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* * *
Then, I found myself undergoing a more subtle sense of presence. I began struggling to speak of this, often using paradox in my writings and employing other referents for this Presence than those of my past. While impossible to represent fairly, I will point to this. This experience is more subtle, more intangible. Usually, I do not feel a presence or Presence. Life is just happening. Life is flowing, moving. There is no sense of inside or outside. I am in that flow, that movement. I do not give much thought to this, as the experience is known as a coming together of the "seen" and "unseen" in harmony, so there is no need to seek to retain some particular kind of feeling, even be it religious or spiritual. Occasional senses of a Presence or presence arise, but it is not a remarkable matter. What has become central is simply being with the sense of Something present in the presentness of this moment, my not needing to feel anything to remind or reassure that such is so. And, now, I experience Grace most clearly in interaction with others, both in spiritual gathering and in everyday sharing here-and-there, often with strangers I have not met before and never will again, when before the felt-sense of Presence was strongest as a personal, private experience. The experience, now, is neither personal nor not-personal, private nor not-private.
Likewise, while I for many years, daily practiced intentional meditation, I do not feel the same need for formal silence or spiritual practice. Sometimes, I relax in the Quiet, for I want to, and I rarely time it, simply come out when the time seems ripe. I do not engage any special posture, I just sit or lie down. Often, I feel the joy of Quiet walking by myself or in conversation with others. I no longer sense a need to do this intentionally every day. Now, the sense is more a living in, with, the Silence, and Silence is lived, integrated into the fabric of routine, day and night, even amid the noises of others, human and other. Looking back, I did need that intentional practice for many years; I may sense that need again, but the need would be different from before.
* * *
In this pilgrimage with Grace however, we cannot speak it. The moment I say what my experience of Life is, Life has moved on, and I have moved on. And what I say is an interpretation, one that may fit with someone else or not. We walk the same path, for the pathless path is the path, but we walk differently, and since the path is not a static reality, I hesitate to say we walk the same path.
* * *
The way is not statically laid out under our feet. Any description is not only inadequate due to the limitations of thought and language, but for it is changing all the time, constantly and along with us. We are so intimate with the path, we are moving with the path, the path with us. We and the path interpenetrate, in communion, a wholly communion. We cannot rightly think of the way as an object, something we move through. The path and we move together. There is no solid something to hold to, to point to.
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