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
Inner Friend or Foe?
One can treat one’s inner being as a friend or enemy. It’s good to make this an explicit choice. It’s too important to let it be a choice imposed upon you. People are not conscious of their non-conscious mental processing Yet, the science in this is unequivocal. The inner, non-conscious mental life of a person Read the full article…
Weak, Hard, Strong, Gentle
One picture’s worth In this picture, I put weak versus hard, whereas gentle and strong are rather pointing to each other. In many real-life situations, people put the two blobs in the picture against each other. They don’t want to be (A), so they fall into (B) or vice versa. I see in this an Read the full article…
Descartes’ Dual Error
“There is no body-mind unity, nor non-conscious mental processing.” Both errors, as made by Descartes, are intrinsically intertwined — eventually, the same error. It is at the non-conscious level that body and mind overlap. Conscious awareness, being an emergence, is like a shadow on the wall — present, yet not influencing the wall. Thus, making Read the full article…