Once again I lost site of my seeing glasses, this time at my University in the Swiss Alps. I searched for them everywhere – my hotel room, the classroom, made an announcement to my classmates and no one had seen them. I was wondering about them but managed let the idea sit for the time being.
Class began with two students guiding a group exercise. It was 15 minutes of tuning the attention to the the sensory surfaces of the room – things we can see, taste, touch. From noticing the scent of the air as it brushes against our skin, the texture and slope of the carpet, to the friction between the eyelids and the eye balls. No thinking was required, just a sensitivity to notice the surfaces of the sensory world. We were keenly held in a beginner’s mind.
At one point while standing, we were asked to slowly scan the entire room, rotating our bodies 360 degrees. I began to see other bodies engaged in the same exercise, a flat screen TV rested on a counter, various instruments laying there too; then I arrived to the window and my eyes flew into the mountains which were fully visible from our position in the valley. Even with blurry vision, I gazed at the rich features of the mountain range – the white snow scattered across, rocky textures, subtle colorations throughout, the trees, and just the enormity of the whole thing.
As I continued to observe with my body’s rotation, I peered back into the room and saw the kitchen and the typical utilities a kitchen contains. It all became very vivid and I could sense everyone was present in the consciousness of the moment. As I continued to follow the surface, my attention gradually touched onto a surprise – my glasses were folded around the handle of one of the drawers. I remembered I had randomly placed them there the night before. At the time, I was thinking it was a fun and unlikely place for glasses…and naturally I forgot about it.
I slipped from the silence of the room and casually commented, “Hey my glasses.” We laughed at the irony of the incident and when reflecting, I was presented with a simple yet profound message: stay on the surface and you’ll be surprised.
The human mind has an innate thirst for clarity, depth, and meaning, but one does not need to look far to attain that level of fulfillment. All is readily available through the physical senses, the present is a living memory continually at play with the body. The class exercise reaffirmed the value of dropping into the senses without fixating on beliefs. Simply staying at awe and on the surface can reveal interesting things.
A month later I found Margaritas on the surface at a beach in Spain. I finally managed to lose the glasses there.