“For me the entire universe was created”
“I am but dust and ash”
- Rabbi Simcha Bunam Bonhart of Przysucha
A couple of years ago I was listening to a podcast about heartbreak. They were talking about the physical pain that manifests in our bodies and the difficulty that some of us have in getting over heartbreak. At one point the guest said that one of the ways that the body heals from heartbreak is through the experience of awe.
In thinking back on my own experiences of heartbreak I found resonance in this idea. I noticed that whenever my heart is aching, my immediate impulse - once I’ve finished numbing myself by eating lots of ice cream and watching several days worth of not great movies - is to get myself outside, away from the constructed world, away from the things I am used to.
I go to the desert with its vast open skies, dry air, and stunning landscapes of rock, brush, and the occasional bright flower. I go to the forest with its rays of light dancing through the trees, lush canopy that feels like a warm intimate embrace, and earthy aromas that smell like life itself. I go to the ocean who’s waves roll and roar in constant motion and with such force that it brings my nervous system into alignment with its natural steady rhythm. And in each of these places, the primary feeling I experience is awe.
In trying to describe it, I struggle to determine where in my body the experience of awe occurs. I feel it in my stomach, an almost lurching forward from the deepest parts of my core, as though there is something in there that is yearning to get out. I feel it in my heart, a radiance of heat surging, pulsing, flaring up, as if the physical container of my ribcage is too small to hold the amount of energy my heart is longing to produce, to release. I feel it in my throat and lungs, an irregular expansion that leaves me short of breath and full of pure clean air at the very same time, that has me coughing out toxins I did not know were there. I feel it in my eyes, softened by the wide expanse and life size scale of the natural world, a deep heaviness wells up as tears that are a thousand years old seep forward to clear the way for crisper more focused vision. I feel it in my skin, tingly and vibrant, awake, alive, alert, but also relaxed. And I feel it in the part of me that lives outside the physical boundary of my body, a blurring of the separation between my skin and the world beyond it, a sense of connection and oneness with the air, the trees, the ground, and the water.
What is healing about the experience of awe is that it isn’t about making me feel better, it is about making me feel connected. One of the things that I think we forget in our good/bad binary way of thinking, of naming experiences, is that our emotional lives are way too complex for good and bad. Awe allows me to feel profound relief at how very insignificant I am. It allows me to feel freedom in the beauty and wonder of a world my mind will never fully understand. It brings forward in me a confidence that is at once emanating from the core of my being and completely disconnected from any notion I may have about a thing called self.
Rabbi Bunam of Przysucha walked around with two slips of paper in his pockets. On one he wrote, “for me the entire universe was created”. On the other he wrote, “I am but dust and ash”. His practice was to pull out and read the one he needed to bring balance to the thing that he, in that moment, was feeling. I too have a practice around these phrases. I like to look at them together, to take them in as one. They are, to me, a written version of the experience of awe, of a truth that I know in my body when standing at the edge of the ocean under the bright full moon: that my insignificance to the roaring of the ocean or the cosmic rhythm of the moon is only matched by the profound privilege I have at getting to experience the awesome beauty of both.
The experience of awe knocks me straight into presence, releases me from the habits and patterns I find myself stuck in, and dispels me of any story I might have constructed that would otherwise serve to solidify those habits and patterns. Awe is the visceral, full body experience that does for me the thing that the words in Rabbi Bunam’s pockets seek to evoke: remind me that the full experience of being alive is so much more than whatever temporary emotional state I find myself in, be it heartbreak, triumph, or anything in between. And with the clarity that comes from stepping into presence, I am able to show up to whatever moment I find myself in with the the fullness of my being.