A Sense of Wonder

     

    

     The world is filled with unexplained, the weird and wonderful but you wouldn't know it with the current tide of ridged thinking. It's ironic the one thing the atheist and the religious agree on is that the supernatural is to be scorned as inherently evil or superstitious bullshit.

         Rational thought has robbed us of a sense of wonder. Everything can be explained with science or "the work of God". There is no middle ground when confronted with mystery. Dreams, intuition, and premonitions are shrugged off as mere whims of imagination without further question.

         What happened to our sense of curiosity about infinite possibilities? There is so much we don't know but instead of awe we react with cynical disdain, primordial fear or outlandish conspiracy theories that would confuse Rube Goldberg.

         Look at astrology, to the religious it's the devils work. To the atheist, it's a con game for the gullible. I'm not defending it but it has been studied for thousands of years with some validity in it. Does that mean all of it is correct? No, but sometimes it does get things right without a sensible explanation. Mystery still unresolved.

         Direct experience is the surest way to alter reality. I studied aikido for years with the emphasis on ki but had no idea how or why it works. I gave up trying to figure it out years ago and just accept that it's real.

         While faith in nice, doubt is where you get an education. Making sense of the world is a life long search that includes stumbling over things you can't explain.

Most would prefer to stick with what they have to avoid the enviable discomfort uncertainty would stir in their consciousness. Anything odd, or unexplained is considered a threat to the world we have so carefully constructed to make us feel big, because the awe inspiring the unknown makes us feel small.

         Nature is awash in mystery, out in the wilderness, the sense of awareness is heightened but it can shrugged it off as our imagination on the loose, or a latent survival skill we no longer need. We turned our backs on nature and embraced the world of logic and Artificial Intelligence with the promise of a kind of Godhood to replace it but with that loss, we sacrificed a connection and appreciation of nature.

         There are things we can not understand in the vastness of existence and it's entirely sensible to accept that. Enjoy the mystery, you may find answers in it.