David Robert Ord

Would it help you if you could see from the life of another person what it actually takes to become present, then stay present in each moment of your day?

A lot of us have moments when we are present, but we can’t sustain it throughout our workday and time with our family.

We either drift into thought or we become emotionally reactive to something that upsets us.

Well, there is a historical personage who models for us exactly what presence is and shows us how to become present to the point that it stays with us our whole day through.

But as well as this famous historical individual, there’s also a delightful fictional character, the product of the brilliant insight of the early French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupery, whose story addresses why we find it so hard to be true to ourselves and so easily lose ourselves in relationships, why we become so reactive to each other, and why it’s so difficult to get along with one another.

This fictional character is The Little Prince, who meets a crashed pilot in the Sahara Desert and introduces him to what it means to live consciously in the state of present-moment awareness—as well as showing him why this changes completely the way we relate to each other.

What amazed me when I first read the story of The Little Prince is the way both his experiences and those of the crashed pilot mirrored my own life. The insights are just so right-on, it’s truly mind-blowing. I really had my eyes opened.

But even more amazing is the way the tale of The Little Prince parallels the experience of the historical personage I have in mind.

Together, these two characters show that if we are going to be conscious in the way we live our life—if we are going to come from real awareness, so that we don’t live dysfunctionally—there are experiences we simply have to go through and cannot escape.

And the beauty of both these stories, the current imaginary character and the historical character, is that they show us exactly how to negotiate the obstacles that arise.

They also explain why the difficulties we encounter in life are actually our friends and not our enemy—and how, once we become true to ourselves, we are at last equipped to get close to each other without all of the usual emotional drama.

If I mention this historical person’s name, most of the world will immediately get the whole wrong idea of what I’m talking about. They’ll think I’m speaking of a religious figure, when I have nothing of the kind in mind.

There was absolutely nothing religious about Jesus of Nazareth, which is why good churchgoing people often couldn’t stand him, whereas those who loved to party, have a good time, and enjoy life—including social outcasts such as prostitutes and people who drank too much—thoroughly appreciated his presence.

I'm persuaded that Jesus is in fact the most misunderstood person in history, precisely because most of us resist being introduced to our true self lest we have to show up in our life for the magnificent person we really are.

We don't want to meet the real Jesus, preferring a religious figure who's more mysterious to us, because we don't want to meet our real self.

The journey of The Little Prince actually helped me understand the story of Jesus in a very different way from how Jesus is usually portrayed. At the same time, Jesus gave me insight into what The Little Prince’s journey is really about.

So deeply did these two stories affect my life that I ended up writing two books—one about how Jesus mirrors our essential being and calls us to awaken to our true self and live in present-moment awareness, the other about how the really difficult, painful times that come into our life are intended to crack open the shell of our false egoic self so that who we really are can at last emerge.

You can get the book Your Forgotten Self right here on this site at a special discounted price or you can obtain it through any book source. The seven-hour audio book on five CDs, Lessons in Loving—A Journey into the Heart, is available only from this website.

I wrote both these books because these two characters, so very different and yet so much the same, changed my life in a way I can't even begin to describe. It's just night and day from the way I used to be.

I invite you to let both Jesus and The Little Prince introduce you to your true self also—and to show you how to bring who you really are into all your relationships.