Living Presence summary

In the early days of his spiritual journey, the author studied under a Sufi teacher, or shaikh.

One day, the shaikh instructed him to brush a horse. The author – a kid from New Jersey – had no idea how to groom a horse. But he spent hours on the job. He groomed from the mane to the tail, from the hooves up to the ears. While working he noticed his own body, his arms, his feet, his breath, his heartbeat.

So far we’ve explored Sufism’s concept of the infinite spirit, an energy more often known as God that connects and manifests through all things, ourselves included. But just as we embody the divine, we also have something of a villain lurking within us: the ego.

In Sufism, the ego is your compulsive self. Seeking only to preserve itself, the ego stokes fear, resentment, judgment, and envy. It can’t sustain mindful attention on any task so it flits about. And, it reads the world as either a threat to extinguish, or an angle to be played.

There was once a king who was generous to all people, so long as they could observe a moment’s silence.

One day the king gave to widows, the next he gave to the blind, and on the day after that he gave to poor students. But one poor student couldn’t help but whine as the king approached, and so the student received nothing.

There was once a poor man who loved God and would spend his days beneath a tree in a park, whispering, “Oh God, God, God . . . ”

One day, a stranger passed and laughed at the poor man. “God’s not answering you,” the stranger said.

A master of Balinese dance once described his experience of performance. The dancers gather on stage and the audience gives its attention. This attention becomes like a ball of energy held between the audience and the dancers. The dancers then begin to dance.

Through both their skill, which is the result of countless hours of mindful work, and their commitment to the moment, which is a form of presence, the dancers manipulate the ball of energy.

Presence for Sufis is a practice of mindfulness that reveals the reality beyond the veil of appearances and the chattering of the ego. That reality is the loving energy of the infinite spirit, or God.

When you join the spirit, you lower the barriers between yourself and the world and your love grows. You become both more sensitive to the needs around you and more eager and able to respond. This includes being able to respond to the needs of other people, other creatures, and the environment.