The Spiritual Practice of Awe

“Alive in the World” is the name I chose for this website.  That name comes from a song by Jackson Browne.  The song invites you to consider how you can be present in a world that offers an amazing depth and complexity.  In a previous post, I expressed how, for me, this aliveness, this meaning goes beyond what I believe.  It is about practice…what I do…how I live and order my life.

When I say practice in the context of the spiritual journey, you may think of things like prayer, meditation, or worship.  Could it be that practice is also the development of different attitudes, different stances that we take toward ourselves and the world?  Could it be that specific acts of devotion and spirituality arise, not from specific beliefs, but from these attitudes and stances that we take as we move about the world?

With that in mind, I invite you to consider awe as a spiritual practice.  Respect, wonder, admiration, veneration, fear, dread, sublime, powerful, expansive.  These are words that are associated with awe. The word comes from a 13th century Old Norse word “agi,” which literally means “fright” or “terror.”  

In the beginning, awe was associated with religion.  God or the Sacred was what evoked awe.  You can see this in the biblical phrase “the fear of the Lord.”  Sensing that “fear” did not capture the full meaning of that phrase, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel spoke of the “awe of the Lord.”  Psalm 111:10 says: “The awe of God is the beginning of wisdom.”  Awe really can be a spiritual practice.

Awe has a bigness to it. 

Quite often, awe is inspired by and directed toward something that you recognize to be more substantial and more powerful than you.  That why the concepts related to awe include wonder, admiration, even dread.  That is why awe is often associated with places like the Grand Canyon or a redwood forest, like cathedrals or the Pyramids.

But awe goes beyond just the big and the powerful.  In 1757, in his book, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke noted that awe could be evoked in experiences like watching a sunset, viewing art, or listening to a symphony.  Awe was not just something that happened to religious people; it could be experienced by anyone in the middle of everyday life.

You can see this broader sense in some of the dictionary definitions of awe.  Awe is “an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like: in awe of God; in awe of great political figures.”  Another definition says awe is a “mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might.”

Why do tears come to my eyes in response to specific scenes in a movie or TV show, no matter how many times I have watched them?  Think of those summer blockbuster movies over the last 40 years: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, all of the Star Wars and Star Trek films, all of the Marvel Universe movies, all the Jurassic Park films.  It seems that we are deeply attracted to the experience of awe.  Awe as a spiritual practice can help us experience it beyond the theater.

Perhaps this would a good time to offer you the chance to practice awe.  One of the earliest, most primal experiences of awe happens with music and the sound of a singing voice.

If this music is familiar to you, see if you can hear it with a beginner’s mind, like you are hearing it for the first time.

This piece of music may not evoke awe for you.  You may like it.  You may think it sounds lovely.  But, for me, that is different than awe, where the music seems to put you in touch with something deep and complex.  A depth and complexity in the world around you that resonates with the depth and complexity deep within you.

I chose this piece of music on purpose.  In 1975, the professor of my music appreciation class at Baylor University played Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Op. 11.  I immediately realized that not only had I heard this piece of music before, but also, it had a powerful emotional resonance in me.  And then, the professor identified the very moment I was remembering there in my desk.  It was a piece of music that radios stations across the country played in the days following the assassination of President Kennedy.  The events around Kennedy’s death were emotional, almost traumatic, for me.  Sitting there in that class, I was remembering, no re-experiencing, those days…and the comfort that music gave to me.  Awe.

The word associated with awe that I find most meaningful is reverence. 

Reverence recognizes the presence of the sacred in everything.  Imagine being in the presence of a rock, a stream, an animal, another person.  Reverence doesn’t simply look at or watch.  Reverence actively seeks and looks for the sacred in our encounter with any of these.  Because when we resonate with the sacred in the other, whatever or whoever it may be, we resonate with the sacred in ourselves.

Awe is more than this lovely experience we have from time to time, saying “Wasn’t that nice,” and then moving on with life.  What if awe is an emotion that is essential for us to experience if we are to have a well-rounded and meaningful life?  How different would the world be if we opened ourselves to experiencing awe in deliberate and intentional ways?

Neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall says awe is an “overwhelming and bewildering sense of connection with a startling universe that is usually far beyond the narrow band of our consciousness.”  The narrow band of our consciousness.  Awe takes us out of that narrow band.  Awe is response to the presence of other.  The wonder of the other as we really let the other be there.

To practice awe is to accept the invitation that a moment of awe offers you.  You are in the presence of something that is bigger than you.  You are in the presence of the other.  It is beyond your ability to comprehend.  If something is awe-inspiring because it doesn’t fit with your understanding of the world, that’s probably something you should know more about.  

It is tempting to order life, so you do not encounter the new or the unknown. With awe, the new and the unknown crashes into your life.  It almost demands attention.  For those who strive to be go beyond automatic living and be mindful, here is your opportunity.  You are invited to figure out what to do with it.

What are some specific ways to do the spiritual practice of awe?

While we can’t make awe happen, we can put ourselves in places and stances that offer the chance to experience it.  Listen to music…something you find meaningful or something you’ve never heard before.

Practice mindfulness of the senses.  Today, I am going to be intentional present and aware to sounds.  To smells or touching.

A universal expression of reverence is bowing.  Spend the day showing your reverence for others by offering an inner bow to another person to recognize the sacred them.  What does it feel like to offer an inner bow to a friend?  To someone you who is an adversary?

Put yourself in a place of nature, even if it’s a tree or garden in your backyard.  Breathe in and breath out.  As you do, realize that you are breathing in the oxygen that these plants put in the air.  Realize that the plants are breathing in the carbon dioxide that you put into the air.

What if awe is more than just a passing moment of pleasure?  What if practicing awe can give us a more expanded sense of self that connects us to others?  What if practicing awe opens us to a spirit of generosity and creativity?  What if awe gives us a sense of humility?  What if practicing awe can make us treat each other and the world better?

Maybe the Psalmist was right.  The awe of God, the awe of the Sacred really is the beginning of wisdom.