to pay attention with, is always distracted, stressed, anxious, fearful.
The right lifestyle is a way of living (and, particularly, a way to understand life) that helps and allows the mind to slow down, to quiet down, to focus and to be more attentive to ‘what is’, as opposed to be always lost in what ‘should be’.
In time, as our mind begins to slow down and the possibility to pay more attention opens up, (and if and when the ‘spiritual bug’ reaches our heart), we can discover that we are more, infinitely more, than what we thought we were.
We always believed that what we are is limited to our body and mind, we never even questioned it before. But with a more quiet mind, and the right guidance, we can discover that what we actually are is the awareness aware of the body – mind. This awareness has always been here, from the very beginning, but because of the agitated, disturbed, troubled mind, its reality eluded us.
And it is in this awareness, in this Being, in the discovery of our true nature, that the peace, satisfaction and fulfillment we have always wanted, the happiness can finally be found.
