Midweek Enchantments #2: Our bodies evolved to experience awe

Oak leaves, Camellia petals, and the role of awe in apocalypse

This is the second post in Midweek Enchantments. Midweek Enchantments is a weekly series/practice where I’ll share some writing about enchantment and one thing I’m feeling enchanted by, with invitations for joining me in this practice!

Phenomenon #49 by Angela Lake (1974)

Dear Shapeshifters,

When a group of us walked across the Haywood bridge the night after Hurricane Helene hit, I don’t remember feeling fear.

As we walked and talked and looked out over the swollen river, which swallowed the buildings, roads, and the earth below, I remember feeling almost giddy.

We were surrounded by hundreds of people, who had all come to look, to locate ourselves, to stand on a bridge at night in the storms wake, finding new landmarks in a barely recognizable landscape: The sunken in rooftops of favorite places now strange islands in a raging river. But even as the river moved swiftly, time slowed.

I keep thinking back to that moment on the bridge, trying to understand why I didn’t feel filled with dread or fear or have more understanding of what that level of destruction could mean for the region or for our lives, or at least why I don’t remember it that way. Were we dissociating? Just in shock?

Then I realize it wasn’t a lack of presence we were experiencing, but a deep presence.

We weren’t thinking about the past or the future. We were there on the bridge, there with the river, there with each other, deeply aware of the precarity of our lives, face to face with a change so swift and vast that it stopped us in our tracks.

We were in awe— awe for the river, awe for the unexpected upheaval of our lives, awe for having survived, for having each other.

Our bodies evolved to experience awe: the role of awe in the apocalyptic

Our bodies have evolved to experience awe.

This fact is in itself what I find myself enchanted by this week.

That, as my teacher Luna Dietrich shared, “the apocalypse comes with Dahlias”.

That awe may have an important role to play in apocalypse.

Dacher Keltner defines awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world” as well as a “self-transcendent state” “that transport[s] us out of our self-focused, threat-oriented, and status quo mindset to a realm where we connect to something larger than the self” (Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life).

So and Pinar Sinopoulos-lloyd of Queer Nature describe “awe as a nonbinary emotion” and a means by which we can nourish ourselves amidst ecological collapse:

“Awe is a non-binary emotion that can be felt when we are ecstatic or when we are terrified… Awe humbles us and makes us feel small but at the same time fills us with the very ‘big’ emotions of wonder and amazement…And in an era when the future of life on earth is uncertain, these experiences are integral to nourishing our nervous systems. When we are ‘stopped in our tracks’ in wonderment, our panicked or anxious minds have a chance to pause… Pinar refers to the practice of letting oneself be enchanted by the more-than-human in these times as ‘guerilla mysticism.” (Loam Magazine: Weaving New Worlds)

They go on to share how in survival situations, when people have been stranded in the wilderness, a common theme among survivors is that they were able to experience awe for the landscape even while threatened by it, even while lost in it.

Perhaps even especially while lost and disoriented, because being “somewhere new” provokes awe.

Keltner shares:

“Young children are in an almost constant state of awe since everything is so new to them…. Take a moment in each walk to take in the vastness of things, for example in looking at a panoramic view or up close at the detail of a leaf or flower. Go somewhere new.”

I can’t help thinking about how loss takes us somewhere new.

And in that vast unknown landscape of apocalyptic loss, awe is one of the processes by which we orient, by which our bodies remember some core truths about ourselves: our entanglement with a mysterious and miraculous universe and our entanglement with one another.

Awe is an altared state that helps us survive.

Our senses heighten to take in our surroundings, time slows, and our stress responses lessen. We feel our smallness while simultaneously feeling our entanglement in a vast universe. Time and space dilate.

Awe is an experience of kairos, what Michael Meade calls “the mythic moment that is end and beginning at once, when the hard pulse of time becomes ‘once upon a time’ and past, present, and future secretly converse with each other.”

Michael Meade writes:

“In such extraordinary times, things become both impossible and more possible at the same time as life itself seeks to transform on many levels. When everything seems about to just fall apart or come to a tragic end what we need is not the sense of evolution over time, but a felt connection to the potentials for transformation and renewal at this particular time….Kairos is awakened time, it involves moments of transformation in which we awaken to a greater sense of the world but also come to know more precisely who we are and what we have to contribute to this time of radical change and possible renewal.” (Thank you

Leila Haseba Shaban

for this quote)

Awe says, look here, look at this flower blooming on the uprooted tree, this river, this vibrant sky, the miraculous face of your best friend. Orient here. How wild this living. How wild this dying. Move from here.

Awe recontextualizes… everything.

When in awe, we let go of what keeps us separate, scared, alone. We become more generous and able to work together, inspired by existence itself.

Awe is a community weaver.

In the wake of Hurricane Helene, we witnessed people who were on opposite sides of the political spectrum show up for one another.

Keltner shares: “The last pillar of the default self—striving for competitive advantage, registered in a stinginess toward giving away possessions and time—crumbles during awe.”

In the face of climate catastrophe and massive loss and alienation from one another and ourselves, awe threads us back together.

The Extraordinary Ordinary

Awe, while it can be part of our experience of big disruptions of every day life, can also be a part of our every day.

I can feel awe standing on the bridge overlooking a vast flood, but I can also feel enchantment when I look at the fallen oak leaves mixing with fresh Camellia petals.

I can feel awe if I slow down, put my phone down, and savor a strong cup of chamomile tea.

The ordinary is extraordinary, though we may not always be dropped into this awareness.

There is much in our world that seeks to crush this sense of the extraordinary ordinary out of us.

Like I shared in last week’s enchantment post, we don’t have to seek to always be in this altared state. Cultivating enchantment is not about avoiding pain or upset or achieving an unchanging, constantly inspired state.

And yet, being able to touch into awe and enchantment (even momentarily!) provides an incredible amount of nourishment and orientation in disorienting times, and it’s something our bodies have evolved to do.

How can we make more space for ourselves to access the extraordinary ordinary?

Where are those relationships where you get brought back into a sense of reverence for life?

Fallen Oak leaves and Camellia petals

Affirmations for Awe and Softness as Resistance

• Under systems that condition us away from connection, away from reverence for and kinship with the ecosystems we depend upon, our cultivation of wonder and awe for the mundane - which is to say, that which is of this earth - IS a form of resistance.

• Letting ourselves by captivated by the more than human world is a form of resistance - as Pinar calls it - a practice of “guerilla mysticism.”

• Your love and wonder for a sunset, a small bird, a plant, is a form of resistance.

• Returning your attention to the ecosystems around you is a form of resistance.

• Your determined love of other living and dying beings is a form of resistance.

• Sensing yourself as part of an ecosystem is a form of resistance.

• When you feel despair at not knowing if what you’re doing is enough in these times, remember how much important work your heart is doing.

• Do not belittle the power of your gentle hands, your sensitivity, your tender attention and affection for this world.

With love,

Mara June

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If there’s one enchanting thing right now in your day or week, however small, what is it? Sink in, and tell us in the comments below.🦋✨

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PS For more on Enchantment, Awe, Plants, and Grief, join us for Herbalism for Grief Support!

The themes of beauty and enchantment as medicine and the more than human world as allies for grief and nervous system support are foundational parts of our Herbalism as Grief Support course, which begins this January and is discounted through November 25th! Learn more about the course here.

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