Here is a beautiful series on presence through movement from Kim Eng, the wife of renowned spiritual master, Eckhart Tolle (video below). The shy boy who said he spent his adolescence in anxiety over finding a girlfriend has discovered his perfect life partner through the generosity of the universe. She is clearly a master in her own right, imbued with a deep inner peace.
Practicing this 'Presence' is essential for spiritual and psychological balance throughout the day, centering oneself and accessing the divine inner peace and compassion and allowing it to flood itself upon the world through your own open being. Remaining centered in this Presence is also essential for social activists and all those who must confront the evil of the world. I try to limit my own immersion into or exposure to stories of terrible injustice and social evil, because they can have a toxic effect on one's spiritual peace. But this is not the same thing as ignoring injustice or burying one's head in the sand. Quite often the 'Great Compassion,' as the Buddhists like to phrase it, will guide you to take into your heart and soul the essence of evil and injustice in order to confront it and lead the world to healing. But without being grounded in the Great Compassion and surrendering to it with absolute trust and faith, no matter what the trials and travails of life in this world, one can quickly be lost and descend into pessimism and despair.
Every issue I feel called to examine, contemplate, absorb and discern I take to prayer first and last during the day, asking for the Divine Spirit to guide my own searches, to illuminate my own being, and through that gentle inner peace to lead me to certain conclusions about the issues. Without this inner guidance I would be trapped in the turmoil and anxiety of the forces of contradiction and further trapped in the inner recesses of the mind, which cannot of its own and unaided, discern correctly the inner realities of complex issues of social injustice and systemic evil. There are simply too many lies coming at one like a thousand shards of glass. Inner peace gives one the calm and balance to discern with objectivity and the proper distance. It also imbues one with the sense of a blazing inferno of lovering compassion at the 'still center of the turning world, ' a love so profound and so powerfully energetic that it consumes all evil in its blazing furnace, while remaining paradoxically still and silent and unmoved. A stillness so profound, it imbues one with the inner sense that there is nothing to fear, that evil has no objective existence or power to harm in any ultimate, absolute sense, that Love does indeed conquer all - but not without suffering and surrender of the heart to its purging flames. Inner peace and the Living Flame of Love within one's deepest being illuminate and unmask the forces of evil that obscure for so many the radiant Light of the Great Compassion. But with this gift comes obligations born out of gratitude, the call to bring peace and the illuminating light of truth into the marketplace and the town square, and into the deepest centers of violence and injustice. The Great Compassion lovingly calls us to confront the principalities and powers of this world, just as it called the Divine Master two thousand years ago, who's own prophetic calling led him to the tree of torture on the hill of skulls. Divine light and compassion shine most brightly at the center of human depravity and evil. This is where we are called to venture, secure in the inner peace that guides us that all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
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