The universe around me – with the help of my fellow man, I am able to confirm through my senses the smallest scale of reality down to the interaction of quantum forces, and the largest scale as projected by the light of galactic events streaming to me from outside the planet’s cocoon. In between, I am often set back in awe by any number of small experiences or sensual reactions through which reality connects to me.
Each day, I walk, eat, drive, and communicate in a fully awake state, as well as, at the subtle level. Floating back and forth between full presence and sombulence, my car moves through the traffic guided by subtle interaction with my memories and senses, while my ‘awake focus’ works out the end of month financial demands. The subtle self and the awake self are distinguished.
The subtle player lives off the experiences and information stored in memory and can effectively paint a picture of capability and power. I could easily imagine myself as intuitively connected to some great source supplementing my performance, with benevolence or fatalistically.
A man approaches and presents to me a rare New Guinea wax spinner worm for which I have no previous experience. Caught in the unkown, I respond in a fully awake way with all my senses open. An instance of awe explodes as the worm instantaneously changes into a butterfly and flies from my hand. The moment of awe feels full of potential, original, universal. In this spot outside the usual, I see the potential for new seeing and understanding. I feel a freshness that had been slowly fading, over the years, since birth.
The mix of the subtle and the awake defines my presence in the universe around me. It defines my day to day path. It will be a characteristic of my last moment as a sentient animal on the earth. I would like to think that I would prefer to meet the moment always awake. I am realistic enough to acknowledge that the complexity of each day makes this a daunting objective. I have chosen to try to stay awake more continuously, perhaps constantly.
Today, for me, seeing the greatest expanse of the universe and the smallest interactions of the mechanisms of energies is less about imagining a great clockmaker and more about helping me to place myself in the present moment. Here, in the moment, for me, is the optimum opportunity for awe. Here in the present moment is my coming and going.
