Many presence practices from around the world can be rich and elaborate, calling on deities or detailed rituals.
But presence can also be much simpler. It all comes back to your breath.
The Taoist concept of qi means vital energy, but it literally translates to ‘breath.’ For millennia, contemplative traditions have understood that energy, peace, and breath are inextricably linked.
If the mind is the sky and awareness is the Sun, think of your breath as the wind. Imagine your breath as a great wind sweeping across your body and mind. When you breathe consciously, you are doing more than moving oxygen; you are parting the clouds so that the Sun can shine down through. You are innately shifting your fuel source from fossil fuels to internal renewable energy.
The aspiring hero believes they must set themselves on fire to keep the world warm. They burn their own psychic fossil fuels until the smoke chokes them and the resource runs dry.
The antihero knows a better way. They know that by simply taking a breath, they can clear the sky and let the Sun shine through. They become a vessel for an energy that is unspeakably vast, renewable, and already here.
They come to realize that no matter what is happening down here on Earth, the Sun is always there, undisturbed, shining brightly in every direction, for them, from them.
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book The Antihero’s Journey: From Burnout to Real Contribution in Polycrisis Times. To read other excerpts, go here.
