21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview
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T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S
15. Start with Awe
‘When we awaken awe, we awaken gratitude’
Matthew Fox
‘Forfeit your sense of awe … and the Universe becomes a marketplace for you.’
Rabbi Herschel
We have grown used to the idea of an inert, value-free version of the physical universe, built from the ground up with blind force and a few varieties of elementary particles. But our lives are lived in direct opposition to this view. Our experience of the world is a highly subjective one and very much defined by value. Life, as it is lived, is all about choosing and valuing. How very different things look if we think that the universe has said ‘yes’ to life — as a choice and not just as an accident. I think that this makes the universe always on the ‘half-full’ side of things, weighted to the positive. It is not the bland, valueless, morally neutral, entropy-burdened and indifferent place sometimes portrayed to us, with consciousness perceived as a mere by-product of matter.
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