How a Mantra and Two Ravens Changed My Understanding of Presence
What walking with one phrase for 8 miles revealed that rushing never could
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Two ravens stood in the path ahead of me.
I was 4 miles into an 8.5 mile loop through Bois de Vincennes, a 2,460 acre park on the outskirts of Paris. The January air was cold, a light dusting of snow from the night before still visible on the ground. I had been walking for over an hour, repeating a single phrase with each step.
May I be present to sacred reality.
This is the P in my PATH rule of life. Presence to Sacred Reality. Align with Ancestral Wisdom. Transform through Walking and Learning. Hold Space for Service and Growth. I walk with these mantras regularly, letting one phrase shape an entire walk.
On this particular morning last week, I was working with presence.
The ravens were large. Larger than I expected. They stood perhaps 20 feet ahead, watching me approach. In any other circumstance, I might have walked past them without a second glance. Two birds in a park. Unremarkable.
But I was not in any other circumstance.
I was present. The mantra had been doing its work for over an hour, quieting the mental chatter that usually accompanies my steps. - was not thinking about my to-do list. I was not composing emails in my head. I was not rehearsing conversations or reviewing problems.
I was simply walking. Noticing. Present to what was actually there.
So when the ravens appeared, I did not just see them.
I watched them.
The Difference Between Seeing and Watching
There is a difference between seeing something and watching it.
Seeing is passive. It happens automatically. Your eyes register information, your brain categorizes it, and you move on. Bird. Path. Tree. Snow. The world becomes a series of labels, processed and dismissed in milliseconds.
Watching is active. It requires attention. It asks you to stay with something long enough to notice what you would otherwise miss. The way the ravens tilted their heads. The iridescent sheen of their feathers in the winter light. The deliberate quality of their movements, as if they too were assessing me.
I stopped walking.
Not because I decided to stop, but because stopping felt like the only appropriate response. The ravens had noticed me noticing them. Something shifted in the encounter. We were no longer two categories passing each other in space. We were three beings sharing a moment.
I asked, silently, if I could take a photograph.
This might sound strange. Asking permission from birds. But contemplative practice teaches that the more-than-human world is not a backdrop to our lives. It is a community of beings with their own presence, their own purposes, their own sacred reality.
The ravens did not fly away. One of these pictures is at the top of this post.
I raised my phone slowly, took a few pictures, and stood for another moment in their presence. Then they moved off the path, unhurried, and I continued my walk.
The entire encounter lasted perhaps two minutes. It reinforced my understanding of what walking with a mantra actually does.
What the Mantra Made Possible
I have walked thousands of miles.
5 Camino pilgrimages through France and Spain. Countless walks through parks, cities, and forests. I have walked for exercise, for transportation, for thinking, for grieving, for celebrating. I know what walking feels like in many different modes.
Walking with a mantra feels different.
The phrase May I be present to sacred reality is not a command. It is an invitation. It is not telling me what to do. It is orienting my attention toward what is already there. Sacred reality is not something I create through repetition. It is something I become available to through presence.
The mantra works like a tuning fork.
When you strike a tuning fork and hold it near a guitar string tuned to the same frequency, the string begins to vibrate on its own. The tuning fork does not force the string to move. It creates the conditions for resonance.
The mantra creates conditions for resonance with sacred reality.
On that January morning last week, the mantra had been working on me for over an hour. By the time the ravens appeared, I was tuned differently than I would have been on a regular walk. I was available to notice what I would otherwise have missed. I was present enough to stop, to watch, to ask permission, to be in relationship rather than simply passing by.
This is what Domain 1 means in practice.
Walking as Spiritual Practice is not just walking with good intentions. It is walking with tools that change your availability to the world. The mantra is one such tool. Silence is another. Slow pace, receptive attention, and willingness to stop all create conditions for encounter.
The ravens were there whether I noticed them or not.
But without the mantra, I would not have been there. Not really. My body would have passed that spot. My eyes would have registered two birds. My mind would have been elsewhere, composing, planning, reviewing. I would have seen ravens without ever encountering them.
Presence made the encounter possible.
What Sacred Reality Revealed
After the ravens, I continued walking.
The mantra continued too. May I be present to sacred reality. But now the phrase carried something new. I had experienced what it pointed toward. Sacred reality was not an abstract concept. It was two ravens on a winter path, met with attention rather than dismissed with a glance.
The rest of the walk revealed more.
I noticed the smell of woodsmoke drifting from somewhere beyond the park. Not just noticed it, but received it. Let it connect me to something ancient. My spiritual ancestors, the Gauls, would have known that smell as safety, as welcome, as home. Fire means people. Fire means warmth. The smell of woodsmoke on a cold morning is an invitation that has not changed in thousands of years.
I noticed a Christmas tree lying near a bench.
Someone had carried it from their apartment and left it there. Once part of the land, brought inside for a season of celebration, then discarded. I watched myself react to this. The cycle of taking, using, and throwing away. No reciprocity. No return.
These observations came about because I was present. The mantra had opened something that rushing would have closed. I was not having profound thoughts. I was simply available to what was there, letting the world speak rather than filling the silence with my own noise.
This is what contemplative walking offers.
Not escape from reality, but a deeper encounter with it. Not peace through withdrawal, but presence through engagement. The sacred is not somewhere else. It is here, in ravens and woodsmoke and discarded trees, waiting to be noticed by someone willing to slow down long enough to watch.
Domain 1 in Action
I am tending three domains of attention this year.
Walking as Spiritual Practice.
Guiding Contemplative Pilgrimage.
Teaching and Writing.
The first domain is the foundation. What I discover on the path feeds everything else. The ravens became this post. The woodsmoke will become another. The discarded Christmas tree carries teaching I am still unpacking.
This is how the domains connect.
Walking reveals. Teaching and writing translate. Guiding accompanies others as they discover their own revelations on their own paths.
But without Domain 1, there is nothing to teach. Without actually walking with presence, without letting the mantra do its work, without stopping for ravens, smelling woodsmoke, and noticing discarded trees, I have no material. I have only ideas about contemplative walking rather than the lived experience of it.
Domain 1 is not a concept.
It is a practice, and practice means doing. Walking. Repeating the mantra. Being changed by what the mantra reveals.
On that January morning in Paris, Domain 1 was two ravens and a willingness to stop.
A Practice Invitation for This Week
If you want to experience what walking with a mantra offers, here is a simple way to begin.
Choose a phrase that orients your attention toward what matters to you. It does not need to be spiritual. It could be as simple as “May I notice what is here” or “May I walk without rushing” or “May I be available to this moment.”
Walk for at least 20 minutes.
Let the phrase accompany your steps. You do not need to repeat it constantly. Let it rise and fall naturally. When your mind wanders, return to the phrase. When something catches your attention, stop. Watch. Be with whatever has asked for your presence.
Notice what the mantra makes possible.
You might encounter ravens. You might notice a smell that connects you to something ancient. You might see something discarded that teaches you about cycles of taking and returning.
Or you might simply walk and feel the difference between moving through space and being present to place.
Either way, the mantra is doing its work.
Presence changes everything.
On Wednesday, I will share more from that January walk, specifically about the smell of woodsmoke and what my Gaulish ancestors knew about fire, safety, and belonging that my body still remembers. If you walked with a mantra this week, I would love to hear what it revealed.
Walk With Me
If this resonates, I invite you to subscribe to Where Insight Meets Earth, my weekly reflections on contemplative walking, ecospirituality, and embodied practices for navigating what overwhelms us.
If you want to delve more deeply into this, I am launching the Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate at Cherry Hill Seminary in March 2026—a year-long journey exploring Earth kinship through contemplative practice. Learn more here.
In September 2026, I’m leading a contemplative walking retreat on France’s ancient Le Puy Camino, seven days of silence, movement, and practices for metabolizing what sitting cannot, in the most beautiful landscape you can imagine, on a 1,000-year-old pilgrimage path. Details here.
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~ Jeffrey
I love the idea of Domains vs. Goals and will be adding this in to my 2026 planning, thank you! I am a very fast walker and often miss engaging with whatever is on my path. Practicing presence to create the conditions for engagement is something I've been experimenting with in Mexico while here on my first solo vacation.
Being open and available to people and the world as a solo traveller has brought so many new people into my path that I would never have encountered. Thanks for sharing you're lived experiences, they are really resonating and I'm so grateful for your presence in the world Jeffrey!
I am noticing that I did not see the ravens in the photo when I first opened the post. I saw the only the path and the trees; I did not see the ravens until you pointed them out. And I notice that they are beside the path, not on it. Thank you for sharing this, Jeffrey.