In his book Awe: the New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life, psychologist Dacher Keltner, who is known for his course on the science of happiness, offers a simple, two word bit of advice when asked what we can do to cultivate a truly good life:
FIND AWE.
He goes on to explain why he believes awe matters.
How does awe transform us? By quieting the nagging, self-critical, overbearing, status-conscious voice of our self, or ego, and empowering us to collaborate, to open our minds to wonders, and to see the deep patterns of life.
This sure sounds like the contemplative life to me!
His words remind me of this well-worn (and perhaps often misused) verse, from Proverbs 9:10:
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
The Hebrew word translated here as fear, יִרְאַ֣ת (yirat), appears 18 times in the Bible, always as yirat Yahweh, “the fear of the Lord.” Many scholars feel that it should be translated as reverence, or even awe, since it does not carry the sense of fear as being intimidated or brow-beaten.
Ancient scripture and modern psychology agree: awe fosters wisdom, and it does so by inviting us into silence and away from the noiseless chatter of the monkey mind. This, in turn, reminds me of another 3-letter word important to contemplatives: joy.
The second fruit of the spirit shows up in one of Julian of Norwich’s most memorable bon mots: “the fullness of joy is to behold God in all.” (When I typed this out just now, I started to type “to behold God in awe”! Which does work rather nicely).
Awe instills in us the capacity to behold the One. That act of beholding trains us to be able to find (behold) God in all things, as the Jesuits like to say. And that, in turn, fosters a spirit of joy.
Awe… beholding… joy. What a beautiful energetic flow. And holding it all together is the deep silence which we recognize as “God’s first language.”
This month I am traveling to speak with contemplative communities in Connecticut and New York. While I am on the road, I am reposting articles from the AnamChara archive. Today’s article was first published on June 9, 2025. I’m sharing it again especially for new readers, while trusting that longtime subscribers will enjoy revisiting it.
