The Message of Awe
Some experience it daily, others just sporadically. Everybody knows awe, yet it remains strangely elusive. Diminishing the elusiveness may detract from the mystery. It may also Open one up to even more depth.
Awe cannot be coerced ― yet it can be invited.
For instance, through the environment: the mountains, the sea, a sunset or sunrise, feeling how this is part of an infinitely more expansive universe, a starry night, a religious building, a specific happening, the excellence in any performance.
More abstractly, one feels this – or becomes aware of it – through an encounter with Beauty, Immensity, Depth… with the Unspeakable.
Anything that invites awe can be seen as a kind of autosuggestion.
In other words, it’s a communication with the non-conscious ― therefore, with ‘total self,’ symbolized through the awesome object or situation.
As with any autosuggestion, trying to coerce it, it may backfire.
Eventually, a symbol always leads to total self. A Symbol Is Always YOU. For instance, remember the last time you felt in awe? Chances are you also felt profoundly ‘you’ in that situation.
Awe is the feeling of grandeur in this.
It shows how wonderful and important YOU are. This is the profound message of awe.
At the same time, as in any of the above cases, awe has an awesome effect also because it head-on humbles the ego in contact with the total self ― not standing in the way for a while, being Open. Awe is this combination of humility and grandeur.
An encounter with total self ― therefore also with meaningfulness.
Awe can remarkably feel like coming home where you belong. You can feel at peace with ‘it’: your life, life in general, the universe… in a profoundly meaningful way.
Thus, experiencing awe should always be welcomed as an important moment. It is a close encounter of the meaningful kind.
It’s also a very wholesome moment. At such a time, you breathe sanity. It’s an experience that you should cherish and carry with you. An experience that – if repeated now and then – makes life more worthy.
And yes, this tends towards the mystical.
A mystical experience is always one of awe, even when it doesn’t feel so at first sight. ‘The mystical’ lies further along the road of awesomeness.
Every day an experience of awe is everyday mysticism.
An open door to Open Religion.
Wow.
Related Posts
How to Change an Opinion
Including yours. It’s not as easy as just putting facts together. Opinions are recalcitrant, and rightly so. Here are some insights to make it more ethical and doable. Phenomenal importance People cooperate with each other – in the immediate environment and worldwide – from a state of having congruent basic opinions. For instance, the opinion Read the full article…
The Autonomy and the Meaning
To be autonomous. To be an individual. To be alive. Indeed, autonomy is needed to be meaningful, to be anything at all. Then, there is more. Let’s start with the beginning. To be meaningful, one needs individuality, autonomy. Any living being strives towards autonomy. A thing has no autonomy. Chaos has no autonomy. Within its Read the full article…
Collision versus Overlap
This is about two ways of being a human being, as an individual and a social being. It goes all the way from deep inside the brain to the ordering of society. Collision: from the outside, entities clash with other entities. Overlap: Entities learn to know other entities from the inside without losing themselves ― Read the full article…