The Path to Presence
On what attention actually requires
Reading: The Social Path to Presence · Eckhart Tolle
What is the difference between being in a room and being present in it?
Most evenings include a moment, somewhere near the middle, when the body is in one place and the mind has wandered off to a meeting tomorrow or a conversation from last week. The room continues without that person for a few minutes. They come back, usually. Nobody mentions it.
Presence is the practice of catching that drift earlier and returning sooner. Not because the wandering is wrong, but because the room you are in is the one you have. Conversation, food on the table, the light coming through a window in February — these are the materials. The mind elsewhere is a habit, not a verdict.
Source
article:
The Social Path to Presence by Eckhart Tolle