If what has happened to you hasn’t killed you yet, why would this? You’ve survived so much, been through such a typhoon and lived to tell the tale. Battle scars are the lines on the map that show you where you’ve been–the body as record, living proof. In meditation, these battle scars don’t show up as scar tissue or wounds we show off to our friends. Instead, the battle scars are invisible. No one sees the eight rounds in the Octagon as you try over and over to return to your breath. No one sees the mindful inhale you take as you receive “bad” news. No one sees the examination of the leaves on the sidewalk on your way to work in the London drizzle.

Meditation introduces you to the silent wins of the world. No one will ever know just how much I stop and gaze at the clouds, filled with a reverence that the deeply religious must reserve for only their highest of leaders. These silent moments of stillness and appreciation, dropping away from what the world is and isn’t according to me and instead resting in the experience I had right now, are moments that I won’t get to show anyone. They aren’t a highlight reel at the end of a movie. They can’t be captured by camera. They can’t even be captured by the language I use to tell you that they can’t be captured. Meditation evades all common sense–but peace doesn’t have to make sense to be peaceful.

Meditation introduces you to the idea that you can cultivate an incredible inner world, where every step that you walk is another gift and every moment you breathe is another opportunity to find out what the world has given you freely. These moments of deep tranquility don’t come from being in a silent room and waiting for peace to settle on you; they come from watching an insect crawl across a stone, someone on the sidewalk raise their hand in recognition of a driver whizzing past, someone stretch as they amble out of a cafe with their coffee in hand.

Meditation introduces you to the snapshots of the world that we miss. The stories we see in the cinema are ones of explosions and robberies, feasts and fights. But equally engaging stories of the world happen all around us. When we stop long enough to watch the world, the world wants to be watched. Things that happen all around you are transformed into perfectly encapsulated vignettes which spill into each other, linked from moment to moment. The world truly blossoms in front of you.

We miss these things because we get lost in the labyrinth of thoughts of our minds. The simple answer, the way to transcend the maze completely, is simply to observe. Look at the customers coming into your shop–what vignette are they acting out in the few seconds you look at them? Watch your neighbors exit the doors of their homes or apartments and ask yourself what they are doing under your beam of attention. The world doesn’t have to be filled with dancing elephants and scantily clad bodies in order to suck you in like the best novel in the world. The story has already been lain out in front of you, and all you have to do is look.

We miss these things because so few people tell us that these things exist. No one tells us that the world is exciting as it is, that we can exist on the chessboard without winning or losing (link my past article here). We hear “The best things in life are free,” but the cliche washes over us like raindrops on the way from the front door to the car. What we need is the warm cleansing rain of awareness to purify us in each moment.

Awareness is a funny word. We walk through this world semi-aware. We don’t step in traffic; we pay for our meals at restaurants. But we never notice the patterns in the dirt on the hubcaps of cars in bumper to bumper rush hour. We don’t notice the waitress pick up a book in the kitchen and resume turning pages intently after she delivers our food. The awareness comes from looking around in the world more than you look around in your own head. The inner monologue will always be there; the outer world will not.

Each time we step into the world and step out of our heads, we become priests of our own experience. We learn how to baptize ourselves with the everyday, making the mundane miraculous. We give ourselves the reincarnation we so deserve: reborn into each moment with another fresh outlook, we transcend life and death by zooming into life itself. If you wait for a miracle, you will wait forever–so it is said. But the opposite is actually true: if you wait for a miracle, you will find so many that you don’t know how to comprehend the simultaneity, and it will shake up the very foundation of who you thought you were. With so many miracles, you can ask yourself–how was I born into a world that is constantly evolving, shifting, changing? With awareness, you’ll want to watch the kaleidoscope of existence forever.

The world turns, not only around the sun and moon, but it also turns like a woman in a dress spinning slowly in the dim light of a jazz club. The truth of the world is so simple: we must look to see. The world gives to us freely, so much that we can hardly take the gifts as they come. Meditation blows open the door in the back of your head and releases us from our minds. It’s all right here, and if we do nothing, we do everything.

From the soaring cliffs of Scotland to the arid deserts of Egypt, this is what the world brings us. We are here, on this earth, right now, and for free. Repay the world for all its gifts with just a little bit of attention.