Presence, Truth, and the Collapse of Images
There are very few things that can be said without qualification. Most statements depend on language, agreement, memory, or belief. They may be useful, accurate, or meaningful, but they are not absolute. When examined closely, they dissolve.
A small set of truths does not.
The most fundamental of these is the statement “I am.”
Not as an identity, not as a role, and not followed by any description—just being. “I am” does not rely on language to be true. It does not change with circumstance. It cannot be denied without first being affirmed, because to deny it, one must already be.
Alongside this are three other truths of the same order:
- The only time is now.
The past exists only as memory occurring now. The future exists only as anticipation occurring now. Experience has no access to any other time. - The only day is today.
Every day that has ever been lived was lived as “today.” Named days are conceptual overlays added after the fact. - I can only be here; I can never be there.
“There” is always imagined. The moment it is reached, it becomes “here.” Experience has no center other than itself.
Together, these form an irreducible frame:
being, here, now.
Nothing experienced ever falls outside it.
What Cannot Be Ultimately Real
Once this frame is seen clearly, a natural question arises: What cannot be included here?
Anything that depends on distance, duration, or definition cannot be ultimate. Identities, stories, beliefs, moral narratives, progress, and even explanations themselves all require thought to sustain them. They appear within presence, but they are not presence.
This does not make them false in a practical sense. It makes them secondary.
Reality, at its base, is not discovered by adding ideas, but by subtracting what cannot remain without effort.
Image, Imagination, and the Question of God
This reframes the ancient claim that humans are made in the “image of God.”
Taken literally, the idea of image fails. An image requires separation—an original and a copy, a subject and a reflection. But presence allows for no such distance. There is no outside vantage point from which being could be mirrored.
A more precise understanding is that existence arises within imagination, not image—not imagination as fantasy, but as the generative capacity of awareness itself. Forms do not replicate the source; they appear within it.
From this perspective, humans are not reflections of God. They are local expressions of presence becoming aware of itself.
And this leads to an uncomfortable but unavoidable implication:
if humans are not images, then neither are their gods.
Any god with a form, a personality, preferences, or a location is already a conceptual crystallization—something thought about reality, not reality itself. Such gods are not necessarily false, but they are downstream. They are translations, not originals.
This is why mystics across traditions eventually say things that sound paradoxical or even irreverent: God is not a being. God is nothing. God is beyond God. These are not denials; they are refusals to mistake symbols for what they point to.
Where Explanation Ends
At a certain point, even the cleanest explanation collapses.
Not into confusion, but into simplicity.
Before a thought arises, something is already present. That presence does not depend on understanding. Explanations appear within it and vanish from it, but it remains unchanged.
This is why the next step is not philosophical. It is not an insight to be acquired or a state to be achieved. It is simply noticing what is already happening without effort.
Breathing happens.
Seeing happens.
Being happens.
Nothing dramatic occurs. Life continues as before. Names still work. Trees are still trees. Responsibilities remain.
What changes is not experience, but what experience is mistaken for.
Beliefs lose their weight. Identities loosen. Gods and selves become useful concepts rather than anchors. Nothing needs to be defended.
What remains is not certainty, not enlightenment, not conclusion—just this:
being, here, now.
Which, inconveniently and beautifully, was never missing.
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