Looking Around with Presence

Transcript

This is a beautiful thought, how your life is already wonderful.

I was just thinking about looking around.

The other day I left Queretaro coming back to Guadalajara through Morelia and it happens a lot of the time as I am leaving a place I need to look around, double and triple check to make sure I haven’t left or forgot anything.

In those moments it does seem very important because sometimes, it doesn’t happen to me often but occasionally I do leave something behind. I wonder how could I have even missed that I’m sure that even as I look around the room perhaps I even looked directly at the object that I missed and somehow didn’t see it even though it was right before my eyes.

So it does make me think well now I try to get into the habit when I leave a place like that I look around out of intention not out of routine but deliberately.

Trying to look at things as if I am looking for the first time as if I don’t know what to expect. Of course if we expect something to be there, sooner or later it becomes part of the background.

A lot of people have experiences with disappearing object phenomenon, which is a funny thing that happens. Part of the cause sometimes, not all the time, what is happening is we are just not looking clearly at what is going on. We can take a moment, say a prayer to Saint Anthony the Patron Saint of Lost Objects and when we open our eyes we find the objects.

Part of it yes is because we are looking again, looking with fresh eyes. Maybe you have heard this expression. I forget exactly how it goes but: one can look, so one does not see.

Because we have the ability to look around we don’t really exercise it which is kind of strange.

When we do leave a place like a friends house or a cafe or an airbnb, a hotel, we have that opportunity to be truly present with the place that we are leaving. This will serve a wonderful purpose.

It’s practical so we don’t for get things but it’s also gives us a chance to notice what is really going on around us.

Thank you for noticing your surroundings. Thank you for being present. Thank you for not leaving objects behind in your airbnb. Thank you for being aware and a part of the world around you.