[vladgiverts]

> But there is something wonderful in watching a figure emerge from the stone unsummoned, feeling the presence of something within you, the writer, and also beyond you – something consistent, wilful, and benevolent, that seems to have a plan, which seems to be: to lead you to your own higher ground.

As a student of spiritual work, it sounds like the author is pointing to an actual felt experience. It’s very much possible (and common among serious inner-work students) to dis-identify from our usual sense of self and instead feel a “presence” or a sense of “being”, where our body takes actions without us a experiencing ourselves as the “doer” of those actions. It’s as if the universe (or God for the religiously inclined) is acting through us and we are simply a field of awareness that happens to include the body and mind and our whole nervous system.