Make All Cares Into One Care — and Let Presence Do the Rest
The spiritual relief that comes from stopping the inner juggling act
We exhaust ourselves trying to manage what was never ours to carry alone. Somewhere deep down we assume that the more we worry, the more responsible we are being. Yet our actual life experience shows the opposite. The harder we try to hold everything separately, the less effective we become. Presence is the only place where the weight shifts, but we keep trying to carry it from the surface.
This reflection continues our journey through Cynthia Bourgeault’s Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within, drawing on Kabir Helminski’s Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self. In this chapter, Cynthia highlights one of Kabir’s most practical lines: “Whoever makes all cares into a single care, the care for simply being present, will be relieved of all care by that presence.” Kabir is not offering a shortcut or a mystical riddle. He is describing what actually happens to the human system when attention gathers instead of scattering.
The Outer Self Tries to Hold Everything at Once
The outer self lives from the belief that every internal signal requires management. A thought appears and it must be addressed. An emotion rises and it must be understood. A memory surfaces and it must be sorted. A conversation replays and it must be resolved. The outer self takes all of it as separate concerns, not realizing that this approach keeps it fragmented.
Cynthia points out that fragmentation is not a character flaw. It is simply how the outer self works. It functions by division. It tries to solve each piece one at a time, which makes the whole picture feel overwhelming. It’s like trying to straighten a pile of string by tugging at each knot individually. Every knot you pull tightens three more.
The exhaustion people describe as “burnout,” “anxiety,” and “being stretched too thin” rarely comes from circumstances alone. It comes from this inner multitasking. The outer self does not know how to let go of the load, so it just keeps adding more effort.
The Single Care That Changes Everything
When Kabir says to make all cares into one care, he is describing a shift of center. You stop living life from the outer layer and come home to presence. Not presence as a concept, but presence as a lived experience: grounded, embodied, aware, available.
Once attention recollects itself, everything inside you reorganizes. The emotional field softens. The body steadies. The thinking slows. You become more able to respond and less likely to spin.
It is not that the problems become smaller.
It is that you become larger.
Presence gives you the inner structure to meet your life.
The outer self gives you tension without capacity.
Why This Teaching Feels Both Inviting and Confronting
On the surface, the invitation to “just be present” sounds gentle. But Cynthia is clear: this is a discipline. It requires you to interrupt the constant pull toward distraction and reactivity. It requires you to resist the urge to mentally fix your way into stability. It asks you to trust that coherence comes from grounded awareness, not from managing every detail.
This is confronting because the outer self survives by staying busy. Its entire identity is built on problem-solving, defending, negotiating, planning, and anticipating. So when presence tells you to stop juggling and return to one care, the outer self interprets that as negligence.
But Helminski’s point is that presence is not negligent. Presence is the only part of you that can see clearly enough to act wisely. Until you shift into presence, you are reacting from habit.
Presence Makes the Real Priorities Visible
When you return to presence, something practical and almost surprising happens: the actual priority becomes unmistakable. Not the imaginary priority created by fear. Not the secondary problem inflated by emotion. The real next step.
Presence cuts through noise.
The outer self multiplies it.
This is why Cynthia emphasizes that presence does not make you less responsible. It makes you responsibly aligned. You stop spending energy on false urgencies. You stop chasing every mental impulse. You stop pouring attention into the wrong places.
In presence, you are not less effective.
You are more strategic, more grounded, and more human.
Real Practice: One Breath, One Center, One Task
The moment you feel yourself spinning, pause.
Do not reorganize your thoughts.
Do not rehearse your worries.
Do not run through the list of what you “should” be doing.
Return to the body.
Feel your weight.
Notice the simple fact that you exist right now.
Let your attention gather around that single experience.
That is the “one care.”
From there, decide the next step.
One step is always manageable from presence.
Ten steps are always impossible from the outer self.
Attention changes the task.
Attention changes you.
Why This Teaching Actually Works
This teaching is not a mind trick. It is not a technique. It is a shift in identity. When you come back to presence, you stop living from the reactive outskirts of yourself and return to the center where intelligence, compassion, and clarity arise naturally.
This is why Kabir says presence will “relieve you of all care.” It does not erase the tasks. It removes the unnecessary suffering layered on top of them. It removes the noise. It removes the panic. It removes the pressure that was coming from identification, not from life itself.
Presence does the heavy lifting.
You simply return to it.
Virgin Monk Boy’s Take
The outer self treats life like a clown juggling act. It believes that dropping one ball means the entire circus collapses. So it keeps throwing everything in the air, faster and faster, until it burns out and blames the world for being exhausting.
Presence is not interested in juggling.
Presence picks up one ball.
Then it takes one step.
Then it breathes.
Make one care your care.
Give your attention a home base again.
Let presence handle the weight your ego keeps straining under.
Blessed are the ones who stop acting like spiritual octopuses and return to being a single, whole human being at a time.
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Thank you for this timely reminder. Like you say, keep warm in the fire & cool in the storm!
Ps. That picture of the table? Double the objects & you’ll have mine 🙄