"Certain situations or experiences call forth awe without any effort at all. Witness a whale breaching or an eagle soaring, hear a baby's first cry or look upon a magnificent sunset, and the heart responds and connects.

"Those 'free samples' of awe take no effort, but if we want to train the heart to open to awe, then we must undertake some practice. It needs to be clear, though, that cultivating the capacity to experience awe requires not that you seek out the spectacular, but rather that you endeavor to find the spectacular in everything.

"Right now, fix your eye on something that is in your immediate environment. It could be a flower or a pencil, a table or a teacup. Just look at that object until you can sink your consciousness into its very essence, so that you experience how truly remarkable it is that it exists at all. See its material and color and its orderly composition that converge in the altogether miraculous fact that this discrete thing exists in the world. How remarkable! How inconceivable! How awesome!

"Repeat this exercise as many times in this period as you are able."

To Practice This Thought: Try this way of seeing, and let yourself be awed by the miraculousness of what we mistakenly consider to be "ordinary."