Presence | Contemplative Inquiry

‘BEING’

‘Being’ can be thought of in a number of ways. One is to say that it simply is what it is. I am. The flowers are. No need for complications. I sympathise with this approach.

Yet when nudged to look at a 2021 post of my own (1), I found the following words based on the work of Eckhart Tolle (2). “Human is form. Being is formless. Human and Being are not separate but interwoven.” A part of my work in contemplative inquiry is to find a balance between human and Being.

For me, ‘Being’ is a way to talk about the divine, whilst keeping a distance from theistic language and its traditional associations. Some people use ‘ground of being’ in this sense. Experientially, silence, stillness, emptiness – the space between thoughts, feeling and things – open me up to Being. Feelings of joy and lovingkindness are likely to enter in. I find that deepening into Being enriches the human dimension itself – with all of its relationships, roles and activities in 3D time bound reality. In older language, it brings heaven to earth.

I like this use of language for its plainness and simplicity. Ultimately its assumptions are a matter of faith within a larger framework of unknowing. It simply describes where I stand within my continuing inquiry. I have also enjoyed being reminded of this use of words by my past self. It’s a personal benefit of having this record.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2021/03/03/spring-clarity/

(2) Eckhart Tolle Oneness with All Life: Awaken to a Life of Purpose and Presence Penguin Random House UK, 2018 (1st. ed. 2008)

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October 9, 2025

UNSHELTERED

Now in the fourth week after my shoulder fracture, I have ventured out on a contemplative walk.

I rested for awhile in the erstwhile physic garden of Llanthony Secunda Priory. It is a friendly space for me. Yet at first I felt very small. An alien energetic sky raced high above me towards an unknown horizon.

I wasn’t used to the outdoors. The garden stretched in front of me, defined by a long straight path. I experienced the world as a place of distance and extension. I felt alarmingly unsheltered, until I stilled myself and looked down.

The sight of Michaelmas daisies altered my state. Seasonal flowers and a living, shining green. Although I didn’t move to touch them, I felt like a toddler reaching out for a mother’s hand. I was held again within the wheel of the year. Autumn, the season of bearing fruit.

I looked out further and received rhe assurance of an old stone wall, and the majesty of mature trees. The trees might be turning. The wall might be part of a ruin. But they were still in place, still present in time, still offering a quiet companionship.

These changes in perspective allowed me to experience the garden afresh, more closely and intimately. It was easier to be in, and easier to connect with. Still unsheltered, but unalarmed, I knew that I belong.

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October 7, 2025

AN UNDERSTANDING OF ‘GNOSIS’

My last post was about working with ancient texts. Here I look at the term ‘gnosis’ in the Gospel of Thomas. I am indebted to the commentary of translator Jean-Yves Leloup. Here he reflects on logion 5, whose text I include in a note below.

“Gnosis is not a system, not another ideology through which we are to interpret and understand the world. On the contrary, it means opening our eyes to what we are already looking at, right in front of us, not searching somewhere else.

” … Things are not hidden in themselves; they are open – the veils hiding them are in the habits of our own vision, so crude, so overloaded with memories and assumptions about reality, distorting what is before us …

“Gnosis is a long-term work of recognition, of purity of attention so as really to see what is in front of us. The consequence of this attention is that we become what we see and what we love … If we look at chaos, we will reflect chaos. If we look at light, we will reflect light.” (1)

I am glad that this commentary provides more than scholarly exegesis. Leloup says in his introduction that he wants to offer “a meditation that arises from the tilled earth of our silence. It is my belief that it is from this ground, rather than from mental agitation, that these words can bear their fruit of light “. In this way Leloup dreams the myth onwards for our time, and passes the baton to his readers. Both a blessing, and a responsibility.

(1) Commentary on Logion 5, The Gospel of Thomas: The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2005

(Text translated from the Coptic with commentary by Jean-Yves Leloup; foreword by Jacob Needleman. English translation by John Rowe Original French edition published 1986).

The translated logion reads:

“Yeshua said:

Recognize what is in front of you, and what is hidden from you will be revealed.

There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.”

NOTE: See also

CHILD OF THE NOW

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September 20, 2025

LIMITATION

A familiar scene, in its equinoctial clothing. My experience of it is made different by a recent fall, in which I fractured my left humerus bone near the shoulder. I am left-handed, so it’s the ‘wrong’ side for a break. Happily my wrist and fingers remain flexible, and I don’t need surgery for the fracture. It could have been much worse.

Nonetheless Elaine, still depending on a rollator for walking, and I have to be resourceful and strategic in leaving and re-entering our apartment. Essentially I specialise in legs and she specialises in arms, though we each have some capacity in the other’s domain. We’re a team, after all. We work together. But we aren’t getting out much for the time being.

I look out a little wistfully and write a bit ouchilly. I feel limited and constrained. I also feel loved and supported. I’m a little foggy in my thinking, but I don’t see an episode like this as time off from my contemplative inquiry. All experiences are there to be acknowledged, moment by moment, day by day. Otherwise the practice becomes an alienated exercise, or performance, separated from the ups and downs of life. In reality, it sits ever-present within them.

I look within myself. I look across at Elaine. I also look out of window to connect with the world outside and its changes over the year. The grey sky is typical for this September, but blue sky is too. Variation is the overall story. It’s an inherently changeful and unsettled time. I’m intrigued by the way in which Robinswood Hill retains its green cover, when the town trees are in an advanced stage of turning. I’m alive.

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November 27, 2024

FAITH

In my Druid circle, I associate the northern quarter with faith. The quality and context of faith are not defined. They could simply mean faith in the practice and path. My contemplative inquiry overall has tended towards a stance of ‘sacred agnosticism’ (1), in which faith is not emphasised. This has served me in many ways. I have avoided mixing up the idea of ‘faith’ with affiliation to authoritarian movements, mandated beliefs, or the surrender of self-responsibility and personal discernment. I have been alert to the metaphysical group think and consensus collusion that can show up in any spiritual movement (other kinds of movement too). I have done my best to gather and evaluate information skilfully, when developing principles about how to live ethically and gracefully in an increasingly scary world.

And yet … this is not the whole story, or I would feel spiritually malnourished. In recent months I have experienced a strong felt sense of the divine. When I describe myself as ‘living presence in a field of living presence in a more than human world’ – an animist identification – the identification now seems more than animist, though the animism is still there. I pray more congruently to the Goddess as Ancient Mother and talk, less anthropomorphically, about the ‘bubbling source from which I spring’. The Divine is beyond name, form or description – and some people prefer a specialist, capitalised use of rather abstract terms like Consciousness, Awareness, Void, Ground of Being. But the ones from my own practice are the ones that work for me. They come from the intuitive heart and the imagination. To me they offer a deeper knowing, though I am personally cautious about the use of the word gnosis. For me, it can reduce the sense of mystery, banishing the creative role of faith itself.

I have become a provisional panentheist, experiencing intimations of a divine which is everywhere and no-where, and from which we are not separate. This partly reprises work I did in the earlier days of my inquiry using the framework of non-duality. Now I find panentheism a better term than non-duality for affirming both the divine and the world. The earth spirituality in the Druid tradition is in no way compromised by a panentheist perspective. If anything it is enhanced.

(1) See https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/02/16/sacred-agnos

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October 24, 2024

LIVING LIGHT

I am walking in woodland beside my local canal. These walks are infrequent now and all the more treasured. I notice how strong mid-afternoon light can be when the sky is clear, even on 22 October. Stepping energetically into its presence, I enter into a kind of communion. The light feels alive and I feel differently alive too – lifted, and touching into joy.

In the picture above, I feel as well as see the effects of the light on trees and water. In the picture below, I both feel and see the living light on leaves which themselves seem to greet me from their horizontal branch. I feel energised by this connection.

Looking up I see blue sky. I do not see the sun, but I can see its effects on the upper branches of trees. both subtle and magical. Looking down, I see a dance of light and shade, with the light present on a fence and on a pathway. A sense of the sacred pervades everything, and I feel blessed.

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August 29, 2024

ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

I first registered Contemplative Inquiry on 28 August 2012 and WordPress have sent me 12th anniversary greetings. That’s a long-term project by my historic standards. True, the first two years were tentative and I took an 8 month break in 2018/9. But my contemplative inquiry, both as blog and as practice, now feels like a settled part of my life. I continue to ground it in a form of modern Druidry with, Janus-like, both pagan and universalist faces.

Through my inquiry, I came over the years to understand myself as, at heart, ‘living presence in a field of living presence in a more than human world’. This may sound like something of a formula, but it is at least my own formula, providing a compressed account of my experience and understanding, It is not connected to any particular belief system, and arose through a simple recognition of what seems to be given to us, in joy and sorrow alike.

When I open and deepen to living presence, a gestalt of self-and-world, not just self, reveals itself in a sometimes transfiguring way. It is not complicated to practice or experience. In consequence I have found myself nudged, however haltingly, towards a spirit of openness, an acceptance that nothing stays the same, an ethic of interdependence and a life of abundant simplicity.

I no longer think of the inquiry as a path or journey. It is more like a deepening, or maturation, in place. Looking back at early blog posts I find seeds of my current view right at the beginning of my inquiry. As early as 2 September 2012 I wrote about Satish Kumar’s experience (1,2) of outdoor walking meditation. It made a strong impression on me. The difference today is that I have internalised it and given it my own unique flavour. This year I celebrate a clearer understanding and a more confident voice. I am grateful both to influences like Satish Kumar and to the version of me who launched this inquiry twelve years ago..

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2012/09/02/outdoor-walking-meditation/

(2) Satish Kumar You Are, Therefore I AM; A Declaration of Dependence Totnes, 2002: Green Books

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June 19, 2024

MIDSUMMER DREAMING 2024

In the original edition of The Dreampower Tarot (1) The Sleeper is an androgyne figure in a field of corn and poppies. Their face is turned towards the flowers. Their right arm is outstretched, with palm and fingers turning a little towards the ground. Their forefinger hints that we should look to the earth and underworld for healing and inspiration. The whole image evokes deep evening slumber.

In this midsummer period, I’m in a regime of going to bed early, before the light has gone. It reminds me of delicious childhood moments and I feel comforted. During this period I have tended to dream of abstract images and unfathomable events, with background sounds so soft that I can barely hear them.

In these dreams, I have no language and can make no real sense of anything. I’m OK about this, because I’m aware of being aware and safe in awareness without the slightest ability to formulate a sentence like this one. The recognition is primal and wordless. At times, I experience a push towards understanding of a sort, but it is not (yet?) agitated or dominant in consciousness. I seem, in this dreaming (as perhaps once in pre-natal life), to be in realm of divinely simple potential.

When I wake up in the early morning. at this time of year, I find light again, and a different feeling of wonder. Using my resources of language and culture, I am able to make cognitive sense of my world once more. The gift of the dream is that my everyday experience feels, for a while, strange and new. It makes room for the luminosity and magic that I can easily forget in my ‘waking’ hours. The morning light outside my window confirms their presence here. They nourish me, and I am porous to the world.

(1) R. J. Stewart The Dreampower Tarot: The Three Realms of Transformation in the Underworld London: The Aquarian Press, 1993 Illustrated by Stewart Littlejohn

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January 3, 2024

2024: INQUIRY AT THE DAWN OF THE YEAR

It is 3 January 2024, around 8.30 am. I repeat my best wishes to all readers for 2024 from inside the new year, as it begins to unfold. I contemplate the sky, uncertain about what this new year may bring. At some level I feel open and uncluttered, free of over-determined intentions. It is as if I have surrendered to a current.

My Contemplative Inquiry, once a formal structured project, has gradually evolved into a simpler and more natural-seeming contemplative inquiry in no need of capitalisation. This inquiry is wired in, no longer in need of much external input or formalised internal effort. I am aware of owing a debt to the formal structured project, with its inputs and efforts, for it enabled this evolution to occur.

The result of the early, more formal, years is recorded in my ABOUT section. It was simultaneously a gnosis and the discovery of a place to stand that felt right and made sense. “My inquiry has been a pathway to greater understanding, healing and peace. In the contemplative moment, I am living presence in a field of living presence, at home in a living world. This is not dependent on belief or circumstance, but on the recognition of what is given, joy and sorrow alike. I find that this simple recognition moves me towards a spirit of openness, a fuller acceptance that nothing stays the same, an ethic of interdependence and a life of abundant simplicity”. My inquiry today is about deepening, and living more congruently and confidently from this place. It is part of me now, and I foresee no end.

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November 26, 2023

LATE FALL IMAGES

Recently I’ve been unwell and housebound, hardly even watching the world go by. But there came a day when I could go out again, a day that was blessed with sun. It seemed bright and new. I was almost blinded by its luminous presence on a white tree-patterned wall. I had entered late fall, a season with both autumnal and winter features.

The sun shone on trees in Gloucester City Park which retained some of their foliage, but in an end-of-season way that signals austere changes to come. Leaves showed a fragile, lingering beauty, prior to their necessary descent.

The Brunswick Gardens, sitting under a clear blue sky, were home to trees where the leaves had already fallen, leaving the branches as patterns of quiescent arboreal bones. The leaves were on the lawn. Other, managed, flora continued to flourish.

In visual and tactile ways, after an indoor confinement, the neighbourhood was full of reward for me. But I felt cold, and it was indeed the coldest it’s been for many many months. I could not stay out for long. But I had encountered a moment in the year, of interbeing, of living presence – where the wheel is visibly and palpably turning. I was glad to be there, however briefly, available for a nurturing and healing experience.

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Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Presence

October 12, 2025

‘BEING’

October 9, 2025

UNSHELTERED

October 7, 2025

AN UNDERSTANDING OF ‘GNOSIS’

September 20, 2025

LIMITATION

November 27, 2024

FAITH

October 24, 2024

LIVING LIGHT

August 29, 2024

ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

June 19, 2024

MIDSUMMER DREAMING 2024

January 3, 2024

2024: INQUIRY AT THE DAWN OF THE YEAR

November 26, 2023

LATE FALL IMAGES