The role of awe in transcendence (part 2)
Prepandemic, I was a gym rat. (I will get back to it finally in 2024.) Four to five times a week, I hit the gym in the early hours, and once a week I did a hour-long, choreographed exercise class with about 30 other women, most of whom were in the habit of attending, too. After many years of attending the same class, the faces were familiar and friendly; it was like a club, with a self-selecting membership in that not many wanted to be up and out that early on a weekend morning. Standing around waiting for the class to begin, I would be sleepy and a bit out of it. As soon as the music started and we began to warm up, I felt a growing rush of elation and a small tingling in the skin of my arms and legs that spread and grew in intensity until the core of the class was well underway and I was focused on the workout. I thought of this as a "high", a wonderful one, and intuitively attributed it to the energy in the room as 30 women began to move in unison. It was a favorite event each week. I stored up the joy from that shared experience for the rest of the hour, and drew on it over the coming hectic working week, week after week.
I am so pleased to have a name for the feeling I got in that gym class, courtesy of Dacher Keltner and his book Awe: he calls it "collective effervescence", and ascribes it to physical movement, in particular in groups where the energy created may be shared. Ceremonies, rituals, exercise, athletics, games, and dance are some of the versions of this he mentions; I would add productive physical labor to the list (the joy of "many hands make light work", or the collaborative joy of making a meal or anything together). He quotes studies showing that exposure to collective effervescence improves health, happiness, empathy, generosity, kindness and creativity. This reinforces what my favorite life coach espouses, that being with other people in community is regulating for us all; it activates the vagus nerve in the more primal portion of our brain and releases oxytocin, the brain's comfort chemical, creating a sense of safety and security while we are with our "tribe" and afterwards.
Collective effervescence is one of eight categories of awe that Keltner calls the "wonders of life". Moral beauty, that is, finding awe in the actions of other people, mainly acts of goodness, is the most prevalent type of awe-inducing experience by far. Sharing the experience of a "wonder" with others is often an enhancing element of the awe moment. The others include:
Nature: majestic views, forest bathing, communing with critters, gardening, etc.
Music: performance or listening, live or recorded, aural awe
Art and architecture: visual awe linked subconsciously to patterns in life
Mystical encounters: religious ceremony, or independent encounter ascribed to a divine origin
Encountering life/death: witnessing the initial or final moments of a life is awe-generating, as is often a near-death experience; all a glimpse beyond the current life
Big ideas/epiphanies: a leap to greated understanding often provokes awe
The author breaks each of these down into compelling elements and stories, which further describe how each type of awe is manifested.
There are so many ways to look for awe or transcendence each day, whether through prayer, walks in nature, group activities, attending a performance, viewing art, learning, yoga, meditation, and so many more. Then, there are the times when awe sneaks up on us when we least expect it, if we can just stay open to it. Keltner says that awe “challenges default expectations” about a given situation, such as encountering a surprising degree of power, mystery and/or new understanding (p. 179). The context for this is that our brains are constantly predicting all aspects of what is happening in our world as we navigate it, all aspects of what is to come - and when those predictions are wildly surpassed, it may lead to awe. As a person trains themselves to look for awe, trains themselves in that openness, inevitably they will be more sensitive to their environment and find awe more, achieving its many benefits more often.
Throughout the book, Keltner tells stories about his deep connection to his brother - in childhood, during his brother's illness, and after he passed in 2021. He told several stories that blurred the boundary between this world and the world his brother passed to. From those contemplations he drew this poetic conclusion: "… that the people we love, and our companions in a life of awe, remain with us in even more mysterious ways after they leave, enabling an opening to new wonders of life." (p. 236)
This was a book that was easy to read, to learn from and get lost in. It was fun to read about "everyday awe" as a goal or a practice, because it must be so closely correlated to the everyday transcendence so close to my heart. Keltner describes of awe as an emotion, and as my attempt to set transcendence apart, I would say it is the mental state of the egolessness, connection and wonder that accompanies the emotion of awe. Keltner wrote that awe dissolves the boundaries of the self, awakening us to interdependence with each other and all things, and connecting us to something bigger than ourselves (p. 244-9). To that I would add, transcendence is the place we are trying to get to, the "bigger than ourselves". Would you agree?
