Awe is the root practice

Letting go into the particularity of grace

“When I look at a sunset, I don't say, 'Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple in the cloud color. I don't try to control a sunset. I watch it with awe. One of the most satisfying experiences is to just fully appreciate an individual in the same way I appreciate a sunset.”— Psychologist Carl Rogers

According to scientists, awe is the experience of self-transcendence. I’ve come to realize awe is the root practice.

“In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude.” --  Dietrich Bonhoffer

We receive more gifts than we can get by ourselves. All this earning and achieving, buying and consuming makes us lose sight of what Lynne Twist calls the “Great Fullness” of life (get it?). An infinite number of things had to go right in the universe for us to be here. It’s what I consider grace. And we’re held in a universe of it. Franciscan mystic Richard Rohr asks us to let go of the question of why there is so much Evil in the world and ask a much bigger question: why there is so much unnecessary and extravagant Good?

All real spirituality is about letting go. We spend most of our lives avoiding the internal stress, discontent, and dissatisfaction that characterizes much of our moment-to-moment experience.¹ And the ego project tries to mask it. What any wisdom tradition or mature spirituality teaches us instead is that we can simply meet all of it, ie, ourselves, with friendly awareness. Nothing has to change, except awareness. And with that, everything changes.

This realization doesn’t happen for everyone. It is not an all or nothing thing; it doesn’t happen all at once.

The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy. - Thich Nhat Hanh

The particularity of grace

Wonder is available, I think, at all times. One day, I was stretching after soccer, leaning up against Wu Wei, my dog, and basking in the sun. I suddenly got so grateful for what life afforded me: financial security, a working body, and time to enjoy life. Time to learn and do important things, enjoy yummy foods, and love the beauty of living in the Pacific Northwest. Grace was all around me. And at that moment, I chose to receive it.

I realized that other people got other things: an intimate partnership, or children, or anything number of other things. And they could be grateful for those things. But my job is to be grateful for my life, for the things I got. My gratitude had to have “particularity” to it, which shielded me from both envy and pride.

We all can be grateful for the particularity of our grace.

My friend Chip Conley calls it a “Day without Comparison." A day in which you settled into the gifts in your own life, with not a care in the world about how they compare with others. If you can handle a day of bliss, maybe you can stretch it to a week, a month, a year, or a lifetime. “Most of us have so over-stuffed our lives that we have narrow margins,” he says. “And, then, we pour salt in our wounds by being overly judgmental about ourselves.”

Let go into the particularity of your own grace. Awe is the root practice.

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I think our self-judgement and comparison to others is a healthy part of human development. We spend the first half of our lives meeting the expectations of society and contributing to it. In a capitalist economy, that process, what developmental psychologists call “socialization,” plays out as workism and consumerism. This ego project is a natural and necessary stage of a good life. But at some point, we need to grow out of that. To stay there is pathoadolescence.²

Most of us stay on the surface of our own lives. But any wisdom tradition or mature spirituality teaches us to let go of our separate, individualistic and fragile egos and move into That which connects us to All.³ All the mystics know St. Catherine of Genoa’s (1447–1510) meant when she said: “My deepest me is God!”⁴ Thou Art That, Tat Tvam Asi. And when we let go of trying to control the sunset, other people, and even the particulars of own life, we become more Ourselves than we ever were.

If you could naught yourself for an instant, indeed I say less than an instant, you would possess all that this is in itself. — Meister Eckhart

It doesn’t happen for everyone (just take a look at the news). It doesn’t happen all at once. But it’s there, a Whisper of transcendent meaning. You can find it in the particularity of grace.

In this life, we receive than we give. Awe is the root practice.

Let go.

1. H/T Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga

2. Bill Plotkin

3. Carl Rogers might call it actualization.

4. The Bible says “Be still and know that I am God.” But if the mystics are right, who is the speaker and who is the receiver?