TLDR: This teaching offers a structured approach to beginning and ending your day in presence—a practice rooted in connecting with the transcendent 'I am' beyond thought and sensation. Rather than immediately reaching for devices or mental activity, you can ground yourself in the simple fact of existence itself, which becomes both a foundation for the day ahead and a sanctuary to return to each evening. The practice involves closing your eyes, deepening your breath, and recognizing the aliveness within you as distinct from the stories your mind tells. When integrated with your relationship to digital devices and everyday activities, presence becomes not a luxury meditation reserved for quiet mornings, but a living dimension available wherever you are.
Why does presence matter most at the beginning of your day?
The way you begin your day sets the tone for the hours that follow. Without intention, most people wake and immediately engage with their thinking mind—checking messages, planning, worrying, or falling into habitual reactions before consciousness has fully awakened. This approach means you spend your day in a reactive, thought-dominated state rather than a present, aware state.
By deliberately starting your day in presence, you establish a foundation that is not dependent on external circumstances. You are connecting with what the teaching calls the 'I am'—not the personal identity constructed from past experiences or future goals, but the pure awareness that you exist, that you are alive. This is prior to thought and sensation. It is simple being itself. Once you've anchored in this place, the day's demands and distractions can arise without fully displacing you from that ground of presence.
This is not merely a psychological benefit, though it has those too. The teaching suggests you are connecting with something transcendent—a dimension of existence that is always present but usually obscured by mental noise. Beginning your day here means beginning your day in alignment with your deepest nature, not your surface personality.
What is the 'I am' and how do you access it?
The 'I am' is not a belief or idea. It is the felt sense of existing—the fact that you are aware, alive, present. If you say "I am," you can notice there is a presence, a sense of being, that underlies those words. This is not the 'I am happy' or 'I am anxious'—those are states overlaid on something more fundamental. The 'I am' is the simple, irreducible fact of consciousness itself.
To access it, you close your eyes and turn your attention inward. Rather than thinking about it, you feel into it. You notice your breath. You notice the aliveness in your body without labeling or analyzing it. You sense the space of awareness in which all experience arises. This is not a peak experience or extraordinary state—it is available right now, beneath the surface of your typical attention. It has always been here.
The practice involves a gentle shift in focus. Instead of being absorbed in thought about your life, you redirect attention to the fact of your existence itself. Many people report a kind of settling, a quietness, a return home when they make this contact. This is what the teaching describes as embracing the inner 'I am'—not as a goal you achieve, but as a recognition of what is already present within you.
What is the morning presence practice?
The teaching offers a concrete practice designed to anchor you in presence upon waking. Before you engage with your day—before checking devices, planning, or moving into activity—you set aside time to be present. The recommended approach includes:
- Close your eyes: This simple act removes sensory distraction and signals to your nervous system that you are entering an inward time, not an outward activity.
- Breathe deeply: Your breath is an anchor to presence. As you breathe consciously, you connect with your body and the simple fact that you are alive in this moment. You need not control your breath or make it elaborate—just notice it, feel it.
- Connect with the transcendent self: As your mind settles, direct attention inward toward the 'I am' presence described above. This is not thinking about yourself or your life. It is a direct contact with the sense of being itself.
- Remain here for several minutes: The practice is not rushed. You allow yourself to dwell in this state, to become established in presence before the day's demands begin.
This practice need not take long—even 5-10 minutes, if done with genuine presence, creates a significant shift. The key is consistency. When you make this a daily rhythm, presence begins to have a momentum. It becomes easier to access, and it begins to color your entire day.
How do you maintain presence while using digital devices?
One of the great challenges of modern life is that digital devices are nearly constant. They pull your attention outward, fragment your focus, and often activate the reactive mind. If you spend your morning in presence and then immediately lose yourself in your phone, that practice is undermined.
The teaching acknowledges this directly: presence with digital devices is a specific skill to develop. This does not mean you must abandon technology—rather, you bring awareness to how you use it. A few approaches:
- Delay device use: Do not reach for your phone or email immediately upon waking. Protect the first 20-30 minutes of your day as a presence-first time. This allows the foundation you've built to stabilize before external input floods in.
- Bring awareness to the impulse: Notice when you reach for a device. Often there is an underlying restlessness or unconscious habit driving it. Can you pause and ask: am I doing this because I genuinely need to, or because I am escaping something? This awareness itself begins to shift your relationship to the device.
- Use devices consciously: When you do use technology, do so with intention and presence. Notice the tendency to scroll mindlessly or to follow every notification. Can you use the device for a specific purpose and then set it down? This is the difference between being used by your device and using it as a tool.
- Return to your breath: Throughout the day, whenever you notice you've been pulled into unconscious digital engagement, pause and return to your breath. This simple act reconnects you with presence, even for just a few seconds. These moments add up.
Digital devices are not the enemy—but they are powerful attractors of unconscious attention. The teaching suggests you need not be their victim if you bring awareness and intentionality to your use.
How do you incorporate beingness into everyday life?
Presence is not something that happens only during meditation or morning rituals. The ultimate aim is to live in presence throughout your day, in all your activities. This is what the teaching describes as incorporating beingness into everyday life.
Beingness means being aware of yourself as a presence, as consciousness, even as you engage in doing. You can walk, work, listen, or speak while simultaneously being aware that you are aware. This is not a distraction from activity—it actually enhances it. When you are present, you are more creative, more responsive, more compassionate.
Some practical applications:
- Pause throughout your day: Set small reminders to stop and notice your breath, your body, your sense of being. Even 30 seconds of this recalibrates you toward presence.
- Be present in conversation: Rather than thinking about what you will say next or judging what you are hearing, truly listen. Listen from a place of presence, and the quality of your relationship changes immediately.
- Find presence in ordinary activities: Whether you are eating, washing dishes, or walking, bring full attention to what you are doing. Notice sensations, movements, the simple miracle that your body moves and your senses perceive. This transforms routine activities into meditation.
- Notice the space between thoughts: Throughout your day, there are small gaps between one thought and another. These are moments of presence, however brief. As you practice, you can expand your awareness into these gaps until presence becomes your baseline rather than a rare occurrence.
The teaching emphasizes that beingness is not separate from doing. You don't need to withdraw from life to be present. Rather, you infuse your life—your work, relationships, and activities—with the quality of presence. This is how a daily practice transforms into a way of being.
What is the meditation to connect with your deeper self?
The teaching includes a guided meditation designed to deepen your connection with what the teaching calls your "deeper self"—the transcendent dimension of yourself that exists beyond ego and thought. While the specific guidance would be best experienced directly, the meditation likely follows this arc:
- Settling into your body and breath as anchors to the present moment
- Releasing attachment to thought and identity
- Feeling into the 'I am' presence as something alive and intimate, not abstract
- Recognizing that this presence is not something you create but something you are—something you can only access by relaxing into it
- Sustaining that recognition for a period, allowing it to deepen and stabilize
The value of guided meditation is that it gives your attention a clear direction and helps you recognize the state you are aiming for. Over time, you can enter this state without guidance, until it becomes natural and available wherever you are.
How do you end your day in presence?
Just as beginning your day in presence sets the tone, ending it in presence completes the cycle. Before sleep, take time to return to the inner stillness you contacted in the morning. This might involve the same basic practice: close your eyes, breathe deeply, connect with the 'I am'.
Ending your day in presence serves several functions. It allows you to release the day's tensions and concerns, returning them to a larger context rather than carrying them into sleep. It also deepens the anchoring effect of the practice. By bookending your day with presence, you are saying to yourself and to reality: this is what matters most to me; this is my true home; to this I return.
This rhythm—presence upon waking, presence woven through the day, presence before sleep—creates a life increasingly centered in what the teaching describes as the transcendent 'I am', rather than the reactive personality self.
Where to go from here
Begin with the morning practice. Choose a specific time each day, even if only 5-10 minutes, to close your eyes, breathe, and connect with the 'I am' before engaging with your day. Notice what shifts. Over days and weeks, this small practice compounds. You will likely find that you are more present, less reactive, more aware of the difference between thinking about your life and actually living it.
Then gradually extend presence into your day. Bring awareness to moments of digital engagement, conversations, ordinary activities. The teaching is not asking you to achieve anything extraordinary—only to notice and cultivate the presence that is already here, already you.
The series continues with Part 2, which explores these themes further. The work is not intellectual but practical and direct: the 'I am' is not a concept to understand but a reality to experience. Begin where you are, with what you have, and allow the practice to unfold.
