If you want to know what it is like to experience presence with another person, just sit with an infant, face to face, for an extended period of time. There are no words to get in the way. There are no mental concepts. There is just the experience of being with another human being. The speaking is done in silence, not words. The mind isn’t used; only awareness. It is an awareness of connection.
I experienced that when my daughter, Kamilia, was born almost 20 years ago. And now I get to experience it again, with a baby that my wife, Maggie, is caring for.
Recently Maggie decided to retire from her mental health counselor work and work with babies. And now, we have the opportunity to have a 12-week-old baby brought to our house five days a week. And though he is only an infant, his presence fills our house with a sweet happiness. Although his care is my wife’s job, I can’t resist just sitting with him, staring into his eyes and watching a big smile transform his face from a contemplative mode to one of joy and fascination.
What babies are, in essence, shine unobstructed by ego and mental posturing. You get to be with each other. Not with each other’s thoughts, but with each other’s presence. It is wonderful to see the response I get when I smile at him. He smiles back. A reminder that a smile needs no translation. Human warmth evokes a response of human warmth.
I received a call today from a friend in Washington, DC who is very mystically inclined. When I told him about my enjoying having this little guy around, he knew immediately what I was talking about. He said, “That’s wonderful. You get to experience presence with another being.”
We all have moments when we experience presence with other people. But all to often words and labels get in the way. When we meet someone, so often we want to categorize the person by asking, “What do you do for a living?” And then we have a concept of who that person is.
But with a baby, you can’t do that.
I remember Emerson’s words: “Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.”
So why is the presence of an infant so powerful? Is it because the infant isn’t full of desires and demands? Is it because it enjoys your company, not for what you can provide it, but simply because you are its company at this moment?
In a world where knowledge is so valued, it is refreshing to enjoy the charms of innocence, of someone not in the know. When we take him out in the stroller, he doesn’t look at the trees as trees. Oak trees and pine trees haven’t been labeled in his mind yet. They are, instead, beautiful creations of life — dancing, flowing, graceful and majestic. He has never once cried when out in the stroller. Instead he is overpowered by the light dancing on the leaves, the squirrels dancing from limb to limb, the birds gliding across the sky.
To see the fascination of life in his eyes is a reminder to me to live in the present moment, to be receptive to life in all of its glory, and to love for the sake of loving.
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