Experiencing Awe
How 'Double Rainbows' tell our Egos to STFU!
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
Rachel Carson
If you’ve worked with me or listened to my podcast, you know I often talk about the 10 traits of Positivity from the work of Barbara L. Fredrickson, in her book Positivity.
One of my favourite traits is Awe.
I spent some time with my niece last night, combing through the wild raspberry bushes weaving through a row of tall evergreens in her backyard, which is the same backyard I grew up in.
We didn’t have raspberry bushes growing up. They miraculously appeared one day and spread - abundance in the wild. This is one of example of everyday Awe for me.
So naturally, when I saw Awe - The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life, by Dacher Keltner, I had to sink my teeth into it.
Several weeks later, (and a day behind my own schedule) I’m sharing some nuggets for us.
What is Awe and why is it worth your attention?
Keltner and his longtime collaborator Jonathan Haidt studyied writings of mystics on encounters with the Divine, peak experiences (flow, joy, bliss, enlightenment), anthropologists’ accounts of Awe (in dance, music, art and religion), to come up with this definition:
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”
And why?
Awe is “thriving in the present, awe brings us joy, meaning, and community, along with healthier bodies and more creative minds.”
It also helps to; quiet our ego, create a pathway to healing from losses and trauma, reduce inflammation in our bodies, and find connection.
Let’s get into it.
Creative Nuggets
Allowing ourselves to witness and experience Awe provides us the opportunity to pause, and just be happy.
Right now. With very little effort on our part.
We are human beings, and not human doings after all.
It’s worth considering how Awe might fuel you to create?
Or how your creation might serve as the fuel for Awe in others?
The Most common indicators of Awe: 8 Wonders
Moral Beauty - Philosopher and Psychologist William James conducted research to understand mystical awe. "What most commonly led people around the world to feel awe was other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming.”
Émile Durkheim’s “Collective Effervescence” - “we feel like we are buzzing and crackling with some life force that merges people into a collective self, a tribe, an oceanic “we.”
Nature - For more on this, see Colleen’s contribution below.
Music - The resonance and comfort it creates - evokes the feeling of being connected to something larger than self
Visual Design - Duh! (and further explored below)
Stories of Spiritual and Religious Awe
Stories of Life and Death
Epiphanies - when we suddenly understand essential truths about life.
Awe can be physical - standing next to a 350 foot tree, or hearing and feeling the resonance of a singers voice.
It can be temporal - a laugh, or scent that transports you in time.
It can be semantic - ideas, epiphany, coherence.
Awe catalyses a “search of new forms of understanding,” or as Kelter calls it, a “system,” stemming from the First Nations communities (the original systems thinkers)
Imagine putting on a pair of sunglasses that allow you to see not one stand alone element, but the element and how it relates to everything else.
When we see the world with a systems lens we are seeing how an action or change to one element of a system can impact many other interrelated parts.
The experience of Awe is about trying to make sense of the vast mysteries of the universe and where we fit within all all of it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Epiphany:
Rousseau’s epiphany contemplated that
in our natural state, we are endowed with passions that guide us to truth, equality, justice, and the reduction of suffering—our moral compass. We sense these intuitions in music, art, and, above all, being in nature.
Need clarity? Get into Nature.
Rousseau was a forerunner of Romanticism.
Romanticism was about finding “yourself in freedom and exploration. Passion, intuition, direct perception, and experience are privileged over reductionistic reason. Life is about the search for awe, or what the Romantics called the sublime.”
The more we experience Awe, the more we free ourselves from the confines of our ego, and follow our intuition.
Art and Awe
Art that is predictable to our brains—such that the pieces fit with the viewers expectation of the larger context (puzzle completion)—creates comfort and ease for the viewer. This can produce a collective resonance that feels appealing.
According to Philosopher Edmund Burke, “for visual art to stir awe, it must suggest vast mystery. One pathway is to hint at expansive causal forces. … Simple repetition, is suggestive of vast causal forces that manifest in repeating forms. Images of waves, or mountains, for example, hint at large, unifying forces” - from Burke’s 1757 publication of A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.
Yes, and…
“Visual art fine-tunes our experience of awe,”
and it “enables new ‘possibilities of feeling,’ allowing us to perceive the world directly through the lenses of emotions.”
For the visual artists reading this - what a gift you have to share!
And yet, your Ego pipes in from the peanut gallery…
When this happens, when your ‘default self’ kicks on, it’s your cue to find Awe.
Our Default Self, Ego, Protector, resides in the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of our day-to-day life, and our “reductionist reasoning.”
This part of the brain tells us we’re separate from everyone and everything else.
“When our default self reigns too strongly, though, and we are too focused on ourselves, anxiety, rumination, depression, and self-criticism can overtake us. Awe, it would seem, quiets this urgent voice of the default self.”
If experiencing Awe feels like a reach in a highly self-critical moment, one (of the many!) reframe/mindset shifts I use is:
Rather than serve me, how can I be in service of others?
“Our default minds, so focused on independence and competitive advantage, are not well suited to making sense of the vast. So guided are we by prior knowledge and our need for certainty that we avoid or explain away the mysteries of life. Visual art, though, offers us hints at understanding the vast and mysterious.”
Our Ego/Protector loves the known and the predictable.
“Awe arises when we perceive change. When we sense a sunset changing from oranges to deep purplish blues, or how clouds transform as they move across the horizon.”
Or how my niece is suddenly old enough to speak in full sentences, and join me to pick raspberries from the ever-abundant bush.
The Untangling
I am the double rainbow guy.
As a kid I had a legitimate dream of finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I was certain I could find it if given the opportunity.
Rainbows still evoke that sense of Awe within me.
What is it for you?
This Reel captures the feeling we’re going for.
I’m fascinated by all of the different ‘ways in’ to experience Awe (for help, go back to the 8 Wonders shared above).
Psychedelics, Meditation, Near Death Experiences, are also an avenue to experience the wonders of Awe.
I thought the research on Psychedelics was interesting enough to untangle this week.
Psychedelics act as a Permission Slip.
“Psychedelics make us more open to experience,” and guess what the defining emotion of openness is…?
Awe.
You can write your own permission slip to experience the deliciousness of Awe.
Do Psychedelics really change people?
People speak about the transformation.
I know many people who have experienced the epiphany of the “Oceanic We” discussed above.
The alternative hypotheses, though, is that people think they have changed but actually revert to personally ingrained habits of thinking and feeling.
Maybe she’s born with it…
William James hinted at this possibility, that mystical awe reveals our individual temperaments.
Psychedelic experiences make us more like who we are, rather than changing us in enduring ways.
Out of the decay of these extraordinary experiences, we simply distill who we really are.
This echoes back to my first article/newsletter and how I relate to astrology. It’s a tool for understanding myself.
I’m not looking to it, or meditation for anything new, just a feeling that resonates within me, a sense of coming home, a feeling of placing myself within the vastness of the Universe and its infinite possibilities.
I’ve never tried any intense psychedelics before, part of me thinks it would be fun, and part of me questions the need to.
I can write my own permission slip.
I’ve had similar experiences of Awe in meditation, in synchronicities and manifestation, in nature, in a massive a-ha in therapy, coaching or other self work, in the eerie accuracy of a birth chart or psychic reading, in watching my grandmother transition, or in acting as a conduit for connection at a celebration of life.
I feel Awe that you’re reading this right now, that we somehow found each other. This, in itself, feels greater than the sum of its parts.
People who are open to experience, studies show, are receptive to ideas and new information, are innovative and creative, are often moved to chills and tears by art and music, and are inclined toward empathy and generosity.
This feels like me, and I’m willing to bet that this is you, too.
And that’s how we found each other.
We are more abundant together.
Cultural forms that ritualize moving in unison weave together may wonders of life. Such movement matters. Flocks of flying birds, schools of fish, and herds of wildebeests fare better against predators when moving in harmony. This is true for humans as well. — In one study, it was the shared feeling of success, above and beyond players’s skills, that predicted the likelihood of victory for teammates playing cricket, football, baseball, and a popular video game”
“Awe heightens our awareness of being part of a community, of feeling embraced and supported by others.
Abundance Aggregate
By now you’ve seen Colleen Wilcox’s Awe influenced work splashed across this newsletter.
More than anyone I know, her work is informed and inspired by the nature around her.
Colleen’s company is called Wander on Words, I invited her to unpack “wandering,” and how it relates to Awe.
“Wandering” to me is all about following my curiosities and experiencing new things.
I often find inspiration by pursuing seemingly strange trains of thought or researching an interesting word I heard on a podcast. I love discovering new coffee shops by simply appreciating their name and stopping by roadside attractions that spark wonder.
She goes on to say that…
To wander is to learn and explore.
I find myself wandering on new trails in my home state of Vermont often, but I love seeing beauty in well-worn paths as well.
Taking time to slow down and look a little more closely at your daily surroundings can open up a new world of wonder all around you!
This, my friends, is Awe. It’s always abundantly available to us.
You’ll spy that tiny red eft dashing through the garden. You’ll notice the particular hue of blue in the sky. By taking life a little bit slower, you can appreciate the awe in the everyday.
Keltner shares a similar thread:
“Mysteries awaken us to systems. Look to the sky and listen for migrations of birds. Follow the tides. Watch the growth of a seedling and its relationship to the earth. Take in the ground of a forest, the humus, fungi, and tree roots, which we now know to be communicating via slow neurochemical signals, intertwined in ecosystems of collaborating species.”
We are all connected.
Colleen was inspired to start hand lettering in Yellowstone National Park, and she also met her husband there! As her way of giving back to the nature that inspires her, Colleen donates a portion of her profits to protecting it, via The National Park Foundation.
Your support of her business will contribute to that.
Thank you Colleen, for creating work that reminds us of our connection to the whole.
Aaand before I go, just a final reminder that I’m offering a free 90-minute Creative Brain Untangling session with me, for the readers of this newsletter until the end of July :)
This are great for:
Working through creative ideas or projects & determining clear next steps
Getting unstuck and taking inspired action
Getting clarity on your unique special sauce and how to share with the world
Brain-dumping with a human, (who isn’t your partner or Mom) who can pick out the red thread between it all.