Spiritual Forum

“The first act of awe, when a person was struck with the beauty or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience.”
Henryk Skolimowski

Searching for the Truth is admirable quality – however beware of ‘arrogance’ that might follow. Too much intellectual analyzing, compartmenazing will eventually drawn one within itself.

‘Be as a child’ - means to live life not in the ‘bliss of ignorance’, but to have an innocent passion – a sense of Awe, Wonder to the world around.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. They to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, are as good as dead: their eyes are closed.”
Albert Einstein

Those who chose to give and show generosity toward others are the ones who stated a higher likelihood of experiencing awe.

"Might awe cause people to become more invested in the greater good?”

It turns out that sense of awe not only can provide a powerful emotional and spiritual experience, but also promote altruistic, helpful and positive social behavior.

The power of awe-inspiring experiences extends far beyond our mind. These special moments, where time seems to stand still, can also help make us feel happier, more relaxed and more creative. Experiencing awe forces us to focus on the present and truly experience it for what it is. And often, it's during these moments when we can also experience the biggest transformations in our lives. Awe involves being in the presence of something powerful, something greater than ‘self – you are’ – looking far beyond our petty concerns, understanding and experience the true reality of existence. Those experiences and encounters humble us - overwhelmed by greatness of those magnificent moments of life. Awe is a life changing moment, when one can perceive the world on the grand scale and include him/her self as one of wonders of the world, the feeling of amazement of fascination invoking spiritual connection.

Descartes placed wonder as the first among passions; the experience of wonder and awe is the incipient perception of grace, because the perceiver stands eclipsed in the immensity of the awesome; engulfed, yet somehow sustained in it.

Dr. Brian Ostafin said: "You can't digest [the object of awe] with your cognitive structures -- it's too big for you "So there's a need for accommodation, to change your mental structures to understand what that is. This is the key element of the spiritual experience in a number of different religions." "Awe involves that assimilation -- giving up your cognitive structures in order to accommodate [the object of awe]. And mindfulness is a little bit about that too, because you're paying attention and exercising non-conceptual awareness, so you should be more open to the immensity that's there. You step out of the small frame that you have and this small idea of what the world is... You're not stuck in your own story."

"Wonder is the beginning of wisdom."
Socrates

“Awe-inspiring experiences are universal and consistent across all of humanity, sharing common phenomena across all cultures and time periods, regardless of the creeds and practices of religious traditions, social systems, theories, hypothesis, beliefs.

In our culture, knowledge is perceived as power, and power is perceived as the ability to predict and control: the very currency of expediency. Anything less is threatening for us. We are the information society. The one with the most answers wins. Where is there room in this for wondering? In a sound-byte culture, where is there time for living with questions? How are we to live comfortably in a Universe where every question answered multiplies mysteries exponentially?
It does not matter whether you believe or know that the Source of you, the spark of the Divine of you, is driving you to seek your true level. What you can trust is your own experience: the emergence of events that will bring states of wonder and awe in a sequence and quality exactly suited to your particular needs. Once you allow yourself to fully experience the wonder and awe that will naturally come into your life, you will come to a level of knowing that will inspire further questions in you. In allowing yourself to live those questions, you will come to the place of yearning.

The yearning has been described as the most sublime of all types of human suffering. As you consciously open yourself to deeper levels of wonder and awe, the answers will come from all levels of your life experience. The yearning is overcome as the God-Shaped hole is filled, where everything else you have attempted to fill the emptiness in your life has failed. Then, you will know. It doesn’t matter whether you believe already or not. Whether you are already a person of faith, an agnostic, or atheist, this process will add the dimension and fulfillment to your life you have always intuitively felt was missing. There is another thing you are intuitively aware of with regard to allowing wonder and awe to be a conscious part of your life.

Doing this will ultimately require more courage than you have expressed at any point in your life. Beyond the constraints of our culture, this is the source of our greatest resistance to opening ourselves up on this level”. - Granville Angell

"One cannot but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
Albert Einstein

“When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought.”
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” Gerry Spence

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it "creative observation." Creative viewing.  -William S. Burroughs