Wonder

This person is not actually experiencing any awe or wonder they are just faking it for the camera, as is so often the case in our social media driven society.

Wonder refers to the sense of beauty and awe that you get when interacting with the cool parts of the universe.

"Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder." -Plato

Experiencing wonder and associating it with the god concept helps you develop a universal sense of optimism and automatic mindfulness.

Inspiration and Awe

Awe is related to the emotional experienced of wonder, but with an implied sense of reverence versus the joy of wonder.

Inspiration is what turns Wonder and Awe into creative action. When speaking on spiritual matters we feel inspiration because the god concept motivates us towards self-improvement and the improvement of society. We see the Wonder of the universe and are inspired to make it even more Wonderful.

Cultivating Wonder Without Woo

Traditional religion has leaned hard into the "mysteriousness" of the universe as a central method for connecting with awe. Because the universe is so huge, complex, and incomprehensible to us, there must be some "god" being that is way smarter than we are that actually can comprehend it. While this makes total sense in a pre-science era where real understanding is impossible, it no longer seems intellectually honest now that this information is readily available to anyone.

Well said, but advocates ignorance. While we may never go back to the way things were before we understood the universe, that is a good thing.

Creating wonder through mystery also opens up spiritual practice to woo, conspiracies, and grifters. If so much of how the universe works is a mystery, then the mind becomes open to anyone who provides an explanation. The brain naturally seeks explanations and resists the idea that mysteries cannot be solved. The best solution is to provide a rational explanation before an irrational one can be presented.

But does taking the mystery out of the universe take away the wonder? Absolutely not. There is far more wonder, awe, and inspiration in understanding exactly how something works than the mystery can ever possibly hold. There is far more happiness, too, since actually figuring out how things work is the brain's primary function and happiness is the by-product!

When you see how intricately all of the pieces of the universe fit and work together, from the quantum level all the way to fractal galactic clusters, and the infinite detail that every tiny piece of the universe contains which could be studied for a lifetime, how can you possibly say that the wonder is gone? It is a ridiculous, self-serving notion meant to trap people in ignorance, not grant them access to spiritual ecstasy.

Cultivating Wonder - To the Best of Our Knowledge

Awesome Videos

Is it hyperbolic to use the word "awesome" when you really just mean "pretty darn cool"? Probably. It might be better to reserve the use of some words to describe truly unique encounters with the divine. But that is a digression.

Jason Silva: Shots of Awe

The Trick to Regaining Your Childlike Wonder - Zach King

Dacher Keltner: Why Awe Is Such an Important Emotion

Philomena Cunk's Moments of Wonder (Series)

Things I Didn't Know I Loved

Things I Didn't Know I Loved is a beautiful poem by Turkish poet Nâzim Hikmet that explores the wonders of life, love, and nature as contemplated through the window of a train.

it’s 1962 March 28th

I’m sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

night is falling

I never knew I liked

night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain

I don’t like

comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn’t know I loved the earth

can someone who hasn’t worked the earth love it

I’ve never worked the earth

it must be my only Platonic love

and here I’ve loved rivers all this time

whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills

European hills crowned with chateaus

or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see

I know you can’t wash in the same river even once

I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see

I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow

I know this has troubled people before

                        and will trouble those after me

I know all this has been said a thousand times before

                        and will be said after me

I didn’t know I loved the sky

cloudy or clear

the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino

in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish

I hear voices

not from the blue vault but from the yard

the guards are beating someone again

I didn’t know I loved trees

bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino

they come upon me in winter noble and modest

beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish

“the poplars of Izmir

losing their leaves. . .

they call me The Knife. . .

                        lover like a young tree. . .

I blow stately mansions sky-high”

in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief

                                       to a pine bough for luck

I never knew I loved roads

even the asphalt kind

Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea

                                                         Koktebele

                              formerly “Goktepé ili” in Turkish

the two of us inside a closed box

the world flows past on both sides distant and mute

I was never so close to anyone in my life

bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé

                                       when I was eighteen

apart from my life I didn’t have anything in the wagon they could take

and at eighteen our lives are what we value least

I’ve written this somewhere before

wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play

Ramazan night

a paper lantern leading the way

maybe nothing like this ever happened

maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy

                                      going to the shadow play

Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather’s hand

  his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat

     with a sable collar over his robe

  and there’s a lantern in the servant’s hand

  and I can’t contain myself for joy

flowers come to mind for some reason

poppies cactuses jonquils

in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika

fresh almonds on her breath

I was seventeen

my heart on a swing touched the sky

I didn’t know I loved flowers

friends sent me three red carnations in prison

I just remembered the stars

I love them too

whether I’m floored watching them from below

or whether I'm flying at their side

I have some questions for the cosmonauts

were the stars much bigger

did they look like huge jewels on black velvet

                            or apricots on orange

did you feel proud to get closer to the stars

I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don’t

  be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract

  well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to

  say they were terribly figurative and concrete

my heart was in my mouth looking at them

they are our endless desire to grasp things

seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad

I never knew I loved the cosmos

snow flashes in front of my eyes

both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind

I didn’t know I liked snow

I never knew I loved the sun

even when setting cherry-red as now

in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors

but you aren’t about to paint it that way

I didn’t know I loved the sea

                            except the Sea of Azov

or how much

I didn’t know I loved clouds

whether I’m under or up above them

whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois

strikes me

I like it

I didn’t know I liked rain

whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my

  heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop

  and takes off for uncharted countries I didn’t know I loved

  rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting

  by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

is it because I lit my sixth cigarette

one alone could kill me

is it because I’m half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow

her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night

I never knew I liked the night pitch-black

sparks fly from the engine

I didn’t know I loved sparks

I didn’t know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty

  to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

  watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

                                                    19 April 1962

                                                    Moscow

Wonderful Music

It's like a jungle sometimes. It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under.

Louis Armstrong - What a Wonderful World

Natalie Merchant - Wonder

Wonder - Shawn Mendes

Oasis - Wonderwall