It’s such a gift to have this time because we spend so much of our day busy and distracted. We’re so busy focusing on our goals and challenges that we rarely look around and appreciate how incredible the Universe is.

When we become aware of the beauty and immensity of the universe, we experience enormous benefits, like raising feelings of humility, gratitude, and inspiration. It helps cast our lives in a deeper light, putting our day-to-day stresses in larger perspective. In our sessions together, I often talk about how living mindlessly takes us away from the moment right in front of us. Today, I’d like to talk about the cosmic profundity of that present moment - any moment - every moment. Including this one. And I don’t mean what’s happening within - our thoughts and emotions. That’s all tremendously important. What I’m talking about is what’s all around us.

 If you think about it… This very second, the cosmos is orchestrating itself in ways almost too magnificent to believe. You’re sitting on a planet spinning at over 1,000 miles per hour, and it’s hurtling around the sun at over 70,000 miles per hour. Our star is one among more than 100 billion in the Milky Way Galaxy, all churning away in a mesmerizing, galactic spiral. Think of all the forces and processes at work right now, from gravity to photosynthesis. And let’s not forget about the most complicated machine known to humankind resting on your shoulders, the human brain with its 100 billion neurons

There’s a wonderful Japanese word for which there isn’t really an equivalent in the English language. The word is, "Yuugen," It roughly means: an awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses that are too mysterious and deep for words. As Carl Sagan said, “ The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be . Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.” Perhaps sometime this week, you can try experiencing a state of Yuugen. Try sitting under the stars for a few minutes, marveling at the Universe, its beauty and vastness.

Credits: Calm Inc.

Used with permission