The Mystery and Awe of Experience + Existence
The Mystery and Awe of Experience + Existence
The deepest realities are not hidden because they are distant.
They are hidden because they possess an inwardness that exceeds our grasp.
A mountain can be measured.
A river can be mapped.
A star can be analyzed.
A stone can be weighed and broken apart.
Yet there remains something that forever escapes possession.
Not merely in living beings.
In being itself.
The mystery is not only that another creature experiences the world. The mystery is that anything exists at all in its own manner, from within its own reality.
The horse stands before me.
I may learn its habits, trace its lineage, understand its anatomy, and spend years in its company. Yet I cannot cross into the actuality of its existence.
Likewise the bird.
Likewise the tree.
Likewise the bee.
Likewise the beloved.
Likewise the stranger.
But the mystery does not end there.
The stone lying beside the road.
The river moving beneath moonlight.
The mountain standing through centuries.
The star burning in unimaginable silence.
Each possesses a reality that exceeds my encounter with it.
Not necessarily consciousness as I understand consciousness.
Something deeper and more fundamental:
its ownness.
Its irreducible being.
The fact that it stands before me as something that is not myself.
This cannot be abolished by knowledge.
No accumulation of facts destroys mystery.
Knowledge unfolds endlessly, yet the thing remains.
The star remains the star.
The stone remains the stone.
The tree remains the tree.
The beloved remains the beloved.
There is always an excess beyond comprehension.
A remainder.
A depth.
An inward horizon.
This realization transforms the spiritual task.
One ceases attempting to conquer reality through understanding.
One ceases attempting to possess the world through explanation.
One ceases demanding that mystery surrender itself.
Instead one learns to attend.
Attention becomes a form of reverence.
To attend is to acknowledge that existence exceeds one’s grasp.
To attend is to allow another reality to stand before one without reducing it to an object of use.
The tree ceases to be scenery.
The bird ceases to be decoration.
The mountain ceases to be landscape.
The star ceases to be data.
Each becomes a presence.
A center of being.
There is a temptation to believe that if complete knowledge is impossible then relationship must also be impossible.
The opposite may be true.
Knowledge reaches its limit precisely where communion begins.
For communion does not require possession.
It does not require mastery.
It does not require certainty.
The horse remains unknowable.
Yet one may sit beside it.
The tree remains silent.
Yet one may stand beneath it.
The stone remains inscrutable.
Yet one may hold it.
The star remains infinitely distant.
Yet one may look upward and feel oneself addressed by its existence.
The mystery is not overcome.
The mystery is honored.
Indeed, genuine communion may depend upon preserving mystery rather than abolishing it.
The deepest encounters do not eliminate otherness.
They allow it to remain.
One does not absorb the world.
One dwells with it.
One enters into relation with realities that can never be fully possessed.
In this way attention becomes love.
Listening becomes participation.
Wonder becomes a mode of dwelling.
The abyss remains.
The distance remains.
The mystery remains.
Yet through sustained attention something extraordinary occurs.
Without possessing the thing, one begins to belong with it.
Without knowing completely, one begins to commune.
Without crossing the distance, one discovers that existence itself is already a form of kinship.
The stone.
The tree.
The horse.
The river.
The beloved.
The star.
Each remains forever beyond complete understanding.
And yet, through attention, each becomes intimate.