An Exposed Awe Of Reality
There was a newsletter I wrote for Samarasa back when we had our physical space. In it, I wrote about this sensation I’ve had at many points in my life:
“It seems to me that there should be a word for the sensation of knowing that one day, I will be nostalgic for this moment. Maybe the closest word we have for this idea is "gratitude", and that doesn't quite seem specific enough. … My dad wrote a song called "These Are The Good Ol' Days", and I think about it a lot. It's easy to look back on memories and think about how great things USED to be, only to fast forward 5 years and have the same thoughts about this time.”
For years, I’ve tried to find the words to describe the feeling, and through my years of practice, I’ve been able to grow more intimate with it. I’ve started to notice that “anticipated nostalgia” isn’t exactly it. (Funnily enough, I’m not really even a nostalgic person.) So, I’m going to make an attempt to describe it again. It’s an active inquiry - bear with me here 😜.
In these moments, I feel a sweet struggle between the majesty of the moment in front of me and my human ability (or rather, inability) to experience it in its entirety.
On her podcast episode with author Susan Cain, I heard Glennon Doyle describe her sense of bittersweetness as an “exposed awe of Reality”. Later in the episode, Susan spoke about the Jewish teaching of Kabbalah. As I understand it from my very introductory level of study, the teaching says that in order to make space for humanity, God created vessels to hold divinity. But as the vessels began to fill with the light of God, it became too much to hold. The vessels broke, shattering onto the earth. These shards of divinity are now scattered amongst us in our earthly world. Our task is to pick up these shards whenever we find them. Through this, we as humans are able to restore the light of God.
I find this fascinating and beautiful, especially in relation to the tantric teachings that I’ve studied. It’s like every now and then, spontaneously, the veil lifts and I become breathlessly aware that I am witnessing God right in front of me, in the moment. I’ve stumbled upon a shard of divinity.
Beautifully, this feeling is often triggered in the moments I would least expect. It hasn’t necessarily been weddings or births or deaths, though sometimes it is. But just as often, it’s been laughing with girlfriends at a stupid joke while we make dinner together on a bachelorette weekend. It’s been watching my husband help my mom do yard work. Two-stepping on a sweaty, crowded dance floor at a dive bar in South Austin. A server silently clearing my empty dinner plate, and replacing it with a chocolate cupcake.
In our last YSD retreat, I caught the feeling in the moment and was able to write it down, after waking up from a Yoga Nidra practice. It’s a little too long to share the whole thing here, but the last few lines sum it up:
“It’s all too much to take in.
How am I supposed to feel all the sweetness of you and all the beauty of her, when I can hear the lap of the waves and the rustle of the leaves?
When I can see the fullness of the sky filled with pure white cotton clouds, and clear blue crystal, and subtle gray mist, all pierced by radiant golden shards of starlight?
Little pieces of the setting sun leaving surprises in every pocket.
How am I supposed to feel this much
With just this one life
In all my humanness
If every moment is this sacred?”
In that same podcast episode, Glennon spoke about this feeling that she has: “a deep inner knowing that it was all supposed to be more beautiful than this”. I usually find myself on the same page as her, but on this I couldn’t disagree more.
If these moments have taught me anything, they’ve helped me to find and understand a deep inner knowing that all of it - every single thing - is exponentially more beautiful than I could possibly imagine. I just miss it a lot of the time. How human of me.
In Love, Lucy