"Wonder and love, we see, are inseparable." I think love is the source of everything; it is the animating force of the universe. I "know" this from an experience I've talked about before here; that love is constantly permeating everything and that energy of love is available to us all the time, but we have to be receptive to it. And perhaps that is where wonder and awe come in. I agree with you Renée that wonder is one of those doorways into the mystery and that love awaits when we are in a state of wonder. I remember reading a passage by Stephen Levine when he was describing what you were saying around the experience of seeing a tree, for example. The mind has such a need to name things to make them familiar to us, perhaps stemming from the ego's need to have control over our world, when in truth we have none. And by naming the tree a "tree" we often miss the experience of being with the tree as another being in our world, and marveling at the fact that it exists at all; and that we have the capacity to connect with this being as another being without words, without labels; just experiencing in wonder, and dare I say love. When I am in a state of wonder and awe, I am one with everything and every being; there is no separation. And when I truly allow myself to surrender to that state, I am also in love with everything and everyone. How could it not be so? I have a new poem by Mark Nepo I recently memorized. I would say that you can substitute light for love in the poem and be changing nothing. "The poplars are reaching for the sun. The taller of the two leans more toward the river than a year ago. I wonder what they can teach me now that I'm leaning more into the world. I keep struggling to be who I am without shutting out others, and to be with others without giving who I am away. Surely this must be doable. To be who we are, anywhere, everywhere. The poplars lean as all plants do toward water and light. But we resist. Overwhelmed or in pain, we turn from the light, and push things away, when it's how there is no end to light that is the teacher. There is something reassuring about the poplars leaning. When in grief, I can't bear all the light, though it's the relentless way that light keeps filling dark places that keeps everything possible."
This is beautiful, Ed. I love being with a tree, knowing she is experiencing me as I experience her, and then being stopped short as my mind breaks the inner silence with some silly 'wondering' like: where is her face? With what organs is she perceiving me? And then enters another silence (the gap of wonder perhaps) as I let she and I be so wholly different from one another. In that moment I experience beauty. I agree that it is love that is there, the container for all of it, as well as the force that drew us to see one another in the first place. Substituting love for light in Nepo's poem was exquisite. Thank you for sharing that!
I love your question: "With what organs is she perceiving me?" Here, the wonder is a recognition that bridges the gap instead of opening a gap. What is the nature of a ponder that brings us closer to aliveness and allurement? Perhaps, we will explore this, too, in the weeks to come.
And you bring beauty to the fold. In your words, we come to see a certain purpose in beauty--an expression itself of love that by our experience of it, ushers us out of our forgetting and straight into the heart of love.
I agree that Ed's substituting love for light is exquisite.
So much beauty, depth, and richness here. What an extraordinary prelude to our course beginning this weekend. Where to begin . . .
Wonder as a doorway . . .
into the mystery
into love
What you share of your experience of a quality of oneness with everything is not only beautiful, Ed, it touches on an essential attribute of wonder that *reveals* all-pervading love.
You say "we have to be receptive" to wonder, and you share the tendency in the human to name things. Naming – we see in Genesis (reading Genesis philosophically as a glimpse into the human psyche) – comes about at an epochal shift in human evolution and structure of consciousness. We can see that the inclination to name comes about with the birth of rational thought. With rational thought comes perception that self and world are separate. And with this shift in perception comes the recognition of 'self' and the birth of 'ego'.
So, to name something is to see it as something we re-cognize.
So quick are we inclined to name: tree, bird, blue, rain. And so, to open to wonder is to be alive *with* this being in our midst--tree, bird, rain--and be in the *experience* more so than the conception of it.
Following the Genesis thread: Wonder returns us to Eden, if just for a moment, recalling an innocence of being. In wonder-moments, all is love.
Back to your reflection on our receptivity to wonder. How is it that we open ourselves to wonder?
We will reflect on this together on Sunday and the weeks ahead. Perhaps, too, we will unwrap resistance in the weeks to come, per Nepo: "But we resist. Overwhelmed or in pain, we turn from the light, and push things away. . . ."
"The world is by how it is experienced, and that experience is an ever-unfolding flux. In this very moment of that ceaseless unfolding, you and I are the world to one another and every other being. We are the world." Hi Renee. I'm a new subscriber here and love this post on wonder and "affinity for being," so much to ponder, but really, I suppose, so much to live. I'm going to enjoy spending some time with your footnotes and the resources listed there as well! Thank you.
Welcome! It is great to 'hear' your voice here after we bumped into one another last week in Notes.
Yes! "so much to live." You go straight to the heart of opening to wonder: fully-embodied experience. What is the "inner orientation" that allows experience more so than thought to lead?
Please feel free to reach out to me by email if you have any questions about the citations.
Thank you Renee. Part of me wishes that the inner orientation had a location, some way to pin it down, but I think it’s more of a continual turning and returning. I appreciate the email and look forward to more newsletters.
I love that your brought "location" into the fold here and "continual turning and returning." Thank you.
In the upcoming course (this is not a plug for the course!), we will be working with this 'location' through practices that bring open awareness through the organ of the heart. When we turn to the world through heart-centered awareness, we experience in novel ways and call up a nascent innocence. So, perhaps we keep "turning and returning" with heart as a way of experiencing the world and one another anew.
I have read your reflections twice over these last difficult days Renée, and with my heart in many torn unrecognizable pieces it has been an exercise of endurance to reply with any deep understanding.
Wonder has not appeared in any of its extraordinary forms, wonder was taken by the hand of death and temporarily, I hope, fled.
Despite that which has broken me though, despite that for these days of the present, which are after all, the only now I can live much as I find no pleasure in the tristesse of these moments given, love is ever present… Love for my lost loves, left in iridescent mists of memories, all that remains. And thank goodness.. thank goodness.
But now, I flounder, contrary to my own original reflections on wonder and love being companions with an unquestionable surety, here, today I do question whether perhaps, in circumstances beyond the normal, whether in fact one can be present without the other..?
Love without wonder..? Wonder without love?
I send my gratitude for your insightful words nevertheless, with love xx
Permit me to offer you my deepest sympathies for your losses and the horror of these losses. I had not read your letter, "Monday Mourning," yet until reading your comment. What devastation. What trauma to encounter the brutal forces of a bloodhound on your beloved pastoral flock. I can only touch at imagining the disorientation you must have experienced fumbling out to the field, the heart-wrenching shock, the sheer horror of it all, the immensity of grief.
I believe I understand that you are wondering about wonder in such extraordinary circumstance, and wondering about wonder and love--very understandably so. The trauma of such horrors tears us from any capacity to make sense. "Why? Why?" would be a reasonable refrain. And perhaps in time, after this rupture begins to repair and your heart begins to mend, there will be meaning in this question of wonder and love.
If it may be of help, I offer that wonder is not all admiration. It is also the experience of being struck with awe, which can have a terror and horror quality about it. Some say the word "wonder" comes from the German "Wunde"--wound. Something ruptures through the ordinary and seizes the heart. We are left with only the barest sense-making in the beginning through the pulsing heart itself, wrenching and writhing in pain. That there is in us an inclination to wonder--how could this have happened? what does this mean? how can I go on? and so on--may, in fact, be part of the path of healing such sorrow; and this is so because we love. . . .
I hope these reflections provide glimmers of insight for healing.
And dear Friend, may you feel held in the arms of grace. May the days ahead bring ease. May your heart mend. May your one remaining be found, and may those who died be released from suffering.
With love,
Renée
PS: Please accept my heartfelt gratitude that you took the time to read Sunday's letter and to offer your comment.
Firstly Renée I thank you for understanding of my emotional state when you wrote your gracious reply. But, I find I have a feeling of deep need, to apologise for my overly harsh words. As I read them over again, words so wholly negating something I have always believed in, wonder and love... I will add kindness too because your heart is so evidently overflowing with this, I am overwhelmed with shame at my insensitivity.
I am deeply sorry and can only say thank you for being such a guiding light, your reply about wonder also enveloping awe, be that beauty of terror, has carried me safely through the hardest days.
You are most generous to circle back to this. And dear friend, it saddens me to learn that shame paid you a visit and has been hovering in your midst. Shoo fly to shame! Your comment was not insensitive in my read. It was raw, and why wouldn't you and so, your words, be? You and I have never met eye to eye, but I have a sense of you from our correspondences, from your writing and images, and there is a bond of intimacy here. I thank you for your kind words and am thinking of you these days. . .
Thank you Jenna for appreciating my entry and for letting me know. It lets me know that you and others are first of all reading what I write, and being moved as well. I love what you said about the tree experiencing us as well as us experiencing the tree. Sometimes I forget that it works both ways. I see those organisms we call trees as uniquely beautiful and certainly capable on whatever level it exists for them, to feel and connect with our presence.
Ed, thank you for circling back to share. I love that you share: "Sometimes I forget that it works both ways," recognizing that we, too, are perceived and felt, and that there is a desire to "connect with our presence" too--*affinity for being* = love.
I so love this letter, Renee! Here, among other things, you've given me the gift to consciously recognize the gaps and, thereby, expand into more and more wonder. Thank you for that! ♥️ In my work with the ancestors, I've come to know that (at least for some, some of the "time") when we die, we do keep seeing through our eyes, and also through the eyes of others, including the still-living, if we choose to. It's one of the reasons the ancestors are so focused on us. They are with us, in us, seeing through our eyes. I feel compelled now to take a journey with them and ask about the ways they perceive the gap. I really love how you brought the idea of the gap into also being a bridge. This really resonates with me. It makes me think of wonder as a sort of initiation. First it creates the gap (the separation) and then it bridges to its own expanded return. That's magnificent! Thank you for all of this, my friend! I can't wait to begin the class with you.
We are dancing in the mutual field of one another's inquiries and posts. I have read your introduction to psychopomp (https://witchcraftandmetaphysics.substack.com/p/a-psychopomp-introduction?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2), and I have been sitting with the reflections bubbling up in me before commenting. Now you have given more to consider. Of course, when I reflect on our eyes being seen through by ancestors, I come to a phrase that is so familiar to you now: "seeing through the world." Might you say that in wonder, our eyes are more transparent to be seen through (by ancestors)?
You might see where I'm going with this: Transparency being an attribute of 'seeing through the world' per Johnson, per Gebser. Integral structure concretizing time--all is present now, an 'ancestor' transcending all constructs of linear time . . . wonder closing the gap and allowing this to be so.
These reflections are poorly formed. To say, you've pulled me into such a wondrous thread here, Jenna! Thank you, dear friend.
"Wonder and love, we see, are inseparable." I think love is the source of everything; it is the animating force of the universe. I "know" this from an experience I've talked about before here; that love is constantly permeating everything and that energy of love is available to us all the time, but we have to be receptive to it. And perhaps that is where wonder and awe come in. I agree with you Renée that wonder is one of those doorways into the mystery and that love awaits when we are in a state of wonder. I remember reading a passage by Stephen Levine when he was describing what you were saying around the experience of seeing a tree, for example. The mind has such a need to name things to make them familiar to us, perhaps stemming from the ego's need to have control over our world, when in truth we have none. And by naming the tree a "tree" we often miss the experience of being with the tree as another being in our world, and marveling at the fact that it exists at all; and that we have the capacity to connect with this being as another being without words, without labels; just experiencing in wonder, and dare I say love. When I am in a state of wonder and awe, I am one with everything and every being; there is no separation. And when I truly allow myself to surrender to that state, I am also in love with everything and everyone. How could it not be so? I have a new poem by Mark Nepo I recently memorized. I would say that you can substitute light for love in the poem and be changing nothing. "The poplars are reaching for the sun. The taller of the two leans more toward the river than a year ago. I wonder what they can teach me now that I'm leaning more into the world. I keep struggling to be who I am without shutting out others, and to be with others without giving who I am away. Surely this must be doable. To be who we are, anywhere, everywhere. The poplars lean as all plants do toward water and light. But we resist. Overwhelmed or in pain, we turn from the light, and push things away, when it's how there is no end to light that is the teacher. There is something reassuring about the poplars leaning. When in grief, I can't bear all the light, though it's the relentless way that light keeps filling dark places that keeps everything possible."
This is beautiful, Ed. I love being with a tree, knowing she is experiencing me as I experience her, and then being stopped short as my mind breaks the inner silence with some silly 'wondering' like: where is her face? With what organs is she perceiving me? And then enters another silence (the gap of wonder perhaps) as I let she and I be so wholly different from one another. In that moment I experience beauty. I agree that it is love that is there, the container for all of it, as well as the force that drew us to see one another in the first place. Substituting love for light in Nepo's poem was exquisite. Thank you for sharing that!
Jenna,
I love your question: "With what organs is she perceiving me?" Here, the wonder is a recognition that bridges the gap instead of opening a gap. What is the nature of a ponder that brings us closer to aliveness and allurement? Perhaps, we will explore this, too, in the weeks to come.
And you bring beauty to the fold. In your words, we come to see a certain purpose in beauty--an expression itself of love that by our experience of it, ushers us out of our forgetting and straight into the heart of love.
I agree that Ed's substituting love for light is exquisite.
With love,
Renée
Dear Ed,
So much beauty, depth, and richness here. What an extraordinary prelude to our course beginning this weekend. Where to begin . . .
Wonder as a doorway . . .
into the mystery
into love
What you share of your experience of a quality of oneness with everything is not only beautiful, Ed, it touches on an essential attribute of wonder that *reveals* all-pervading love.
You say "we have to be receptive" to wonder, and you share the tendency in the human to name things. Naming – we see in Genesis (reading Genesis philosophically as a glimpse into the human psyche) – comes about at an epochal shift in human evolution and structure of consciousness. We can see that the inclination to name comes about with the birth of rational thought. With rational thought comes perception that self and world are separate. And with this shift in perception comes the recognition of 'self' and the birth of 'ego'.
So, to name something is to see it as something we re-cognize.
So quick are we inclined to name: tree, bird, blue, rain. And so, to open to wonder is to be alive *with* this being in our midst--tree, bird, rain--and be in the *experience* more so than the conception of it.
Following the Genesis thread: Wonder returns us to Eden, if just for a moment, recalling an innocence of being. In wonder-moments, all is love.
Back to your reflection on our receptivity to wonder. How is it that we open ourselves to wonder?
We will reflect on this together on Sunday and the weeks ahead. Perhaps, too, we will unwrap resistance in the weeks to come, per Nepo: "But we resist. Overwhelmed or in pain, we turn from the light, and push things away. . . ."
Thank you, dear friend.
With love,
Renée
PS: * is a way of emphasizing the word.
"The world is by how it is experienced, and that experience is an ever-unfolding flux. In this very moment of that ceaseless unfolding, you and I are the world to one another and every other being. We are the world." Hi Renee. I'm a new subscriber here and love this post on wonder and "affinity for being," so much to ponder, but really, I suppose, so much to live. I'm going to enjoy spending some time with your footnotes and the resources listed there as well! Thank you.
Dear Emily,
Welcome! It is great to 'hear' your voice here after we bumped into one another last week in Notes.
Yes! "so much to live." You go straight to the heart of opening to wonder: fully-embodied experience. What is the "inner orientation" that allows experience more so than thought to lead?
Please feel free to reach out to me by email if you have any questions about the citations.
reneeeliphd@gmail.com
I'm so glad you're here.
With love,
Renée
Thank you Renee. Part of me wishes that the inner orientation had a location, some way to pin it down, but I think it’s more of a continual turning and returning. I appreciate the email and look forward to more newsletters.
Emily,
I love that your brought "location" into the fold here and "continual turning and returning." Thank you.
In the upcoming course (this is not a plug for the course!), we will be working with this 'location' through practices that bring open awareness through the organ of the heart. When we turn to the world through heart-centered awareness, we experience in novel ways and call up a nascent innocence. So, perhaps we keep "turning and returning" with heart as a way of experiencing the world and one another anew.
I love that Renee.
I have read your reflections twice over these last difficult days Renée, and with my heart in many torn unrecognizable pieces it has been an exercise of endurance to reply with any deep understanding.
Wonder has not appeared in any of its extraordinary forms, wonder was taken by the hand of death and temporarily, I hope, fled.
Despite that which has broken me though, despite that for these days of the present, which are after all, the only now I can live much as I find no pleasure in the tristesse of these moments given, love is ever present… Love for my lost loves, left in iridescent mists of memories, all that remains. And thank goodness.. thank goodness.
But now, I flounder, contrary to my own original reflections on wonder and love being companions with an unquestionable surety, here, today I do question whether perhaps, in circumstances beyond the normal, whether in fact one can be present without the other..?
Love without wonder..? Wonder without love?
I send my gratitude for your insightful words nevertheless, with love xx
Dear Susie,
Permit me to offer you my deepest sympathies for your losses and the horror of these losses. I had not read your letter, "Monday Mourning," yet until reading your comment. What devastation. What trauma to encounter the brutal forces of a bloodhound on your beloved pastoral flock. I can only touch at imagining the disorientation you must have experienced fumbling out to the field, the heart-wrenching shock, the sheer horror of it all, the immensity of grief.
I believe I understand that you are wondering about wonder in such extraordinary circumstance, and wondering about wonder and love--very understandably so. The trauma of such horrors tears us from any capacity to make sense. "Why? Why?" would be a reasonable refrain. And perhaps in time, after this rupture begins to repair and your heart begins to mend, there will be meaning in this question of wonder and love.
If it may be of help, I offer that wonder is not all admiration. It is also the experience of being struck with awe, which can have a terror and horror quality about it. Some say the word "wonder" comes from the German "Wunde"--wound. Something ruptures through the ordinary and seizes the heart. We are left with only the barest sense-making in the beginning through the pulsing heart itself, wrenching and writhing in pain. That there is in us an inclination to wonder--how could this have happened? what does this mean? how can I go on? and so on--may, in fact, be part of the path of healing such sorrow; and this is so because we love. . . .
I hope these reflections provide glimmers of insight for healing.
And dear Friend, may you feel held in the arms of grace. May the days ahead bring ease. May your heart mend. May your one remaining be found, and may those who died be released from suffering.
With love,
Renée
PS: Please accept my heartfelt gratitude that you took the time to read Sunday's letter and to offer your comment.
Firstly Renée I thank you for understanding of my emotional state when you wrote your gracious reply. But, I find I have a feeling of deep need, to apologise for my overly harsh words. As I read them over again, words so wholly negating something I have always believed in, wonder and love... I will add kindness too because your heart is so evidently overflowing with this, I am overwhelmed with shame at my insensitivity.
I am deeply sorry and can only say thank you for being such a guiding light, your reply about wonder also enveloping awe, be that beauty of terror, has carried me safely through the hardest days.
Bless you xx
Dearest Susie,
You are most generous to circle back to this. And dear friend, it saddens me to learn that shame paid you a visit and has been hovering in your midst. Shoo fly to shame! Your comment was not insensitive in my read. It was raw, and why wouldn't you and so, your words, be? You and I have never met eye to eye, but I have a sense of you from our correspondences, from your writing and images, and there is a bond of intimacy here. I thank you for your kind words and am thinking of you these days. . .
with love,
Renée
Thank you Jenna for appreciating my entry and for letting me know. It lets me know that you and others are first of all reading what I write, and being moved as well. I love what you said about the tree experiencing us as well as us experiencing the tree. Sometimes I forget that it works both ways. I see those organisms we call trees as uniquely beautiful and certainly capable on whatever level it exists for them, to feel and connect with our presence.
Ed, thank you for circling back to share. I love that you share: "Sometimes I forget that it works both ways," recognizing that we, too, are perceived and felt, and that there is a desire to "connect with our presence" too--*affinity for being* = love.
I so love this letter, Renee! Here, among other things, you've given me the gift to consciously recognize the gaps and, thereby, expand into more and more wonder. Thank you for that! ♥️ In my work with the ancestors, I've come to know that (at least for some, some of the "time") when we die, we do keep seeing through our eyes, and also through the eyes of others, including the still-living, if we choose to. It's one of the reasons the ancestors are so focused on us. They are with us, in us, seeing through our eyes. I feel compelled now to take a journey with them and ask about the ways they perceive the gap. I really love how you brought the idea of the gap into also being a bridge. This really resonates with me. It makes me think of wonder as a sort of initiation. First it creates the gap (the separation) and then it bridges to its own expanded return. That's magnificent! Thank you for all of this, my friend! I can't wait to begin the class with you.
Dear Jenna,
We are dancing in the mutual field of one another's inquiries and posts. I have read your introduction to psychopomp (https://witchcraftandmetaphysics.substack.com/p/a-psychopomp-introduction?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2), and I have been sitting with the reflections bubbling up in me before commenting. Now you have given more to consider. Of course, when I reflect on our eyes being seen through by ancestors, I come to a phrase that is so familiar to you now: "seeing through the world." Might you say that in wonder, our eyes are more transparent to be seen through (by ancestors)?
You might see where I'm going with this: Transparency being an attribute of 'seeing through the world' per Johnson, per Gebser. Integral structure concretizing time--all is present now, an 'ancestor' transcending all constructs of linear time . . . wonder closing the gap and allowing this to be so.
These reflections are poorly formed. To say, you've pulled me into such a wondrous thread here, Jenna! Thank you, dear friend.
With love,
Renée