This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
The Eternal Now: Stillness and the Rhythm of Practice – Rev. Linda Jackson
DESCRIPTION
It’s a common misconception — that five minutes of morning meditation counts as ‘practicing the presence.’ Goldsmith is far more demanding and far more freeing than that: presence is available continuously, in rhythm, not as an occasional appointment.
The summary and transcription were auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
SUMMARY
Rev. Linda Jackson explores the spiritual practice of “the eternal now,” emphasizing that presence is not a destination but a rhythm of returning to stillness and awareness. Drawing on Joel Goldsmith’s *Practicing the Presence*, she describes expansion of consciousness as growing awareness of what already is rather than through effort. The talk distinguishes between creative meditation (guided focus) and receptive meditation (transcending thought), noting that both can lead to inner discovery. Jackson shares practical techniques for embedding presence into daily life, such as using doorways as reminders to acknowledge “where I am, God is”. She connects this practice to the concept that pain comes not from past events but from what we carry into the present, offering liberation through conscious release. The talk concludes with a guided meditation expanding awareness from individual presence to universal divine presence everywhere .
TRANSCRIPTION
Rev. Linda Jackson:
All right. Are we so blessed, with this music? So good morning, Cityside. Thank you as always, music team. And thank you for being here in the room. Thanks for the online folks as well. That song, Let It Be. How good are you at letting it be? If you find yourself in times of trouble, do you take time in the stillness? Do you turn within? Do you listen? Listening for words of wisdom, I love that. It’s about that connecting within, or do we jump in to try to solve, right?
We’re in our October theme, expansion of consciousness. And everything we do at Cityside is about expansion of consciousness, really inspiring talks, classes, tools. We have principles and practices. But this month we’re looking at expansion as something that you experience by letting go of effort.
It’s becoming aware of the presence that already is. And I just want to acknowledge this morning, I ran out of the house without my phone. I got here, we had a couple of things we were trying to do to get ready for the meeting after service. And I’m like, oh, great. I’m talking about presence and I am so out of my body right now. But just acknowledging that it’s ongoing. It’s a continual process.
So Darrell started us off at the beginning of the month with reminding us that consciousness just already is. Everything that has ever been or ever will be already exists in this idea that I call God, call it consciousness, call it intelligence, whatever word is resonant for you, right? But this expansion is really just about us growing our awareness to include what already is. So sort of enlarging our container. And then last week, Aimee invited us to let down the doing, to trust the presence within us that does the work.
Letting down the doing doesn’t mean that we stop living. It means we stop living from effort.
We start living from presence right here, right now. And now today we’re going to expand into how we experience this. How do we practice this? Not just from time to time, but how do we live in it? So the eternal now, stillness and the rhythm of practice is the talk title. And stillness is this idea of opening ourselves, making ourselves available to listen. And rhythm is how we return to the stillness, returning to the listening over and over and over. And the eternal now is where it all happens. I’m going to say that again. Stillness is opening to listen. Rhythm is how we return to listening and the eternal now is where it all happens. And I just want to give you a heads up that I have a lot of slides because there were a lot of really interesting ideas on this. And for me, presence is something that I feel.
It’s not something that I intellectualize and I found it helpful to use the words of other people to explain. So in our book, Practicing the Presence, it’s our monthly book, Goldsmith says, “It’s not enough to meditate a little.” He says, “We must read and study, meditate and ponder hour upon hour of every day until we are living continuously in the presence.” I’m like, “Hour upon hour, really?” It sounds daunting. And most of us have calendars that are full of other people’s important things, right? But he’s not saying you have to sit longer. He’s describing a different relationship with time. So not necessarily hours of sitting in meditation, but this rhythm of returning. So it may be brief, but often. A memory is just coming to me. Uh-oh, I’m going off script. Years ago at Bodhi’s Spiritual Center, we had Tibetan monks come. We used to have a meditation before service and we had the Tibetan monks come.
They were touring and they came to lead the meditation and they got up there and our meditation was like a 20 minute to 30 minute thing before service and the doors would close and it’d be quiet in the room. And these monks were up there. They sat for about two minutes and they got up and walked away and people were like, “No, no, this goes for 20 minutes.” And they were like, “What? We already did what we needed to do.” So I think that’s a really interesting example. They just needed to feel the connection to spirit, to the God of their being, and they did that. They didn’t need to take 20 minutes. So I find that’s interesting, right? So this is this idea, it can be brief, but often, and it can be right where we are, wherever we are.
And I want to do a little check in on the word presence. When we hear presence, we may be thinking being here fully in our bodies. I use the word that way all the time. We practice being present in NVC, nonviolent communication. We practice presence in the conscious leadership group work. There are many tips and tools for practicing fully arriving in the body to be totally here in the moment. And Goldsmith uses the same word to mean something that sounds bigger, the presence of God. So are those two different things? Yes and no. Here’s how I think of it. One is the individual human physical practice of bringing ourselves present. And if God, spirit, source is all there is, then there’s no place that isn’t. It’s not out there. It’s not later. It’s not only in sacred places. It’s not only when I sit down and meditate.
So when I drop into my body and connect with my breath and fully arrive, I’m not leaving the presence of God to go visit my body. I’m remembering where I already am and where I am, God is.
So the somatic and the sacred overlap. We are both physical and spiritual, right? You’ve heard the spiritual beings have a human experience. And if you’ve ever prayed with me, you have likely heard me say it is in the present moment that we experience the presence of God. That is a phrase that I use regularly in my prayer. It supports my centering, my becoming present, my remembering and reminding myself God is. Goldsmith says, “We cannot live yesterday. No one can live tomorrow. There is only one time in which we can live and that is now in this instance, in this instant.” And there are big gifts of living in the now. It is only what we carry over into the present that hurts us, not what happened in the past. That’s a great idea. It’s only what we carry over into the present that hurts us, not what happened in the past, but what we carry over into the present of what happened in the past.
I mean, do you feel an expansion just thinking of it this way, this idea of we don’t have to bring things from the past into the present?
Our book Practicing the Presence by Joel Goldsmith, he was a Christian mystic writing in the last century. And a writing is profound and beautiful and I feel expanded by reading it. It’s meditative for me, the practice of reading his book. And like always, please don’t let any of his language or specific words keep you from getting the bigger message. Goldsmith himself said, “What we call it makes no difference at all. God, the spirit of God or the Christ, as long as we recognize that it is divine in nature and that it has a function in our experience.” He goes on to say, “It doesn’t matter if it’s Christian, Hebrew, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, or Muslim in any language from any country as long as it is universal truth, a universal truth.” That language resonates with me. That way of speaking has always been what speaks to me, but we all have the words that resonate for us.
There are many messages in many voices, traditions, styles, something to reach each of us. And I’m adding another voice on this, Ekert Tolle from The Power of Now. “Have you ever experienced, done, thought or felt anything outside the now? Do you think you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside of the now?” The answer is obvious. It is not. Nothing ever happened in the past. It happened in the now. Nothing will ever happen in the future. It will happen in the now. What you think of as a past of the past is a memory trace stored in the mind of a former now.
When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace and you do so now. Whatever happened, it happened in the now. And whatever I’m carrying of it, I’m carrying into this now. And that awareness means I can choose to set it down, to let it be. Not to say it didn’t matter or I’ll skip the feelings, but I can choose not to carry it into this moment. So in this context of eternal now, eternal is an endless time going on forever, as much as it is transcending time. Goldsmith and Tolle use slightly different vocabularies, but they’re saying the same, giving us the same invitation. This moment is all we have. We are in an eternal now. There is only the present moment.
And this is such a perfect flow from last month where we really dissected affirmative prayer, opening ourselves as channels of the divine. And that line that I gave you a few minutes ago that I often use in prayer, it’s one of the ways I get myself present into the first step of affirmative prayer, recognizing God. When I say it is in the present moment that we experience the presence of God, it reminds me that God is always present. I just need to turn my attention to it, right? We just have to decide what we’re focusing on. It brings me both present and in presence. And we heard in the reading today that prayer is the act of talking to God and meditation is the act of listening. And I just want to say that for me, affirmative prayer is also a type of listening. I open myself and I listen.
Even as I’m speaking the prayer, I receive insights and speak those insights into the prayer. And Goldsmith describes prayer much the same way. To be in prayer means to be in a listening attitude, an inner stillness, not cluttered up with outside noises.
In a state of relaxation and peace, we wait. That is all we can do, just wait. We cannot bring God to us for God is already here. In this inner stillness, in this quietness and confidence, this is where we remember God by turning within, or you can use other resources. You can see it in the sunset, in the mountains, you can see it in your neighbor’s face. God is everywhere present. And Darryl shared last week or two weeks ago, Goldsmith’s idea that presence already is. The presence already is in sickness, in health, in lack or abundance. Presence always is. We’re just expanding our capacity to know it, to experience it.
Stillness occurs when we stop trying to get somewhere that we already are. Goldsmith isn’t saying we pray all the time. He’s saying we are in prayer, a way of being, an attitude as much as an activity. And in the reading, Patrick Harbula or Harbullah said, “Meditation doesn’t require chanting or breathing or sitting a certain way, but he does admit that those techniques are sometimes helpful.” He’s saying it can be done anywhere at any moment. And in conversations with God, Neil Donald Walsh hears and says it this way, “Listen to me in the truth of your soul. Listen to me in the feelings of your heart. Listen to me in the quiet of your mind. Hear me everywhere.
The soul, the heart, the mind, everywhere.” And here’s what listening requires. It requires being present, being here in the now. You can only listen right now. And stillness and now are the entry point to presence. In Harbullah’s Magic of the Soul, I find this description of meditation very helpful. He says, “There are two basic forms of meditation, creative meditation and receptive meditation. Creative meditation is any type of guided imagery or mental focus that creates an altered state of consciousness that is conducive to inner discovery or growth. And receptive meditation is the act of transcending the thought process completely, stilling the rational mind and experiencing a quality of consciousness more subtle than thought. It is through the latter process that many have received the gift of mystical experience or even cosmic consciousness.” He goes on to say that while many traditional meditation paths would only consider what he’s calling receptive meditation as true meditation, creative meditation often leads us into a state of receptive meditation.
So most meditators practice both. We can use whatever tools support us to come into presence. And he spent a lot of years training and practicing integrative breath work. You use circular breathing, evocative music, and sometimes it induces non-ordinary states of consciousness and it was absolutely conducive to inner discovery and growth. The inner experiences and insights were profound and very important part of my healing journey. Breathwork moved me into that receptive state.
And years ago when I was actively training in the spiritual practice of visioning, I went to a weekend intensive training in visioning, if you will. And for those who don’t know, visioning is a contemplative guided meditation designed to open you to receive, to hear insights and receive guidance. And the more I practice doing it for two days straight, hours on end, that opening to receive became automatic. It felt like a sort of communing was happening on a regular basis. And I don’t practice visioning so constantly now, but it is still automatic for me to drop in to open for guidance or practicing the presence. Harbula puts it so simply, a meditative state is less a place we get to than simply a process of becoming more aware of where we are.
So there are many forms, creative meditation that can lead you into receptive meditation where you can receive insight, guidance, sometimes healing. Goldsmith says it is not by struggling, not by battling, but by relaxing and allowing. So those creative meditations support that relaxation, the ability to access a different part of our mind, of our consciousness. And so Goldsmith offers a technique for developing a rhythm. It includes an active phase and a receptive phase and not rushing. We can notice that rhythm has two parts, a beat and a space, a squeeze and a release, an inhale, an exhale, day, night, right? The practice is the same, the returning to present moment and an opening and letting go. There’s two parts. And Goldsmith explains that practicing the presence means training yourself to constantly remember this reality 20 or 30 times a day until it becomes a natural state of awareness.
It’s just 10 seconds. You don’t need to close your eyes. You don’t need to sit down. You can do it at the kitchen sink, in the car, at your desk.
Years ago I used to do this exercise, I don’t know if you know the power plate, it’s this high tech vibrating platform thing and it was really intense. And the hardest part for me about exercise is occupying my mind because my mind is just sitting there going, “I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.” So getting my mind right was a huge part of it. And I began to use it as an opportunity to say, “Just to know God.” I remember being on this vibrating platform in a plank position going, “Just to know God, just to know God.” But it’s an opportunity to turn to God in any moment, and especially in those moments when you might not typically. So you can use your own version and you can use your own words. Goldsmith uses where I am, God is, and he suggests using doorways or doors as reminders.
He says, “It is not too difficult to develop the habit of waiting for a second at every door we open or close to realize God is just as much on the other side of this door as on this side. There is no place where I can go today where the presence of God is not. Wherever I am, God is. Each door is a threshold, a chance to arrive, a chance to practice. Practice isn’t perfection, it’s the returning over and over again. And we’ve done many practices that he would call the creative, like counting a breath, repeating a phrase, picturing a light. We were doing something.
We’re talking about a receptive experience where we’re letting something come to us. The only doing is bringing our attention back over and over. And for anyone who’s ever said,” I can’t meditate. I can’t get my mind to stop, “Goldsmith is offering this simple practice. Every door you pass through is an opportunity to return to the present moment and saying,” Where I am, God is, where I am, source is, where I am, love is, whatever works for you. The only doing is returning to practice, pausing to remember, there is nowhere you can go where the presence isn’t or as Ernest Holmes would say, there is no place where God is not. Not God, an external entity out there somewhere, but a universal presence that fills every part of existence. There is no separation between human consciousness and divine mind. Remember our unification step in prayer. The individual and spirit are one.
We are the channels through which it expresses. Okay, so how are we doing? I know we’re a little distracted by the food arriving. It’s a big deal.
All right. We’re talking about practicing the presence. We have the present or now moment, the rhythm of returning to practice over and over until it becomes a living practice and we have stillness and inner listening. Presence isn’t somewhere we go, it’s what we return to over and over until the returning becomes a way of life. So Goldsmith has us developing the habit of remembering to never make a move without the acknowledgement of presence. Wouldn’t that be a life changer to never make a move without acknowledging presence? Doors are just examples of ordinary moments that you can use as reminders. Another example he gave is to pause before eating and silently express gratitude for the source of the food. Many of us have learned that, but acknowledging presence in that moment is you get to choose your rhythm. Is it every hour, every half a day, every door, every red light, every time you wash your hands?
And when you forget, you probably will, the moment you notice that you forgot, you’ve remembered, that is the practice. That is the rhythm, returning over and over again. And that’s our invitation for practice this week. I’m going to take us into another practice of presence and then we’ll close with prayer. So I just invite you, if you’re willing, to turn your attention inward and get yourself settled into your seat, taking a deep breath in and out, feeling where your body meets the chair, whatever anchors you use for becoming present, fully engaged in your body and letting your breath be whatever it is. You don’t have to change it and just noticing that the breath is already happening, you are being breathed.
And notice your body, the weight, the sensations already here and your awareness is already within you. Gathering our energy and our attention, bringing ourselves fully present. It is in the present moment that we experience the presence of God. God is I am. And let that awareness widen just a little beyond your personal space to include the room, the presence within you and all around you, everywhere present. The sounds, the people beside you breathing to individual expressions of the divine, breathing together in one room in one moment, the presence within you and all around you, everywhere present.
God is I am. And see if you can expand again beyond the doors and the walls of this place. No place where God is not. Divine presence in the street as the neighbors, people going to breakfast, people sleeping in the outdoors and people grieving, people laughing all at the same time, the presence within and all around, everywhere present. God is I am. The city, the lake, all of Chicago, one now and this now. The presence just as much within as it is all around, everywhere present. God is I am. Divine presence everywhere, present as the country and of the world, every continent, every time zone, all of it happening in this eternal now.
Nothing to do, just noticing. Consciousness already is. We expand our capacity for it. Presence in, as and through you, all around you, everywhere present. God is I am. Can we let it be? In stillness, we listen. So just for a minute, I invite you to sit in the stillness, open yourself to hear, not intellectualizing, just allowing it to rise up within you to listen for your own guidance and your own insight. We’ll take a moment now. There is no place where God is not. Presence is not a destination we arrive at. It’s a rhythm we return to over and over until the returning becomes the living, the way of being.
And your practice this week only requires 10 seconds at a time. Choosing a door, a meal, or another way to acknowledge presence in, as and through you, all around you. Everywhere present, God is, I am. And I will take us into a closing prayer. And when I complete, you are welcome to find a practitioner in the room and come up for a minute miracle prayer. So just remaining in the awareness of this one power, this one presence, this one life, not something we have to reach for or find. We simply open ourselves to it, turn our attention to it and remember that we are one with this infinite source, this unlimited creative nature, this unconditional love, power, freedom, all that God is, we are. Each of us, everyone in this room, everyone online, everyone hearing my voice, all living beings, one with the divine expression.
We are individual expressions of it.
And from that place, I just affirm that there is a deepening in our remembering of this, that there is an expanding of our awareness of presence, that we are saying yes to acknowledging presence in every action, in every conversation, in every step, saying yes to presence, allowing spirit to guide us, to move us, to direct us, to inform us. Letting down anything that we have carried from the past and choosing only what is present now. Placing our energy and our attention and our mind on love, on freedom, on wholeness. And this impacts not only the people in our immediate circle, but it ripples out into the community, into the world, out into the ethers, love and more love. I say yes to the fulfillment of this prayer. I say yes to more love. I say yes to expanded awareness. I say yes to embodying, practicing presence gracefully, walking as emanations of love, peace, and presence.
I’m grateful for the fulfillment of this prayer. I release it into the law, let it be so, and so it is.