The Backward Step into Presence 1

I’ve found it helpful to think of existence—the entire play of sounds and thoughts and bodies and trees—as the foreground of life, and awareness as the background. In the Zen tradition, the shift from focusing on the foreground of experience to resting in pure being is called “the backward step.” Whenever we step out of thought or emotional reactivity and remember the presence that is here, we are taking the backward step. If we wake from a confining story of who we are and reconnect with our essential awareness, we are taking the backward step. When our attention shifts from a narrow fixation on any object—sound, sensation, thought—and recognizes the awake space that holds everything, we are taking the backward step. We come to this realization when there is nowhere else to step. No anything. We have relaxed back into the immensity and silence of awareness itself. - Tara Brach