We Are Knee-Deep in a River, Searching for Water
The presence you long for is already the presence you are standing in
This reflection continues our journey through Cynthia Bourgeault’s Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within, based on Kabir Helminski’s Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self. In this chapter, Cynthia names the quiet tragedy of the spiritual life: we spend years searching for the very presence that is already sustaining us. Like someone standing knee-deep in a river and complaining of thirst, we overlook the living current of Being that is always here, holding us from the inside out.
The Strange Blindness of the Outer Self
The outer self is always scanning. It looks for solutions “out there.” It moves toward experiences that feel dramatic, emotional, or spiritually charged and assumes that anything quiet or subtle must be spiritually empty. It wants an encounter, a sign, a breakthrough that feels unmistakably sacred.
But presence is not dramatic.
Presence is steady.
Presence is subtle.
Presence does not advertise itself.
This is why the outer self misses it.
The outer self expects God to shout.
Presence whispers.
The deeper field we long for is already operating under every thought, every breath, every moment of awareness. Not as an emotion. Not as an insight. As a foundational reality. But because it does not match the ego’s expectations, it goes unnoticed.
We are soaked in the very substance we keep asking for.
Why Seeking Keeps Us Thirsty
Seeking is valuable in the beginning. It gets you moving. It breaks habits. It exposes longing. But if you stay in that mode, seeking becomes its own trap. The ego loves searching because searching keeps it at the center of the story.
The seeker is still the one in control.
The seeker is still the one doing the work.
The seeker is still the one measuring progress.
But presence is not something you accomplish.
It is something you recognize.
As long as you are trying to feel the river, you will miss the fact that you are already wet.
Kabir Helminski teaches that the divine generosity is constant. We do not increase it through effort or practice. What increases is our capacity to perceive it. Practice does not make presence arrive. Practice makes you available.
Presence Is Never Elsewhere
One of Cynthia’s core corrections is that awareness is always here. What blocks it is not absence but identification. When attention collapses around personality, inner narratives, or emotional turbulence, the field of being becomes obscured. Not lost. Not removed. Just obscured.
The deeper self never disconnects from presence.
Only the surface gets noisy.
Even in confusion or agitation, presence remains underneath like the riverbed beneath moving water.
This is why contemplative traditions warn against emotional spirituality. If you treat presence as a feeling, you will lose it every time the mood shifts. But if you treat it as the ground of awareness, you will begin to sense it even in difficulty.
Presence is not fragile.
We are simply inattentive.
Real Practice: Interrupt the Search
You do not reach presence by adding more effort.
You reach it by interrupting the momentum of seeking.
Try this:
The moment you feel the urge to “get somewhere else,” pause. Notice the subtle pressure in the chest, the restless scanning of the mind, the tightening of internal commentary. All of this is the outer self trying to improve the moment instead of fully entering it.
Now take one quiet breath.
Feel the raw awareness that is already here.
Not the content.
The awareness itself.
What you experience in that instant is not something you generated.
It is something you uncovered.
This is the river.
You Are Being Held by What You Are Looking For
Every mystic eventually says some version of this.
Eckhart said, “God is closer to me than I am to myself.”
Rumi said, “I have been knocking from the inside.”
Jesus said, “The kingdom is within you.”
Cynthia says, “Presence is the medium of your own existence.”
The point is the same.
The thing you are trying to grasp is the thing you are already immersed in.
When this truth shifts from concept to recognition, everything changes. The panic subsides. The frantic inner reaching relaxes. The compulsive drive to improve the moment gives way to intimate participation in it.
Presence stops being a destination.
It becomes the atmosphere you finally learned how to breathe.
Virgin Monk Boy’s Take
Most people treat presence like a rare spiritual delicacy that must be hunted down with retreats, teachers, and emotional theatrics. Meanwhile, God is standing in the kitchen saying, “The water is already running in the sink.”
The outer self wants fireworks.
Presence gives you running water.
Guess which one actually keeps you alive.
You do not need a pilgrimage to feel God.
You need five seconds of honesty.
You need the courage to stop moving.
You need the humility to recognize that the river never left.
Blessed are the ones who finally stop searching long enough to realize they were carried the whole time.
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Brother Virge, you’re so wise, you must be luminous!✨ I love your analogy of presence with a river — water is something so beautiful & basic, but we always take it for granted. Like you’ve said before, we shouldn’t try so hard to think about God — just let ourselves be in the presence of God.🕉️
Presence feels like coming home to my self.