12/01/2025
✨: Card of the a Week:✨:
Presence: I Exist Intensely
Scholars believe that Christ spoke Aramaic, among other languages. And the Aramaic word for death translates as “existing elsewhere.” This translation implies that when the body ceases to function, this essence of who we are, this presence of love within us, still exists, just mysteriously, somewhere else.
Death then is not an end, but an irrevocable transition—a transformation from being present in the body, behind our eyes, to being present in a place that’s ultimately unknowable to the living.
This translation of death also allows us to understand the way that the egoic-self can cause a form of death, by forcing us to exist elsewhere, at different points throughout our lifetime.
The strength in the seven powers that Mary Magdalene names in her gospel is that they compel us to exist either in the past, painfully regretting or longing for what was. Or casting our presence into the future, clinging to what might be. So many of us live like this: ransoming our present joy until we reach some distant point when we have what we think we want.
The seven powers of the ego take us from the present moment. And the only place that we can actually create change in our lives is when we have the courage to just be with the presence of love right here within. So, every time we return from the “death” of existing elsewhere, in the past or in the future, we’re coming back to life.
All it takes to be present again, all it takes to come back to this body, to this one ferociously precious life, to this potent moment, is three breaths. And this is both the easiest and hardest part about being human. Because it takes becoming aware that we are no longer present, and that’s the arduous part. It takes waking up again and again, fighting for our capacity to be here, to exist intensely. And for those of us with histories of trauma, the work is even more intense, and the return is even more triumphant. ❤️🔥
Soul-Voice Meditation: What can I release to exist intensely in the present moment?