Something Sacred

Self Awareness

Awareness of our mental selves, our thoughts and feelings, awareness of awareness: We all know exactly what this means, even if none of us can describe it very well.

Neuroscience is still far from being able to explain how human self-awareness works, but some general ideas are gradually emerging. A key concept is that we are spectators to our own awareness. The fact that we take in, reflect, and encounter an I-ness is apparently at the core of religious experiences that we call mystical. Western traditions describe a sense of Immanence or Presence., Asian traditions variously describe states of Nirvana, of liberation, of living with the Tao. Albert Einstein underscores its centrality: "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art. He whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as not fully living."

Throughout history, this experience has often been interpreted as the apprehension of the Divine within or the luminous Other, and they are actively sought in prayer and thought., Western traditions say that we are aware of a Spirit, that we are comprehended by something much larger, deeper, more valuable, and more enduring than ourselves and the infinite universe.

The encounter is truthfully inwardly, intensely personal, and described, if at all, with a halting tongue. In Asian traditions, the religious person seeks in meditation an emptying out, a receptivity, in order to experience an at-one-ness, a spiritual communion with the universe, Enlightenment.


So we raise our eyes to the heavens and we ask, Is this Other? Is this God? Is this the Perfection of Understanding? Or are these overwhelmingly powerful mental experiences, with Immanence a particularly intense form of Self-awareness, so that all else can penetrate? How can we tell? And then, does it matter?.. In the end it doesn't matter. All of us are transformed by our own Light. My response is to open myself to its blessing.

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Poetic Emotion

With your beautiful eyes, I see a gentle Light..

my blind ones could never see.,

One your feet, I bear a burden..

my lame ones could never bear.

With your wings, I fly though featherless.,

By your mind I'm lifted ever upward.,

At your whim, I pale or blush,

cold in the sun, warm in the cold of winter.

In your desire alone is my desire.,

my thoughts are forged in your heart,

my works are breathed in your breath.

Alone, I am like the moon, itself alone.,

our eyes see it in the heavens..

only as the sun enlightens it.

~ Michelangelo 1534

Reflection: ~

A metaphor my father seemed to like with thoughts on life itself: "Life is a coral reef. We each leave behind the best, the strongest deposit we can, so that the reef can grow. But what's important is the reef."

Original of Origin ~

Soem extract from reality, all the meaning and guidance and emotional substance that we can, and we bring these responses with us as we set out to chart global paths. And then we come back to our original of origin. Its better to see it all exactly like a tapestry.

The tapestry maker first strings the warp, - long, strong fibers anchored firmly to the loom, and then interweaves the weft, the patterns, the color, the art. The Epic of Evolution is the warp, destined to endure, commanding our universal gratitude. And then, after that, we are all free to be artists, to render in language and painting and song and dance our ultimate hopes and concerns and understandings of human nature.

Throughout the ages, the weaving of our weft had been the province of our prophets and gurus and poets and teachers. The texts and art that come to us from these revered ancestors includes about Nature, something that can be absorbed over 'time', appreciated, and founding deep wisdom embedded with abundant opportunities that is offered to experience transcendence and clarity.