Spirituality

[Sma11wood]

I'm not 100% sure if spirituality would be the thing to call it, but have there been any distinct moments in your life where you've had an awe inspiring feeling? Something that gave you a new appreciation or perspective on things?

The first of mine would be at an observatory in a little country town 100 odd kilometers from Perth city. Its out in the bush and out of the pollution (both smog and light). Easily the most stars I've ever seen in my life, surrounded by absolute and complete blackness. A whole strip, consistent with the plane of the galaxy stretching from horizon to horizon, heavily populated with as many bright dots as can be imagined. They had some world-class telescopic equipment there also, allowing me to view, among other constellations, Saturn's rings. It left me with such a profound feeling of insignificance.
Coupled with a talk from some leading physicists about future experiments to be held at the facility regarding tracing the big bang's energy, it definitely sparked an interest in science as well, which no doubt helped me through my final year of high-school, and more importantly, helped to clarify my own beliefs about life, the universe and existence.

The other occasion(s) is any time that I'm at the beach. I'm fortunate where I live to have some world-class beaches, featuring the purest white sand, brilliant surf and incredible native wildlife. The sheer beauty of the place, especially if you're far enough removed from civilisation to have practically the whole place to yourself, is brilliant. And yet, its almost nothing compared to when you get into the water. Surfing (of the body variety, I never had the patience to learn to stand ), and moreso the sheer awesome power of the water is quite something.

So what about the rest of you? Any moments that have left you breathless, inspired, awestruck?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There's one point in the Straits of Magellan where it quite obvious that a mountain was broken in two and the southern part displaced by one mile or better. The peak of the mountain on the north side, a slope downward and a sudden straight drop to the water. On the other side, the ground rises straight up for a few thousand feet, then tapers way in a perfect match for the north slope. Some time in the past the entire southern end of a continent went for a little walk. The SOUND that this must have made, leave alone the actual movement, must have been amazing. I wish I still had those pictures, it floored me when I saw it the first time.

[Animavore]

Yep. About 2 or 3 years ago when evolution went from something I took for granted to something that I thought about deeply and its implications.

I was pacing around my house, back and forth along the same line (I get restless when I'm thinking), I think I had just finished The Ancestors Tale, anyway, pacing back and forth and I saw the whole thing unfold in my mind almost like a vision. I pictured the first prokaryotic cell to become a eukaryote after hi-jacking another cell. I then envisioned the cells becoming multicellular and then moving through time accumulating features and gradually diverging and splitting off into all its branches. With little tadpole like babies of sea squirts breaking free from their destiny as a rock cling entity which digests its own brain, now useless, after attaching itself to a rock and through neoteny becoming the first protofish, a precursor to the lancets and lamprey.
And so on into all the various lineages.
I remember at the time seeing this on different levels. From the cellular to the embryonic. All these things morphing from one to another like one of those computer morphing programmes.
I also remember that I had stopped in my tracks and went from standing to sitting on the floor and then just lying there. I must've lay there for 5 minutes just knocked out in amazement by the severe complexity of reality.


EDIT: Spelling.

[Thinking Aloud]

I've had one or two moments ... a couple that come to mind are similarly astronomical.

I was stood, I think, in the park near my house, looking up at the stars just after sunset - I think Venus and Jupiter were in view, along with a crescent moon. As I was looking, I just pictured the vast vast curves of those orbits tracing through the sky...

Sometimes lying down under the stars, looking up at the blackness within nothing between me and them except a tenuous envelope of gas, that sense of "up" and "down" disappears, and I'm looking "out" from the side of this sphere, and space just goes on forever, above, infront and below me.

[charlou]

I've always loved big beautiful trees and as a child I'd lay beneath one and look up through its leaves and watch its movement and the play of light on the surfaces. I think of trees as like the 'lungs' of the earth, all the branches and twigs and leaves are the fine bronchials that breathe for the planet and keep it and its inhabitants alive. I'd go camping and watch water moving along a stream and think about the cycle of evaporation and condensation, and the effect of the seasons on it...I'd climb out of the gorge, over a steep rocky hill to the crest, leaving the others behind, and face the vast expanse of the Ranges and beyond, and have a profound sense of its age and history. I'd feel insignificant and yet intrinsically connected...On wildlife documentaries I'd see shoals of fish and flocks of birds move in unison as if each was attached by invisible strings to the other. I didn't then, and don't now attribute those feelings of wonder to a sense of awe for a deist's god, but I can understand how the various philosophies that a very different kind of 'god' to the Abrahamic one most of us have been raised with 'exists' in everything arose. Hmmm...

I don't think science is incompatible with such a philosophy. Without such human wonder, inquiry would not have developed. From Carl Sagan's Cosmos:

"The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

Those explorations required skepticism and imagination both. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere. Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations. The Cosmos is rich beyond measure - in elegant facts, in exquisite interrelationships, in the subtle machinery of awe."

[Sisifo]

That humbling experience seeing an awesome scenario, I have had lots of them. Seeing the sunrise in a tent in the Sahara, watching the fog clear and Machu Pichu just "happening" in front of the eyes, cave diving in the darkness and suddenly turning and watch the opening of the cave unto a coral reef, passing the night in Petra with a bonfire and listening the night, so many roads in the world where the motorbike the road and you are just one... Too many amazing memories that made me more than I was before... The world is amazing.

The melting of my conscience into the universe... difficult to explain without sounding silly... that would be more what you call spirituality to me... I have it when I meditate long periods, or in some good yoga sessions, and tantric sex.

[Rum]

I have had a few experiences which are the sort of thing described in Buddhism. These are experiences where the 'self' has vanished for a few moments and one experiences somethign akin to being totally open to the Universe. Similarly I have had moments when I look at the world and see it as a mental projection of my consciousness and get a small glimpse of how defined it is by our consciousness.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There's one point in the Straits of Magellan where it quite obvious that a mountain was broken in two and the southern part displaced by one mile or better. The peak of the mountain on the north side, a slope downward and a sudden straight drop to the water. On the other side, the ground rises straight up for a few thousand feet, then tapers way in a perfect match for the north slope. Some time in the past the entire southern end of a continent went for a little walk. The SOUND that this must have made, leave alone the actual movement, must have been amazing. I wish I still had those pictures, it floored me when I saw it the first time.

This is close to the area I'm talking about.

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

[Feck]

There have been moments when I have felt whole ,entire ......complete .Idle hours when I knew that all the missing pieces in my jigsaw could be found .
Hours drifting into days when it didn't hurt anymore.Times when I have cried silent tears of joy at the world because it contained something so beautiful.

[Beelzebub2]

I'm not 100% sure if spirituality would be the thing to call it, but have there been any distinct moments in your life where you've had an awe inspiring feeling? Something that gave you a new appreciation or perspective on things?

So what about the rest of you? Any moments that have left you breathless, inspired, awestruck?

Nah - but I do cherish moments when I was becoming less and less disillusioned about people, universe and world order in general. Can't wait for it to unravel fully, if ever.

I don't trust such "feelings" - anything remotely similar to it means a terrible down-to-earth moment is about to happen, sooner or later. For me it's just a bit more electrified brain circuitry.

[Trolldor]

I'm not 100% sure if spirituality would be the thing to call it, but have there been any distinct moments in your life where you've had an awe inspiring feeling? Something that gave you a new appreciation or perspective on things?

When I found God.

When I realised it was bullshit.

When I looked up at the night sky the first and realised just how small everything really was.

And when I first did the hanky panky.

[VonMushroom]

I have had a few experiences which are the sort of thing described in Buddhism. These are experiences where the 'self' has vanished for a few moments and one experiences somethign akin to being totally open to the Universe. Similarly I have had moments when I look at the world and see it as a mental projection of my consciousness and get a small glimpse of how defined it is by our consciousness.

Isn't it quite hard to describe this? I've tried many times and failed miserably. I can correlate with what you say here because this is pretty much what I've experienced too.

[devogue]

There's one point in the Straits of Magellan where it quite obvious that a mountain was broken in two and the southern part displaced by one mile or better. The peak of the mountain on the north side, a slope downward and a sudden straight drop to the water. On the other side, the ground rises straight up for a few thousand feet, then tapers way in a perfect match for the north slope. Some time in the past the entire southern end of a continent went for a little walk. The SOUND that this must have made, leave alone the actual movement, must have been amazing. I wish I still had those pictures, it floored me when I saw it the first time.

This is close to the area I'm talking about.

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

Don't get it - more pics please.