I believe that Spirit is one and is everywhere present. That it never leaves me. That in my ignorance, I may withdraw from it, but I can realize its presence from the instant I return to my senses...

— Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Notice the word Angelou uses: withdraw. Not banished. Not abandoned. Withdraw, as if Spirit were a tide that never actually leaves the shore, even when we walk inland and forget the ocean is there. This is the small self's great misunderstanding. It mistakes its own distraction for distance, its own forgetting for God's absence.

The work, then, is not seeking. It is remembering. We do not have to manufacture a connection to something larger than ourselves—we have only to return to our senses, to this breath, this moment, and find that the connection was never broken at all. The small self wants a project, a pilgrimage, a technique that will finally deliver presence. The True Self knows presence was never the destination. It was the ground we were standing on the whole time.

And this is the quiet promise underneath Angelou's words: realization is instant, not earned. The moment we return to our senses—not years from now, not after enough discipline or enough proof—Spirit's presence is simply there to be recognized. We are not climbing toward God. We are waking up to what surrounds us already.