Already on Holy Ground
You don’t have to be a guru, a priest, or a Mother Theresa to experience the presence. Nor do you have to be somber, brilliant, or particularly pious. It’s right here, chopping garlic at the kitchen counter!
St. Paul, MN (PRWEB) April 29, 2014
Rich with insights drawn from his own experience, J.K. Bailey shows readers how, by stopping and turning to a simple inner presence, they can find serenity and an absence of emotional suffering. This, he says, is the remarkable gift of presence.
"Already on Holy Ground: Beyond Bliss, Awakening & Enlightenment" reveals how to experience the presence in ordinary life. The presence, Bailey suggests, is available to all. “It’s not,” he says, “about some remote spiritual awakening for the select few.” Nor is it about getting caught up in what he calls "the enlightenment game," with its chakras, guardian angels, and robe-wearing gurus.
As Bailey puts it, “The potential for awareness of presence is as much there with mechanics in the grease and grime at the local Amoco station as it is with Zen monks at a monastery in Kyoto.”
Why pay attention to presence, some might ask? “When we abide in presence, we discover a profound inner serenity,” says the author. “In my case, life’s roller coaster of ups and downs smoothed out. Old worries, fears, and judgments faded. Overall, there’s an ongoing sense all is well.”
In the first chapter of his book, Bailey tackles “the enlightenment myth.” About the quest for spiritual awakening, the author should know. On his 30-year journey, Bailey did it all: Workshops on how to get enlightened, desert treks with shamans at midnight, balancing the chakras with charismatic gurus, watching auras and past lives unfold—this was the stuff of his journey.
But the bliss rarely lasted more than a day or two, at most a few weeks. Then he’d be back full of doubts and worries, looking for the next spiritual book or awakening seminar. Or the most enlightened spiritual teacher.
Ultimately, the mind-blowing experiences fell short. Wonders that at first seemed breathtaking and exotic, turned out to be as short-lived as an evening breeze. “The more gurus I met, the more New Age fireworks I witnessed, the emptier I felt,” he says. “Something was missing.”
“What was missing,” says Bailey, “was the simple presence. It doesn’t matter how many miraculous experiences or glimpses of enlightenment we’ve had. None of it is worth the price of an iTunes download if there’s no awareness of presence. Yet right now it’s available to us all. At first it may seem remote. Yet if we abide in it, we can know without doubt that it’s real. What’s more, it can radically change us so we feel that nothing is wrong anymore.”
Bailey's new website and blog also explore awareness of presence.
REVIEWS:
“Bailey shows us God is here; in the midst of our anger, in the thick of our need to control, in the marrow of our pain, in the hush of a perfect, uneventful moment.”
—Naomi Rose, author, "Tibetan Tales for Little Buddhas"
“My teacher used to say that when we do God’s work the work does itself. Here is that process. Share it.”
—Stephen Levine, author, "Who Dies" and "Embracing the Beloved"
“Bailey shows readers that the spiritual journey always beckons us… Our lives can be transformed in a moment.”
—Karen Casey, author, "Let Go Now: Embracing Detachment"
ABOUT J.K. BAILEY:
For most of his life John Bailey has been a writer, a rambler, and a mystic. For over thirty years he ran a spiritual marathon, consumed by his quest to get enlightened. Not until 2008, when he met non-dual teacher John Wheeler, did his spiritual journey come to an end. With awareness of presence, his questions vanished. He found the serenity he'd always yearned for.
NON-STOP BOOKS:
The publisher has recently focused on titles that explore awareness of presence. Non-Stop Books published David Manners’ "Awakening from the Dream of Me," a book about spiritual transformation. MEDITATION MAGAZINE called it, “A dazzling spiritual testament… the closest thing to a guided tour of an enlightened person’s mind.”