The Space Beneath Reflection Is Presence

I remember a time when our private thoughts used to be just that — private. A space where we could sit with ourselves and just think things through without interruption.

But now, with social media and the increasing amount of information we can access and see beyond the boundaries of our immediate surroundings, we’re getting pulled more and more into other people’s worlds — which in turn begin shaping our reflections.

We’re increasingly sharing our most intimate thought processes online — not just to express them, but because we want to hear what others say in response.

However, social media hasn’t just changed how we share. It’s changed where our reflection happens. And when reflection shifts outside of ourselves, we lose connection to our presence — because our presence isn’t something one can find in what others reflect back to you. It’s what exists within you, before any reflection or response.

Even so, we still feel a strong urge to share what we’re planning to do next, hoping others will say if it’s the right step. We share our emotions publicly to show that we feel deeply. And we share to show how we’re integrating our thoughts or experiences — seeking feedback and reassurance that we’re integrating them the “right” way.

In other words, we’re now sharing our reflections online before we’ve really sat with them ourselves. Before we truly felt them as our own. And before we’ve brought them into conversation with others — even those closest to us.

We’re slowly becoming a society where our once-private self-reflections are becoming public — blurring the line between inner clarity and what others tell you is true.

How We Lose Our Reflection

From there, the responses we receive aren’t just opinions anymore. They start to shape what we believe is true about ourselves. What begins as sharing now becomes the space where we look for confirmation — where it no longer comes from within, but from how others respond to us.

Because our thoughts have become almost like a free-for-all, thrown out into the open for everyone to see, and the responses we receive aren’t perceived as just feedback anymore. They begin shaping our reflection through other people’s eyes.

We start integrating those responses as if they’re part of our own inner knowing — because of a deep desire to confirm we’re on the right path. But that’s when the path becomes blurred — when we begin to see it through their lens as if it were our own.

That’s when self-reflection becomes collective reflection. And our integration begins feeding the outside world — the matrix — unknowingly, because we still perceive it as if we’re doing it ourselves.

It’s natural to want validation. To share what we’re moving through. To hear how others perceive us.

But when we stop trusting ourselves — when we stop being who we are and begin becoming who others expect us to be, especially in this new world that’s being created for us — we’ll find ourselves circling right back to where it all began.

This is why presence matters.

Because what we’ve been seeking through our reflection and as validation from others isn’t just inner clarity — we’ve been seeking the space where none of that is needed, which lives in our presence.  

But our presence isn’t something we move toward. It’s what’s already there in us, already existing underneath everything we’ve been trying to work through and make sense of.

What Presence Actually Is

Presence isn’t just about being aware of what you’re doing or how you move through your day—where we often think it’s about being present in the moment, or simply being more aware of yourself and your surroundings.

Instead, when you look at the definition of presence, it simply means a state of existence.

And that state of existence—that space where nothing is missing—is your wholeness. Presence and wholeness are not separate. Presence is the state where your wholeness already exists.

When you’re in that state of existence — as your presence — you’re in a space where the negative patterns or wounds from your past don’t exist. Not because they’ve been healed, but because in that space, they’re just simply not there — as it’s the space before the wound was created.

So when we speak about being in your presence, it isn’t about the way you carry yourself, or something you need to heal into. Instead, it’s about being in that space where wounds don’t exist. 

The space before you felt the wound, before you recognized it as such, and before your mind perceived it as something negative that happened to you — and where it was processed or understood to be a wounding.

That’s why connecting to your presence isn’t about changing how you think or finding a new way to process your thoughts or heal your wound.

Because when you’re in your presence, there’s nothing to process or heal.

The wound simply stops existing as part of your current experience — because you’re not in the part of yourself where the wound was created. You’re actually in the space before the wounding was understood to be wounding.

Presence Is the Space Before the Wound

And when you are in that space, the space before you recognize it as wounding — that is when your perception shifts.

It is where your thoughts change.
Where your body feels different.
And your emotions now feel settled.

Because when you are in this space as presence, you’re no longer defining yourself by what happened to you, or by what you’re continually trying to resolve or heal.

Instead, you stop identifying yourself as someone who’s been wounded — because you’re in the space before the wound was ever felt, recognized, or understood in the way you once held it.

And now, you are in that space of yourself where you begin to remember your wholeness — and begin to live as your presence.