Presence: Forgetting and Remembering

Photo courtesy of Juan Guillermo Robayo

Earlier on my path, presence felt like something I was constantly losing and rediscovering. I would drift into thought, into emotion, into identification, and then at some point I would remember again. That remembering felt important, almost essential, like returning home after being away. It brought relief, a sense of grounding, something stable to come back to.

If you find yourself in this cycle of forgetting, then remembering presence — let me share from my experience, that this is a very valid experience when walking the spiritual path.

Over time, though, I’ve noticed that my identification with this rhythm of “forgetting and remembering” has begun to loosen, as I’ve come to see more clearly that presence never actually disappears, even when it feels like it has. Something is always here, quietly available beneath the surface chatter of the mind. 

I’m sharing this because, for a long time, I thought the goal was to forget less and remember more, to stabilise myself in presence and somehow hold onto it. And while that orientation can be helpful for a time, something else began to reveal itself along the way.

At some point, presence stopped feeling like a state I needed to recover or hold onto. It wasn’t something I had to keep returning to, or something I could lose in the way I once thought. Instead, it became more like a background to everything, not as an idea, but as a lived reality. Thoughts still came and went, emotions still moved through, life continued with all its textures, its frictions, its unpredictability, but it was all unfolding within something that didn’t need to be managed.

What I once thought of as awakening wasn’t about securing myself in presence, or stabilising in some unshakeable state. It was more a quiet recognition that presence had always been here, before any effort, before any practice, before even the act of remembering it. 

What followed wasn’t a departure from life, but a deeper settling into it.

Presence for me has become less about remembering, and more about staying. Staying with the body as it is. Staying with sensation, even when it’s uncomfortable or unresolved. Staying with the slower rhythms of healing that don’t follow a timeline. Staying with the conversations, the work, the creativity, the relationships without needing them to be anything other than what they are.

I still practice, I still notice patterns, contractions, sensitivities moving through, but they feel less and less like problems standing in the way of life. Resting into presence now is about allowing life to be exactly as it is.

Now I see the ‘forgetting and remembering presence’ cycle differently. Because even the forgetting is happening within presence. Even the moments of feeling lost are held within something that isn’t lost.

So if you’re ‘remembering and forgetting’, coming back again and again, you’re not behind! You’re right in the unfolding of it.

Over time, the emphasis may shift. Not through force, not through trying harder, but through a kind of natural softening. Presence begins to feel less like something we do, and more like something that is already quietly living itself.

There doesn’t seem to be any real conclusion to presence, and paradoxically, that’s part of what makes it feel so wholesome. Meaning is there, but it doesn’t need to be constructed or held onto. Life has its own quiet depth when we allow it to unfold.

And more and more I come to realise that this silent, neutral presence is at the heart of all the joy in life.