We live in a world in which strangers fall “in hate” all the time: the person who took your parking space at the mall, the idiot at the movie theater talking too much, your relative who is obsessed with a political candidate you despise, the co-worker who’s clueless. We become judgment machines if we’re not careful.
Dacher Keltner may be the world’s leading expert on the subject of awe and he lives within walking distance of our Baja campus. His book “Awe” focuses on the eight most common pathways people experience awe. Almost all of us would expect “nature” to be at the top of the list, but it’s third place. Dacher told me that the top two ways people experience awe are a bull’s eye for what MEA offers: a “pro-social” means of feeling more deeply connected with others.
Number two on the list is “collective effervescence,” when your sense of ego-separation dissolves and your communal joy emerges, whether that be with a gospel choir at church, dancing on the playa at Burning Man, at a riveting political speech, or in an intimate MEA cohort where you’re getting to know each other from the inside out.
Number one on the list is “moral beauty,” when we witness compassion, courage, resilience, equanimity, and the best humans have to offer each other. When we see that in others, it awakens our belief that we can mirror these exquisite character traits.
I help strangers fall in love, with no plant medicine, no psychiatric therapy, no persuasion or coercion. Just a proven, hand-crafted Method that helps us all see each other (and ourselves) with a new pair of glasses.
You might want to check out Dacher’s MEA Santa Fe workshop “Cultivating Awe” July 28-August 2
-Chip