Week Eighty-Five: Revisiting Inhabiting Your World with Awareness

A recent article I read described the experience of a Zen monk who was visiting the United States in order to teach meditation. As he entered the meditation hall, in the area where people were putting their shoes, he was surprised to notice that some participants threw their shoes into a heap, with no apparent awareness or mindfulness about the process. His comment in the article was that even the simple act of taking care with our shoes is important and reflects a basic relationship to our world: are we awake or asleep as we move through life?

As I read the article, I revisited some thoughts I’ve shared before about the importance of bringing awareness into the smallest of our daily activities. This time, I also thought about the importance of actively respecting not only our environment but all the objects we take so for granted on a daily basis. As I believe I’ve mentioned before, the Findhorn Community, in Scotland, models a kind of ongoing awareness of, and respect for, the environment that inspires a deeper consciousness of daily activities. For example, when they finish with a meal, as they wash, dry, and put away the utensils they’ve used, they take a moment to thank these items for their contribution to the meal. This doesn’t mean that the utensils themselves “hear” or receive that gratitude in any tangible way. What it does mean is that the people using the utensils have taken the time to notice all the elements that contribute to the process of nourishing themselves.

For this week’s experiment, I’d like to invite you to become conscious of the many small elements that make up the routines of your daily life, and to acknowledge their contribution. For example, when you brush your teeth, take a moment to notice how you handle the toothpaste and toothbrush, and become aware of the place you have chosen to keep these elements of daily life. Are they stored consciously and carefully, or do you just throw them into a glass or the medicine cabinet when you finish with them? When you use a glass for a drink of water, do you wash it and put it away afterward with a recognition of the contribution it has given to quenching your thirst?

Even though this kind of practice may seem to invite a hyper-awareness, it actually offers a way to be awake to the present moment. It’s one more way to fully inhabit this moment, and to bring to it an acknowledgment of the elements that make it possible.

As with all the experiments, allow yourself to play with this one. Notice what it’s like to invite yourself to be more on-goingly awake, and pay particular attention to any mixed feelings this may activate in you. Sometimes, we want to float through a day without really being present, and this can – over time – become a habit that’s hard to break. What’s delightful to discover is that being present in this moment, right here and right now, offers a feeling of being alive in a sometimes subtle, yet always nourishing, way. Even when the moment is uncomfortable, to be fully in it lets you know you’re fully alive, especially when you remember that moments inevitably pass and become something else very soon.

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