Day 123: Finding the Present in the Unexpected

How the Subtle Sensory Moments of Life Can Open the Gateway to Presence

It is tempting to think of presence as something reserved for mountaintops and meditation rooms. We imagine it as an elusive state, accessible only when the noise of life quiets down and the conditions are just right. But presence does not wait for silence. It is not the privilege of monks, sages, or those with time to spare. Presence is available, always, in the most ordinary of things: the steam rising from your tea, the glint of sunlight on a windshield, or the scent of rain in the air before a storm.

Religious traditions across cultures have long pointed toward these quiet invitations. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells his followers, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” This statement suggests a radical notion even by today’s standards. The sacred is not distant or mysterious. It is close, immediate, and woven into everyday life. Buddhist teachers describe satori, moments of sudden awakening, not as grand spiritual events but as flashes of insight during mundane acts. In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki writes, “When you wash rice, wash rice.” In other words, full attention to the simplest tasks can offer a glimpse of awakening.

Modern culture, however, often distorts this message. Presence is commercialized as spectacle, requiring special conditions or extreme practices. Viral videos highlight silent retreats, ice baths, or digital detoxes. While these may be helpful, they also reinforce the illusion that presence lies somewhere else, just beyond reach. In truth, it is often the smallest, quietest moments that offer the clearest access. The whisper of wind through a window, the hum of a refrigerator, the unexpected warmth of a kind smile; these are not detours. They are the doorway.

The question is not whether the present moment is accessible. It is whether we are willing to notice it.

The Neuroscience of Noticing

Presence is not just a poetic ideal. It is a measurable state rooted in how our brains function. Neuroscience confirms what mystics have taught for centuries: awareness of the present moment changes both perception and experience.

A key concept in understanding this process is the Default Mode Network (DMN). This is the part of the brain activated when our thoughts drift to the past, future, or imagined scenarios. It is often engaged when we ruminate, plan, or mentally rehearse. While the DMN supports creativity and memory consolidation, persistent activation has been linked to anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation. It is the neurological basis for what many describe as "autopilot."

What helps interrupt this pattern? Direct sensory attention. When we deliberately focus on physical sensations—sounds, sights, textures, smells—different areas of the brain light up. These include the insula, associated with internal awareness; the anterior cingulate cortex, responsible for attention regulation; and the somatosensory cortex, involved in processing physical touch.

A study by Brewer et al. (2011) showed that experienced meditators had significantly reduced DMN activity during mindfulness practices. More importantly, even novice practitioners experienced benefits with short, consistent effort. Other research (Kiken et al., 2015) on micro-mindfulness found that brief, 10-second practices during routine tasks measurably improved mood, increased empathy, and lowered stress levels.

These findings confirm that presence is not about time investment but about quality of attention. Each moment of sensory engagement creates new neural pathways. The more often we practice noticing, the more the brain adapts toward clarity and responsiveness. In essence, the brain learns to live in the moment.

Rather than requiring extreme methods, presence arises from a shift in attentional focus. The door is not far away. It is right in front of us.

Integration: How to Live with Open Doors

Recognizing that presence is accessible in everyday life is a powerful realization, but putting it into practice requires conscious effort. Fortunately, the path toward presence is not paved with difficulty or deprivation. It begins with small, simple actions that interrupt habitual distraction and invite awareness back into the body and senses.

Here are three approaches you can begin practicing today.

1. The Three-Sense Pause

Once or twice a day, pause for just a few seconds and ask:

• What do I hear right now?

• What do I see?

• What do I feel on my skin?

This exercise requires no preparation and can be done in any environment—at your desk, in the shower, or while walking. Research on attentional anchoring suggests that engaging multiple senses at once reduces stress and increases groundedness. The act of noticing creates a pause in reactive thinking and opens space for more intentional responses.

2. Ritualize the Mundane

Choose one ordinary task—boiling water, brushing your teeth, locking your front door—and commit to doing it with full attention every time. Let this action become your daily ritual of presence. Over time, it becomes a kind of neural trigger for awareness. Your brain begins to associate this act with coming back to the moment.

Ritual does not need to be religious or elaborate. It only needs to be consistent. This sense of rhythm, even in something as small as handwashing, helps cultivate predictability and calm. It also trains the nervous system to shift away from hypervigilance and back into equilibrium.

3. Embrace the In-Between

Much of life happens in transition. Between meetings. Between emails. Between destinations. These in-between moments are easy to dismiss or fill with distraction. But they are also powerful opportunities to practice presence.

Next time you are waiting (i.e. for a website to load, a microwave to beep, or someone to text back) use that pause to notice something real. The way the air feels on your skin. The background noises you usually tune out. The color of the sky.

You do not have to label these things or attach meaning to them. Just witness. Just experience. Each one is a small door waiting to be opened.

Choosing the Small Door, Again and Again

Presence does not depend on changing your circumstances. It depends on changing your attention. The world is filled with invitations to return, to feel, to see, to sense, to be.

The small doors into now are always open. They exist in the silence between words, the warmth of a mug in your hands, the glint of light on a morning surface. They do not ask for effort. They ask for receptivity. They do not promise perfection. They promise depth.

By noticing these doorways, by choosing them again and again, we reshape our experience of time. We begin to live not in anticipation or regret, but in grounded connection with what is unfolding. This is where peace lives. Not in the dramatic or distant, but in the deeply familiar.

If this reflection has brought you a moment of clarity, a pause for breath, or a renewed sense of calm, consider sharing it. Someone in your life may be waiting for their own small door—and your voice might be the key that helps them see it.

Visit Lucivara.com daily for more practices, reflections, and invitations to live deeply. Together, we can help more people step through the door of now, and into the beauty of presence.