The present is infinite consciousness being all that was, all there is, and all that will be.
I first came across this sentence in a book by Deepak Chopra, and something in me recognized it.
I didn’t necessarily understand it intellectually.
I felt it.
Years later, I think I understand why.
Because perhaps the present isn’t simply a moment in time.
Perhaps it is the only place in which life can actually be experienced.
Everything we have ever known arrives here.
Everything we are becoming arrives here.
Every relationship, every possibility, every sensation, every insight, every act of creation arrives here.
Here.
And yet so much of our lives are lived somewhere else.
We are remembering what happened.
Anticipating what might happen.
Rehearsing conversations.
Solving imaginary problems.
Comparing ourselves with who we think we should be.
Planning the life we will eventually live.
And meanwhile, life is happening.
Now.
This is why I have come to see Presence as the center point of creative potential.
Before we create anything, we experience.
Before we experience deeply, we must be available to what is here.
And before we can become available, we have to notice where our attention actually is.
Attention is how we participate in Presence
Imagine sitting beside the ocean.
The ocean is there.
The sky is there.
The warmth of the sun is there.
But your mind is inside an argument you had three days ago.
The beach hasn’t disappeared.
But your experience of the beach has.
Your body is here.
Your attention is elsewhere.
And because attention is elsewhere, life never fully arrives.
This is why attention matters so much.
Not because attention gives us magical control over reality.
But because attention determines what we are available to experience.
What we repeatedly notice becomes familiar.
What becomes familiar becomes easier to recognize.
What we recognize, we can receive.
What we receive can become embodied.
And what becomes embodied begins to influence how we move through the world.
This is where creativity begins to become interesting.
Perhaps creative potential isn’t simply the ability to produce something new.
Perhaps it is our capacity to participate deeply enough in what is here that something new can emerge through us.
Recognition is creative
When I notice beauty, I become more available to beauty.
When I notice generosity, I become more sensitive to generosity.
When I notice wonder, I begin to experience more of the world through wonder.
When I notice belonging, I begin to recognize the places where I already belong.
Recognition doesn’t necessarily create the external world.
But it changes the world that becomes available to me.
And this may be one of the great creative powers of consciousness:
what has my attention grows in my experience.
Not because I control existence.
But because attention is participation.
When Recognition Becomes Embodiment
We can recognize something intellectually and still not live inside its reality.
I can know that I am loved and still brace against love.
I can know that I am worthy and still struggle to receive.
I can understand beauty and still look at myself through criticism.
Something changes when recognition moves from an idea into experience.
And this is where actress, Aishwarya Rai Bachan’s response becomes so interesting.
After giving birth, she was being criticized publicly for her body. The cultural conversation around her could easily have become a mirror through which she saw herself.
But instead, she recognized something else:
“Love is in abundance everywhere around us.“
She didn’t say that criticism wasn’t there.
She simply refused to make criticism the whole field.
And perhaps this is one of the most powerful things attention can do.
It can reveal what else is here.
There was criticism.
There was also love.
There was judgment.
There was also devotion.
There was a changing body.
There was also the extraordinary experience of having brought life into the world.
What we recognize, we become increasingly available to experience.
And what we repeatedly experience begins to become familiar to the body.
This is the movement from recognition into embodiment.
You don’t embody beauty by convincing yourself that you are beautiful.
You begin by becoming capable of recognizing beauty.
Then receiving it.
Then allowing the nervous system to become familiar with its presence.
Eventually, beauty is no longer only something you see.
It becomes something you inhabit.
Something in the way you stand.
The way you dress.
The way you receive a compliment.
The way you allow yourself to be cared for.
The way you enter a room.
The way you meet another person.
The way you create.
Recognition becomes a way of living.
The currencies of Presence
And perhaps this is where the idea of Sacred Economy begins.
We tend to think of wealth as something outside ourselves that can be accumulated.
But there are other forms of wealth we experience constantly:
Beauty.
Love.
Wonder.
Peace.
Belonging.
Attention.
Experience.
Creativity.
Care.
Meaning.
Time.
Presence itself.
These are not merely concepts.
They are lived currencies.
We receive them.
We experience them.
We embody them.
We create through them.
And eventually, we circulate them.
This is why I have come to think of life as an economy of relationship.
We are constantly participating in an exchange between ourselves and existence.
Presence allows us to receive.
Attention allows us to recognize.
Recognition allows us to receive more deeply.
Receiving allows experience to become embodied.
Embodiment gives experience form.
And form becomes creation.
Creation then returns to the world as something others can experience.
The economy continues.
So perhaps the real creative question is not “Who should I become?”
It is:
What is here?
What is coming alive through my attention?
What wants to be lived through me?
These questions bring us back to Presence.
Because the future doesn’t need to be manufactured from nothing.
Something is already here.
Something is already moving.
Something is already asking to be noticed.
And perhaps our highest creative potential is not something we acquire.
Perhaps it is something we become increasingly available to.
The present is where consciousness meets possibility.
It is where life can be received.
Where beauty can be recognized.
Where belonging can be felt.
Where purpose can reveal itself.
Where creation can begin.
And where what we create can eventually return to life.
Presence is the center.
Everything else is participation.
