Power of Now Journal – Are You Present

“There is nothing you need to understand before you become present.”

Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now Journal

You may have heard Anselm’s quote: “For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand.”[1]

I discovered that belief in anything is the vital key to understanding anything. When I undertook a project of any sort, there was inside of me a belief that I would succeed in accomplishing it. But of course, when I think about it, everything in my life works on the same basis, not just projects.

As an example, anxiety has shadowed my life since childhood. In adulthood, I set about trying to understand the nature of anxiety. This was until I found that believing I could overcome anxiety was the first step to understanding anxiety.

Presence is immediate, not intellectual

You don’t have to solve your life, heal your past, understand your psychology, or figure out the universe before you can rest in awareness. Presence isn’t the result of understanding — it’s the space in which understanding becomes possible.

My mind wants to understand first, then accept. But as far as presence is concerned, this puts the cart before the horse. Presence is a state of being, not a state of how I need to think.

As a writer, I sense the moment in the article I write. I am there in person. Here is a story about one of my trips as a young salesman, selling machinery and equipment to forestry estates:

The Road to Inyangani

‘In The Early Morning’

I left at dawn, long before the hotel kitchen rattled awake or the first voices rose from the courtyard. There is a particular stillness in those early hours — not silence, exactly, but a listening. As if the world is waiting to see what you will do with the day you’ve been given. I stepped into that hush with a sense of purpose I couldn’t quite name.

Mutare lay behind me in a soft, cloudless blue, the sky just beginning to gather its light. The air was cool enough to bite, but not unkind. My old Land Rover answered the ignition with her familiar, throaty growl — a sound that had become part of my life, as steady as breath. She had carried me across some of the roughest tracks in Sub-Saharan Africa without complaint, and that morning she felt less like a vehicle and more like a companion who understood the journey ahead.

On the seat beside me sat a box of fresh newspapers. It was a small thing, but out in the forests — among the pine and wattle plantations, the sawmills, and the tea estates — news arrived late, if at all. Bringing the latest papers felt like carrying a thread that tied those remote places back to the rest of the world.

The road climbed steadily, winding through the green hush of the highlands. There was a rhythm to those drives: the hum of the engine, the dust rising behind me, the scent of pine drifting through the open window. I had made this journey many times, yet each time felt like a rediscovery — as if the land were quietly reintroducing itself.

Hours later, the mountain revealed itself. The mists lifted slowly, like curtains drawn aside, and suddenly I was standing on the summit of Inyangani. The world opened in every direction. Zimbabwe’s highlands held me firmly, yet my eyes drifted eastward into Mozambique’s soft, slow dawn. It was a moment suspended in its own light — a moment that felt both intimate and impossibly wide.

I stood on the peak of the mountain. The air was thick with the scent of flowering wattle and dew-soaked pine. I turned in a slow circle, taking in the sweep of hills and valleys, the millions of trees dissolving into a blue haze at the edge of sight. Something inside me tightened — a quiet ache, the kind that comes when beauty arrives too suddenly to prepare for. Tears rose without ceremony. I knew, even then, that no one else would ever see this moment exactly as I did.

Eventually, the mountain released me, and I wound my way down the rocky tracks into the valley. The first mill appeared through the trees, and the wind carried its own kind of welcome — the fierce cry of gang saws slicing pine logs into long, clean planks. Sweet sawdust drifted in the air, mingling with the smoke and sparks rising from the furnace where the offcuts burned. It was the sound of work, of purpose, of people shaping a life in the middle of the forest.

Then, as if the day wanted to remind me of its simple mercies, I reached a paved road and a small hotel. A warm breath of bacon and eggs drifted out to meet me, and I stopped without thinking. After all the beauty, all that quiet, breakfast felt like I had arrived back on earth after briefly visiting heaven.

Looking back now, I realise that morning on Inyangani was more than a journey. It was a beginning — a moment that settled into my bones and stayed there, shaping the way I would remember the land, the work, and the person I was becoming.

No planning could bring about the space I had entered. It was a brief moment where I stood in the present upon a high mountain, gazing at the magnificent world around me. There was nothing to understand, just my breath, the gentle wind, sweet smells, and being able to see forever – and drinking in precious presence.

Understanding is secondary

Understanding can come later — and often it comes more easily once you’re present. But it’s not the doorway. The doorway is simply noticing this moment without resistance.

Here’s a simple metaphor

It’s like standing in a garden at dusk.
I don’t need to understand botany, the soil, or the weather to feel the beauty of the moment.
I have to be there.

Presence is experiential, not conceptual

I didn’t “think my way into presence.”
I felt my way into it — through breath, sensation, stillness, or simply noticing what was surrounding me at that moment.

A clear, human interpretation

When ET says, “There is nothing you need to understand before you become present,” he’s pointing to a straightforward but radical idea:

I will repeat:

Presence is immediate, not intellectual

You don’t have to solve your life, heal your past, understand your psychology, or figure out the universe before you can rest in awareness. Presence isn’t the result of understanding — it’s the space in which understanding becomes possible.

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[1] St. Anselm-For I do not seek to understand that I may believe – Catholic Digest

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