When we are in our body and senses and not in our head, we experience a sense of aliveness that is felt as a subtle energetic vibration, or tingling, and a sense of being alive, illumined, and aware. These sensations are how who we really are is experienced by the body-mind. That aliveness is the felt-sense of who we really are and what we experience when we are in the Now. When we are aligned with who we really are and not identified with the ego, we feel that aliveness, Presence, energetically, and it's very pleasurable.

The fact that who we really are, Essence, can be felt energetically is very handy because it makes identifying when we are aligned with Essence and when we aren't easier. That sense of aliveness can also help us realign with Essence when we are identified with the ego. If you find yourself contracted and suffering, you can search for the sense of aliveness, which is always present, and focus on it. No matter how faint the experience of aliveness is, it will increase as you pay attention to it. Focusing on aliveness is a way of accessing Essence in every moment.

The more you pay attention to the aliveness, the more obvious it becomes. It can become very strong, and when it does, it acts like an anchor, grounding us in the Now and helping us stay there. The sense of aliveness can drown out the ego's mind-chatter, relegating it to the background. If we focus on the aliveness often enough as we go about our day, it will become the foreground, and the mind-chatter will fall into the background.

When we are grounded in aliveness, we experience a deep calm and peacefulness, which allows us to move through our day with equanimity. That peacefulness is unflappable, unless our emotional body gets triggered by a belief or by someone else's belief we've identified with. When that happens, the aliveness is still present and can bring us back into the Now if we give our attention to it instead of to the thoughts and feelings that were triggered.

Not buying into our thoughts and feelings doesn't make us less human, as some might think. It's just a different way of being in the world, although not the most common one. Being aligned with aliveness instead of our thoughts and feelings actually makes us more effective and functional—and also more kind—than being identified with our thoughts and feelings.

Being aligned with Essence instead of the egoic mind is the next step in humanity's evolution. Eventually we will all awaken out of the egoic mind and live from Essence. Emotions will still exist in potential, but they won't run roughshod over the body-mind. Equanimity, acceptance, and love will be the most common state instead of discontentment, striving, contraction, and fear. Certain individuals are heralding this shift in consciousness and helping to bring it about. The potential to live from Essence exists in everyone, but only some people will make that a priority. The more people who do, the easier it will be for the rest of humanity to make that shift in consciousness.

You are probably motivated to make the shift to living from Essence. Paying attention to the feeling of aliveness is one of the most useful tools for awakening. Of course, the egoic self isn't the one who chooses to do that. What chooses to give attention to the aliveness is Essence, as it awakens you. The ego will fight that choice all the way. Essence is the awareness of the whole drama between the ego and the you that is awakening.