Yesterday, something quietly magical happened.
My parents are spending Christmas with me this year. We’re keeping it simple, doing a breakfast thing. As I was thinking about my mother, I felt a nudge to give her an extra gift. Not something planned. Something intuitive.
I paused and asked, almost playfully, Where do I need to go to find this gift? I was standing at Midland Gate Shopping Centre, surrounded by the usual movement, noise, and end-of-year bustle.
No sooner had the question landed than a butterfly appeared in front of me.
It didn’t flutter randomly. It moved with purpose, drawing me forward through the centre until I found myself standing at the entrance of Dusk, a candle and sensory store.
Inside, the butterfly led me toward the back of the shop. I stopped in front of a single shelf lined with candles, creams, and fragrances. I couldn’t move beyond it. Something held me there.
I muscle tested what my mother’s priority gift was. As I did, my eyes landed on a fragrance called New Beginnings.
It felt Divinely timed and Aligned
How Presence Arrives Through the Senses
What struck me later was not just what happened, but how it happened.
Presence did not arrive as a thought or decision.
It arrived through my senses.
The lower senses, the ones that root us in the body, came online first.
My sense of movement slowed. I stopped rushing.
My sense of balance steadied as I stood still.
My life sense softened, that internal signal that says, you’re okay right here.
My sense of touch was awakened by texture, warmth, and proximity.
These senses are quiet until they’re disturbed. When they settle, the body feels safe enough to listen.
Then the middle senses, the ones that help us meet the world, began to speak.
Smell and memory intertwined as I stood before the candles.
Taste became discernment rather than excess.
Sight narrowed, not to distract, but to focus.
Even warmth was present, not just temperature, but emotional ease.
The world no longer felt loud or demanding. It felt receptive.
And finally, the higher senses, the ones that allow us to truly perceive another human being, opened.
When Presence Opens Conversation
A shop assistant approached me. She wore the most beautiful antler headband, something between a winter myth and a gentle deer-goddess presence. I told her about the butterfly and how it had led me there.
She paused, smiled, and told me the butterfly had followed her into work that morning. She had taken it as a sign. “Everything happens for a reason,” she said.
In that moment, the sense of hearing shifted from background noise to tone and meaning.
The speech sense moved beyond words into understanding.
The thought sense allowed me to perceive what she was carrying without her needing to explain it all.
And the ego sense, the most human of all, recognised her not as a role or a transaction, but as a sovereign “I”.
I shared that I run a bio-electric pain management clinic and work as a holistic practitioner. As the words left my mouth, a wave of goosebumps moved through both of us at the same time. She quietly shared that she was carrying a lot. That she was in pain. That life felt heavy.
Nothing needed fixing.
We were simply present.
When the Present Replaced Presence
At some point, the present replaced presence.
Christmas shifted from something experienced to something performed. From attunement to obligation. From sensory nourishment to sensory overload.
When the lower senses are overwhelmed, the body feels unsafe.
When the middle senses are overstimulated, the world feels hostile.
When the higher senses are bypassed, people feel unseen.
This is why so many feel flat at Christmas.
Flatness is not failure.
It is feedback from a nervous system longing for meaning.
From Dawn to Dusk
What struck me most about that day was how ordinary it looked from the outside.
A shopping centre.
A butterfly.
A shelf.
A conversation.
And yet, from dawn to dusk, something essential unfolded because I was paying attention.
The most important gifts weren’t bought or wrapped.
They were moments of sensing.
Of perceiving.
Of recognising one another as human.
Presence was the gift.
And it was shared.
Footnote: The 12 Senses
The 12 senses described here draw on somatic, neurological, and developmental frameworks, including the Rudolf Steiner tradition, which organises perception into lower (embodiment), middle (world-sensing), and higher (relational) senses.
This layered sensory architecture explains why presence is not symbolic.
It is sensory.
By Dawn Kelly, Founder of the Inner Compass – Guiding you to align with the highest expression of your true self.
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