#1: How We Brush Our Teeth Matters
Scaffold for Lifelook: Perception, Aware Action, Attunement
Sometimes a toothbrush is just a toothbrush. Sometimes it’s an everyday doorway to wonder dressed up in minty freshness in all its electrically powered glory waiting twice a day on the bathroom shelf. The brush hums quietly in its charger, ready for reveille.
Let’s tend to the dailies.
Most mornings we simply brush. Some nights we may skip, and we taste it the next day. Yet now and then the routine widens: standing half‑awake at the basin we realize: we’re here. One foot in dream, one foot in daylight, one hand on the basin, one in the void.
Nothing too flashy. Just the whirr of electric Sonicare bristles slapping some enamel. The faint mint hit kicks the choice not to scroll. For sixty unhurried seconds podcasts stop, to-do lists lose their hook, thoughts pause. What remains is clean and direct.
Ordinary moments offer gentle clarity, and so these modest pauses serve as minute calibrations.
How about that? Momentary doorways to meaning baked right into our daily tasks. Psychologist‑poet Steve Taylor notes that presence prefers modest settings: a kettle boiling, a face being washed, a toothbrush vibrating in a half‑lit mirror.¹
Consciousness—call it awareness, being, or the field of experience—doesn’t belong to any one; it receives everything. It’s the spacious medium in which every sensation, memory, and intention appears, gently rising and falling. When the mind’s swirl subsides, that background shows itself: open, quiet, already complete.
When we brush, or wash our face, or other morning/evening routines, we can notice ourselves as this aware presence stepping forward into being itself instead of leaning back as some separate, detached observer. Rather than getting lost in toothpaste and to-do lists, we can gently rest in the spacious awareness that holds them. Philosopher and nondual teacher Rupert Spira reminds us we can never fully step outside this “aware field” because everything we meet lives within it.²
Depth psychology chimes in with Carl Jung, who mapped the psyche’s hidden architecture, who calls the recovery of such moments a step toward our task of tasks: the slow uncovering of the myth quietly shaping a life.³
Jungian analyst James Hollis encourages us to treat small rituals as portals, asking, “What story is being served here?” ⁴ Moments of introspection that help us connect with the stories shaping our lives: what’s ours? what’s conditioned? what’s borrowed? what matters? what to rinse down the drain?
When awareness settles, the usual border between “inner” and “outer” worlds blurs. The buzzing handle, the cool bathroom tiles, the fleeting plan for breakfast all float inside the same clear space. Whether we imagine brushing in glory or in the grip of worry, each image rises in consciousness and dissolves back into it.
From this angle our twice‑daily habit becomes alignment practice.
Morning: What matters today? How will I show up for myself and for others?
Evening: Did I live that way? What residue am I willing to rinse before sleep?
We can transform the mundane into tiny bits of meaning. Awareness at the enamel cleanse helps us notice the aliveness in us, offering a moment to relax into the power of life.
We plug into our innate aliveness, right now, standing in front of the mirror, toothbrush vibrating in hand, not deferring awareness to more perfect moments. After all, as Oliver Burkeman reminds us, we may only meet this ritual a few thousand more times—six, perhaps, if we’re young—so why not use each visit to show up?⁵
Such quiet check‑ins keep the direction true without drama or fanfare. A moment with our inner sanctuary.
We needn’t abandon goals or productivity. We simply stop outsourcing fulfilment to the next purchase, the next scroll, the next appraisal. Each pass of nylon over enamel streaks—meaning shines now, beneath every thought that tries to hide it.
Rinse. Spit. Smile at the minty tingle of dripping foam inching across your chin. In these tiny acts we return to ourselves: simple, fresh, and alive. We just need to tend to our Sonicare-type rituals and charge the brush for tomorrow.
¹ Steve Taylor, The Adventure: Living Fully and Freely in an Uncertain World (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2023).
² Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware (Oxford: Sahaja Publications; New Harbinger Publications, Oakland, CA, 2017), 45–57; Rupert Spira, "Love is a Place," Non-Duality Blog, accessed June 10, 2025, https://rupertspira.com/non-duality/blog/philosophy/love_is_a_place.
³ Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), xxv.
⁴ James Hollis, Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2018).
⁵ Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).
Lifelook: To live is to move as the field of change—felt, followed, and attended with care.