We Don’t See The World As It Is

I recently had an experience that reminded me of a timeless spiritual teaching.

On a recent visit to the grocery store, I had on my handy-dandy grocery list to get some cornstarch. I am so familiar with this grocery store that I know exactly where the cornstarch is located (with other baking needs).

So I went to the isle and section in question and began looking of the shelves for the cornstarch. My first, quick, search found no cornstarch. I looked again, casting my eyes further afoot to neighboring shelves (left and right, up and down)…still no cornstarch. “That’s odd.”, I thought. “I know this is where the cornstarch always it, normally.” I looked more, this time walking up and down the isle a little bit...but I still could not find the cornstarch. I could see the container of cornstarch in my mind’s eye (remembering the jar of cornstarch I had brought home many times before), but I couldn’t see any cornstarch on the shelf.

I noticed a store clerk working at the end of the isle. I walked down to greet him and asked, “Do you have any cornstarch in stock?” “Yes,” he said. “It’s just over there,” gesturing in the general direction where I had already been looking.

I walked back down to the area I was originally looking in and couldn’t see any cornstarch. The store clerk kept calling out, “It’s there! Right there!” still gesturing in the exact area I was standing in. “It’s on the top shelf,” yelled the clerk, now seemingly getting a little annoyed with me.

I looked up toward the top shelf and still could not see the cornstarch. I started walking toward the store clerk and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t see any cornstarch.”

The store clerk stopped what he was doing and walked down with me to where I had been standing. To my somewhat-embarrassment, the store clerk reached out to gently remove the box of cornstarch off the shift, smiled, and handed it to me. I stood there with a dumb-founded look on my face. I looked back at the shelf and there, indeed, were the boxes of cornstarch…exactly where I had been looking all this time. But why hadn’t I seen the box?

The reason I didn’t see the box of cornstarch was because I was looking for a round, plastic jar of cornstarch. That’s the format it had come in the previous dozen times I bought cornstarch from that store. But the format had changed (from a round, plastic jar to a square box).

I eventually laughed at my folly and proceeded to finish my grocery shopping. But as I continued about my grocery store outing, I was reminded of a timeless spiritual teaching.

We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we want it to be. I had been looking directly at the box of cornstarch, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it because I was expecting (i.e., wanting) the cornstarch to be in a round, plastic container. I was blind to the new format of packaging, even though the package clearly had ‘cornstarch’ written on the front of it.

The experience got me thinking, “How many other times in my life have I not seen something because I have a pre-conceived thought/image of what it should look like, instead of what it actually looks like?” No doubt I have done it many times. But hopefully I’ll do it less, now that I’ve had some awareness practice!

Robert Meagher has been ordained as an Interfaith Minister and certified as a Sacred Attention Therapy (SAT) Therapist. Robert is the Founder and Spiritual Director for Spiritual Guidance and Co-Founder of the Center for Human Awakening.