درسنامه اصلی

Hi, I’m AJ, welcome to this month’s lesson.

So there I was, floating in darkness.

I was in a float tank, a sensory deprivation tank.

So I was floating in lukewarm water, about the same temperature as my skin.

The tank was completely dark, 100% blackness.

I was wearing earplugs, plus the tank and the room were soundproofed.

The only sound I could hear was my own heartbeat, the blood coming up into my ears.

I laid there, opened my eyes, but of course, total blackness, nothing.

Now at first, I got a flood of thoughts, y’know?

Lots of different thoughts coming, my mind was racing.

Just like with meditation.

So the good thing is I have done enough meditation to know that this is normal, right?

I know that our brains, usually they’re just thinking too much and we’re thinking, thinking, thinking and thoughts pop up and then they disappear and they pop up and they disappear.

So I just took a deep breath and relaxed into the water, floating in blackness and silence.

And with each minute, my body calmed and relaxed, deeper and deeper and deeper.

And my mind grew quieter and quieter and quieter until finally my thoughts became completely silent, no thoughts.

Floating in the blackness and silence with no thoughts at all.

Now some might think that would be frightening.

Some might think that would be boring.

But I’ll tell you: it was actually one of the most, maybe the most, peaceful experiences of my life.

Even more powerful than the intensive meditation retreat I did in the past.

I just floated there, pure awareness, pure consciousness, without thought.

And then I had an image.

The image came to me of the big bang.

Y’know, the big bang, I think we’ve all heard of it, right?

Astronomers tell us, astrophysicists tell us, that the universe, everything, billions and billions of galaxies, this nearly infinite universe we have, that it all came into being in the big bang.

There was an explosion and the whole universe was born in an instant.

So most of us kind of accept that.

Scientists accept it.

I don’t think too much about it.

But lying there, my thought was what came before?

What came before the big bang?

So everything exploded from the big bang.

What came before the big bang?

Nothing.

If you ask scientists and many physicists, astrophysicists and astronomers will mention this, write about it, what came before the big bang?

And most of them will say nothing, nothing.

Wow, nothing?

The true scientists, the really good ones, will say we don’t know.

We have no idea.

And the really good scientists, the true, true scientists will say we can’t know.

It’s unknowable, because before the big bang, there’s no way for us to get information about that.

The laws of physics didn’t work, didn’t apply, weren’t there before the big bang.

It’s unknowable, an unknowable mystery.

And when you really think about it for a while, and not just brush it aside, not just put it aside, oh, wow, the big bang, yeah yeah… If you really think about it, it’s extraordinary.

I mean, I’m just amazed that scientists can be so kind of relaxed about it when they talk about it because it’s extraordinary.

You think of this, now, in normal physics we are told, in my physics class at least I was told, in university, I was told that matter cannot be created or destroyed.

And really, we should say matter energy, because you can change matter into energy and energy into matter.

But matter is stuff, it’s hard stuff.

Stuff we can see, feel, measure, and of course energy, right?

Light, radiation, all that stuff.

Now supposedly, according to physicists, these cannot be created or destroyed.

And yet they tell us that everything came from nothing.

They will say that, oh, things cannot just pop into existence from nothing, that’s impossible.

And yet, at the same time, they’ll tell us the entire universe popped into existence from nothing at all.

Sort of mind-blowing really, if you think about it.

There was nothing and then suddenly all the energy and matter and everything that makes the whole universe now just suddenly, for why, what reason, we don’t know, we can’t know.

How did it happen?

We don’t know.

Where did it come from?

Don’t know.

It all just exploded suddenly.

Why suddenly?

Why at that time did it suddenly explode out into the universe?

Why?

Don’t know.

We can’t know.

It’s unknowable.

Jeez, that’s pretty big.

That’s amazing.

It’s quite extraordinary.

This nothingness must be quite extraordinary.

This nothingness that gave birth to the entire universe.

And it got me thinking about there’s a Taoist teaching, Alan Watts talks about it a bit, that we have a bad understanding, a poor understanding.

We have a misunderstanding of this word nothing, nothingness, right?

Because when we talk about nothing, the universe came from nothing.

Buddhists will talk about nothingness and emptiness, Taoists will.

But he says if you look at the word, you’ll understand it better.

It means no thing, no thing.

So this nothingness, it’s not a thing.

That’s what it literally means, the direct meaning.

It’s not a thing.

Meaning it’s not a thing you can touch.

It’s not a thing you can measure.

But it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

It’s very hard to talk about this in language.

This great unknowable, unknown mystery that gave birth to the whole universe that all of creation has had many different names given by many different peoples around the world, Tao, Dharmakaya, God, Allah, the life force, whatever you want to call it.

It’s such a powerful, powerful, powerful thing.

And yet we have lost touch with this, or no thing, right?

We have lost touch with this incredible mystery.

See, I believe that spirituality, religion, religion is organized spirituality, right?

Spirituality is something that’s individual.

It’s your connection to something much greater, your understanding that you are part of something much greater.

At the very least, a universe with billions and billions of galaxies and stars and black holes and all of that, but also that great mystery that gave birth to the whole universe.

You’re connected to that, too, in fact you’re part of it.

So spirituality is our individual understanding of that.

Religion is some kind of organization that is created around spirituality.

Sadly, religions often lose their spirituality and become very political.

And because of that, because of the political aspect of religion and because of all the terrible things that those political organizations have done, wars and harming people and torturing people and… still going on today, people have sort of, we say “thrown the baby out with the bath water.”

We say don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

It’s an idiom.

It means if you’ve… imagine you’re giving a baby a bath, right, in a little tub.

And the water’s dirty.

Well, you need to throw away the water.

Well, you don’t throw the baby out also, right?

You keep the baby, the good part, the wonderful part, and then you throw away the dirty water.

You throw out only the bad part.

You don’t throw out everything just because some of it is bad.

Well, it’s the same idea.

I feel like we have in our modern world, we’ve thrown out spirituality.

We’ve thrown out our connection to that great mystery.

Many people have.

Simply because they want to throw out all the bad stuff of religion, of organized religion, of the politics of religion.

So they don’t like the politics of religion so they just throw all of it out and they lose that connection to that incredible mysterious power, that even science confirms, it’s a mystery.

It’s incredible, incredible.

Because we have lost that connection, because we have lost that understanding, we have lost perspective, right?

Perspective means it’s like an art.

It’s a viewpoint and with perspective we can see how big things are compared to other things.

We can kind of get a feeling, oh this is a small thing, that’s a big thing.

Well, when we lose our connection to this great, big, huge mystery, you don’t have to call it God or Tao or Buddha or anything like that, you can just say mystery.

Even an astrophysicist atheist can say it’s a huge mystery.

How did all of this come from nothing at all?

That’s a massive mystery.

And for some reason, that mystery gives us power and it gives us perspective.

When we think on that huge, big level, it gives us perspective.

Suddenly we see the little problems of our world quite differently.

See, with the media, when we watch too much TV, things get changed.

Suddenly little things become big in our mind, right?

Oh, which sport team is going to win?

Or which politician we like or don’t like.

Or all these little problems that they’re always showing us on the news.

And we start thinking, “Oh, they’re so big.

These problems… oh, the world’s so terrible.

It’s so big Right?

Everything can seem so big, so big because we don’t have perspective.

But when you open your mind to something much, much bigger, these great huge mysteries, then suddenly all those things on TV don’t seem very big at all.

You suddenly realize you can even laugh about them.

They’re so petty.

Something that’s petty means it’s small and unimportant.

All that stuff is so petty and unimportant compared to that massive power and mystery that we all come from.

It’s also connected, our modern mental problems, y’know, our modern unhappiness, our modern weakness is connected to, I think, a lack of awe.

Awe is a great word in English, it’s one of my favorites.

A-w-e, awe, it’s pronounced awe… awe.

What is awe?

Awe is an emotion.

It’s perhaps the most powerful emotion we have.

Awe is the feeling we get when you see something huge, gigantic, beautiful and powerful all at the same time.

Now at a small level, for example, you might go to the Himalayas, right, the biggest mountains in the world.

Maybe you might do a hike in the Himalayas and you get up to the top and you’re seeing all those incredibly huge mountains and the beauty and the size and the power of all of it would give you this feeling of awe.

It’s this overwhelming feeling.

And it’s like a mix.

It’s a mix of beauty, it’s a mix of power, it also includes humility.

Humility, where you suddenly, you feel a little bit small, right?

You’re in this incredible massive huge beauty and power and, oh, suddenly you feel kind of small.

But at the same time with awe, what’s interesting about it is that you also feel a connection to that big, huge thing.

And so at the same time you feel a sense of faith and power, humility with faith and power, beauty, hugeness, perspective.

All of it altogether…that’s awe.

So I felt this when we went to Nepal and we got up to the top of our hike and we saw the big mountain range with all the snow-covered mountains in the distance and, ah, so incredible and beautiful.

And I just felt this incredible awe looking at it.

Like I felt connected to it, like I realized, y’know, this is my planet.

I’m part of this.

I’m not separate from it.

But at the same time, I felt small in that huge place.

And it was so beautiful, so stunning.

That feeling of awe is healing.

It heals us.

Without it we become petty.

We become small and unimportant, because we focus on all these small and unimportant things.

And we forget our connection to these great, powerful, huge things.

Without awe we can also become egotistical.

Egotistical means you think of yourself as being so great.

I’m so great, y’know, awesome, yeah, right?

Confidence is good.

You need to be confident in yourself.

But when you start thinking you’re superior, when you’re, “Oh, I’m better than other people.

I’m so awesome and great, yeah.

Y’know, that’s arrogance.

That’s a lack of humility.

And we can also get that way.

We can get kind of egotistical if we don’t have awe, because suddenly everything around us seems so small and we think we’re so great, because we look at our own successes, we look at our own accomplishments and we think they’re so huge, because our perspective is too small.

But when you get those feelings of awe, those moments of awe, you just need moments in your life.

It’s not all the time.

But you just need these moments, y’know, maybe a few times a year at least where you experience that awe and suddenly, y’know, on one hand you lose your fear, you lose your worry, but at the same time you feel humble.

You realize, okay, I’m not so great, this is incredible.

I’m not a bad person but, y’know, it gives you perspective.

You start to see that there’s something much greater than just you and your little life.

That’s the power of awe.

And I encourage you, awe is healing.

It will heal so many of your pains and problems..

When you have this genuine experience of awe, it’s like it just washes away all the small things.

They just go away.

I had that feeling of awe floating in the float tank.

In fact, to be honest with you, I’ve had that feeling of awe in the float tank many times.

I like to do the floating.

I’m in Japan now so I’m not doing it, but when I’m back in America, I like to float maybe once or twice a week when I can.

And it’s because I’ve had so many of those great experiences of awe, of connection to that power and mystery, floating in the tank.

I don’t know why the tank does it but it’s something about… it’s really about that deep meditation of quieting the mind and it connects you to something much, much, much greater.

But you can have it in nature, too.

So usually you need to get out into more of a wilderness.

Now some people, if you’re sensitive, you might get that feeling of awe even just walking around your neighborhood if you just open up and you’re very mindful.

But I think for most people, most busy people, we’re distracted, going to someplace that’s stunningly beautiful, incredibly beautiful.

Y’know, going to someplace like Patagonia or up into Alaska or the Himalayas, y’know, those huge mountains can do it.

For some people just getting out into the open sea can do it, too, because again there’s that feeling of hugeness when you’re on the ocean.

Especially if you’re in a small boat, you really feel it.

When you’re on a small boat you feel the vastness, the hugeness and the power of the ocean.

I sometimes got that feeling when I was kitesurfing.

Right, I’d be out on the ocean with this powerful wind blowing my kite.

I’m out there alone.

And I could feel the power of that wind.

I could feel the power of the ocean and I would again get that feeling of awe, that beauty, looking back at the island, incredible.

This is such a healing thing.

We’re missing it.

You’ll never get it from television.

You’ll never get it from a book.

You’ve got to get out there in the world and see it.

You get that feeling of awe from that grandness and hugeness, from the mystery and the beauty.

That’s what will give you that feeling of awe.

So this month I encourage you to seek out the experience of awe.

You could do it through meditation and prayer.

You can do it by going to a big, vast, natural, beautiful place.

I recommend you try to go someplace that’s more wild, wilderness, true wilderness, where you can feel the power and vastness and hugeness of nature.

You can do it even by contemplating these thought experiments of like… about the universe, about, oh, the universe thinking about the big bang and everything, the billions and billions and billions of galaxies and stars all coming from one thing and what came before.

Just think about it.

What came before?

Why did it all come from nothing?

What kind of nothing gives birth to everything?

Think just… think of the mystery, you’re not going to come up with a direct answer, I promise you.

It’s a huge mystery, that’s what makes it so powerful.

But in life too many times we try to run from things that are uncertain.

We try to run from the mysteries.

But those grand mysteries are what make us most human and alive and give us that feeling of awe.

It’s such a healing experience.

Seek out awe this month.

It seems like a strange homework assignment, but that’s it.

Seek it out this month.

Tell me about it.

See you later.

Bye for now