It's difficult to find peace in the world. By nature the universe is continually moving and changing. If a peace is found then it's only a temporary peace. However, there is a Permanent Peace. It's not something to be found, but it's at the heart of all the searching. Permanent Peace is timelessly present whilst the world spins around. In the world it is like the still centre, and this pattern repeats throughout the universe - a still centre at the heart of movement and change. We see it in the strong trunk of a tree, from which the branches grow outwards. It's in the swirl of water going down a plughole, and the eye of the hurricane as it whirls around. It's in the opening and closing of a flower and the seeming stillness of our view from planet Earth as the stars and planets move round.

These pockets of peace that we perceive aren't wholly accurate. Planet Earth isn't really still. Nothing in the world of movement and change remains still. It's just that they can seem still or they can represent stillness temporarily. Yet there is a True Stillness. It is this True Stillness from which and in which this world of motion is perceived. True Stillness is beyond time and space. Time and space appear within its timeless spacelessness. It's an infinite indivisible Singularity. It's always Here and Now.

Eckhart Tolle often mentions Presence or Being Present in his talks. He sometimes mentions The Present Moment. It's not really a moment in time, of course. He is referring to the timeless Now. This Presence is the true nature of all things. It is That in which time and space seem to stretch out. All the while, Presence is right Here, Now. It is the pure, perfect peace. It's not made of anything. Presence wasn't created. It is timeless and formless. It's an unshakeable Singularity. It cannot be moved or harmed. It cannot be broken or split in two. It is the true nature of the seemingly ever-moving world.

Presence has no beginning or end, no inside or outside. How do we know it's here? Because we know. The very fact of being aware tells us that we are here. We are the Aware Presence that is here. It's not that because there is a human there is Presence. The human is perceived because of Presence. Presence comes first. Well, it would be more accurate to say Presence is timelessly present, before any appearance of first and last. It reminds one of the Bible quote (John 1:8), "Before Abraham was, I am." It means that before the world appeared, Being was present. We can think of it like this: before the universe began, Presence was all that there was; but there was no time, no past or present tense, just Presence, Now. So Presence was before any appearance of beginning. It remains as it is throughout all apparent time and change, and is all that there is once time seems to come to an end.

It's difficult to understand it if one is firmly rooted in the notion of time as reality. The problem is that time isn't reality. Presence is Reality. That's why the question of what was before the beginning doesn't seem to make sense. There is no beginning, or end. There is only the timeless Now/Presence/Peace, and in this the world of time and space whirls around.