Reading Recommendation: Awe
Awe by Dacher Keltner
Several years ago, this book was instrumental in re-invigorating my art practice and paying more attention to delight as a way to heal through the grief of my mom’s death. Dacher also used awareness of awe as a practice after he lost his brother. This practice helped me stay connected to the part of me that wanted to keep living despite all of the difficult emotions. Dacher is a psychology professor and researcher and interviewed many people from around the world to determine the common ways we all experience awe.
Before I tell you about what he calls the 8 Wonders, let’s first have his definition of awe. “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” This vastness can be physical, temporal or conceptual. Vastness is often challenging, unsettling, destabilizing and varies a lot by historical and cultural context. It seems to me that awe involves a process of being broken open to let the mystery in. Here are the 8 Wonders, listed by prevalance among peoples’ stories.
Moral beauty: other people’s courage, kindness, strength or overcoming
Collective effervescence: life force that merges people during gatherings
Nature
Music: because it connects us to something larger than the self
Visual design: art, architecture, machines
Spiritual and religous awe
Life and death
Epiphanies: science, intuition, sudden disclosures
Some notes:
5% were classified as other, they mostly involved physical sensations.
What’s not included: money, tech devices, or consumer purchases. Awe is separate from the mundane/profane, it’s in the realm of the sacred.
Almost everyone described their experiences of awe as involving touch, feeling embraced, a warm presence, or feeling seen, indicating that it’s a deep human need.
I see this list as guidelines for how to spend my time. I hope you too are inspired to seek out more experiences of awe and wonder. Or at least pay good attention when they come to you. His book goes into much more depth about these various experiences and their impact on us in our development as emotional, spiritual beings. I highly recommend you read it.