June 28, 2008

THE ANATOMY OF AWE

Amazement is wonder infused with a touch of surprise.  

Add a more impactful dose of surprise, and the result is astonishment.  

Rev this up a bit, and we shift from astonishing to astounding.

And beyond this is awe. Awe includes not only the rapt attention and radical openness that characterize deep wonder, but also veneration, and a sometimes fearful reverence that can border on dread.

In awe, terror and ecstasy are separated by the thinnest of membranes. The direct realization of the Real can be not only profoundly liberating and joyful, but also terrifying. Arms may be raised in weeping bliss, and a millisecond later our entire frame of being may be stormily shaking. It’s enough to bring us to our knees. We then bow not because we choose to do so, but because we simply have to.

Awe is not just a gape-jawed reaction to the sublime. It reconnects us with  visceral immediacy to the core of Life. But this may not be as great as it sounds, because awe as a state can be accessed at just about any stage of development. For example, if rabid fundamentalists experience awe, they will very likely interpret it through the lens of their developmental level, perhaps using it to reinforce and legitimize the fundamentalism in which they are embedded. But when a very mature person, one consistently capable of intimacy with multiple perspectives, experiences awe, it is interpreted very differently. Same awe, different filter.

But strip awe of whatever conditioning clothes or colors it, and all that’s left is a speechless shiver of primal recognition, a profoundly emotional, self-transcending intimacy with irreducible Mystery. Awe is the Poetry of Revelation, too real for translation. It can’t help being ineffable.

I am in awe that we can feel awe. I am in awe that we are hardwired for awe. I am in awe that is is. And my words fall down speechless as awe pervades me, leaving endlessly sentient openness in the raw.

Awe is all the proof we need for the really big questions. Silence may be the answer, but awe is the answer in full bloom.