Radical Wholeness: The Embodied Present and the Ordinary Grace of Being

a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts—based on the realization that the only real “I” is the whole endless process. This realization is already in us in the sense that our bodies know it, our bones

that the activity of what we’re calling the “brain” is not just in our heads.

The third version of the practice of presence is the natural culmination of the first and second versions (when practiced over years). I refer to that extraordinary mode of being in which the three primary centers of embodied consciousness—head, heart, and low belly—are open and clear, free of resistance to whatever energy wants to flow through, an

human physicality and life experience are extended in space and time. Contrary to appearance, we are not separate, autonomous individuals. We are radically interconnected with the natural and social world. Appearances to the contrary, we live in a highly unified, integrated world. The body, in other words, is “long.”