Have you ever been affected by something so awesome it changed the way you saw the world?

One of the most awe inspiring experiences I ever had occurred in my twenties a few months after I had begun practicing meditation.

One night while I was meditating in the dark, my heart began to pound. My arms and chest tingled like they were on fire. Heat surged through my chest and up into my head as I felt myself begin to pour out and away, as though my soul were a flame flowing into the wind.

That freaked me out so much, I said, “No, no, no, no, I don’t want this.”

The flowing and buzzing stopped.

My heart stilled.

I went to sleep.

In the middle of the night, I felt a sudden painful pressure in my head and then, POP! Out I flew, rushing faster and faster up into complete darkness. Soon I saw before me a white, flaming, sun, floating in the absolute stillness.

Have you seen Pixar’s movie Soul, where the main character is on an escalator taking him to the Great Beyond? It was exactly like that, except there were no other people and no escalator. It was just me, hovering in the darkness, staring in awe at this silent, blinding sun.

It was not like any dream I had ever had. It was real and tactile.

When I opened my eyes to the normal world, I had one thought: “What the hell just happened?”

After that experience, I began to notice how much awesomeness there was in the world around me, in daily life, in all the little things I saw and experienced.

I was in constant awe of the poetry I read in Rumi, or the mist flowing down the peaks surrounding Salt Lake City, or the way my daughter smiled when I returned from work and she knew we had hours of playtime ahead of us. 

The misty rains of autumn.

The bright crisp breezes of spring.

The silence of winter snowfalls.

The soft billowing of window curtains from the hot summer air blowing in from the windows.

The list is endless. 

And that’s the point.

I wanted to share this experience because this constant flow of awe is our birthright. But sometimes we need to be reminded of just how awesome every breath we take is.

And that’s my mission in life.

To find awe in as many places as I can and share it with as many people as possible through my fiction, my classes on mysticism, my scholarship, and now on this blog.

I truly thank you for visiting.

I’m in awe of every precious second you choose to spend here.