Philosophers, historians, and scientists spend their lives interpreting the world around them. We grow up seeing our world through the filters they have created with their interpretations. Even the language we use to describe the world reflects their views. Yet these very interpretations change from decade to decade, century to century. If we pause and step away from the filters, we realize that these ever-shifting, but seemingly solid “truths” may be keeping us from the immediacy of a life experienced without filters, sometimes called “Presence.”

If you are fully present within each moment, aware of each breath, filters fall away, and the need for interpretation falls away too. Yes, language is useful to human beings for communicating and connecting with one another, but an even deeper inner connection happens in silence. The stillness of your soul “speaks” wordlessly in that silence. This must have been what poet William Blake experienced when he wrote of seeing “a world in a grain of sand” and “eternity in a moment.” The poetry of Presence shows us an infinite interwoven tapestry of light that fills the multiverse beyond imagination. Language falls short as the heart overflows with wonder and awe. The only adequate response is, once again, silence.

This is what I experience every time I walk alone in Nature. There is nothing between me and Presence. Any interpretations I still carry with me dissolve in the stillness. I feel one with all beings and with pure Being itself. I am Presence. In those moments, I am aware that there is nothing else. How to remain centered in that space as I go through my day? Not always easy. Old interpretation filters remain within me and bombard my consciousness from every direction. The key is to keep bringing myself back to the direct experience in front of me.

To take a deep breath and see rather than think about what I’m seeing. To not get lost in my mind and its meanderings. We have a choice in each moment to fully focus on the experience before us or to sidetrack into the thought process it engenders. Distraction happens, it’s human, but we can bring ourselves back to the present moment and the present experience by remembering. Conscious awareness.

Will human beings continue to interpret the world around them in order to understand it better? Probably. Yet at a certain point in our lives, as we live year after year with changing reality filters, we may come to see constant interpretation as somehow falling short of a full experience of life. Interpretation can be fun at times (some might call this blog an interpretation—ha!), but perhaps as a side trip, not the entire journey. Interpretation as one experience in a vast spectrum of experiences.

The key is to keep returning to the conscious Presence within us, which connects directly to the experience before us. To shine the light of awareness on any potential filters and allow words to drop away, if even for a few moments. How can words possibly describe the extraordinary magnificence of the universe we inhabit without getting in the way of our direct experience of it? Silently inhale the stillness and you become one with it all.