What Could I Know If I Was Present to the Underlying Reality of the World?
Writing in the morning is an attempt to be present with myself.
And if I can accomplish this regularly, what could I know?
I can be such an obstacle to myself. Regularly engaging only passively with what is present. But when you find that hypnotizing presence of you, there is a freeing from all the propositional onslaught.
It is not a will towards escapism, to find that hypnosis, that wonder of presence. It is a will towards taking a step back and understanding the layers of our cognition rest upon the presence of us and the world.
It’s difficult to get lost there for too long. It is fleeting, even with regular practice of noticing and encountering the present moment. But glimpsing it is something that feels very important. To remember.
Recognizing the layers of our cognition, and in turn our worldview, has been a mental model I have been working with for a few years now. I have discussed in an essay how Bitcoin is a layer of cognition that allows us to build and think long term. I believe it is one of the most powerful base layers we can collectively integrate into our distributed cognition. I believe it has the potential to shape our individual cognition and the relationships in our orbit towards virtuous ends. I said in that essay that the Bitcoin network is cultural layer one.
But presence is pre-layering.
So, what could you know if you came into relationship with the reality that is before anything?
I am curious to know.
And it occurs to me that writing to be present completely misses the mark. I write to have time with myself, but am I present to myself? Or am I in conversation with every proposition, every mental model, every teacher, podcast, book, or idea I have ever encountered? It would seem I am only in conversation with the layers. You cannot be in conversation with presence.
You can only be.
And this is hard to wrap your head around, especially for a propositionally oriented person like myself. Writing has always been something I come back to over and over, to see what I am thinking. But there is no thought in true presence.
It is an opening without the lid of ideas.
And I believe this opening can orient us towards an examination and care for the cognitive layers that build on top of the pre-layering of presence to reality. It is something that points to the sacred, and I have seen it.
I recently had a moment on a beach named Playa Hermosa in Uvita, Costa Rica. I was there for the Bitcoin Freedom Festival, hosted by the folks at the Bitcoin Jungle project. Some of the people I was with were on mushrooms. I was not. But standing in the water at Playa Hermosa, and looking back at the jungle, I had a psychedelic experience. The vivid green surroundings, hit with the Costa Rican sun at the right angle brought me into the realization that I do not need to take a substance to experience that presence. This is not a knock on psychedelics, I think they can be a wonderful tool for bringing yourself into presence with our underlying reality. But the realization that I do not need them to do so felt like magic.
I nudged my friend, who had taken mushrooms, and pointed him back to the jungle to observe what I was seeing. And we shared in the psychedelic experience, in this quiet presence.
What could we know about the world if you engaged it as sacred more often?
These moments are fleeting in the maelstrom of everyday life. But what a sacred thing to be with them when they arise.