How important is my sense of wonder?

The author at one year old

I think that one fully realizes just how important a sense of wonder is once it has been lost. It is most noticeable when it has become completely lost. And having become lost, life becomes predictable, drab and colorless. For me, this is not a desirable, comfortable, nor an acceptable state of being. If it is lost, why did it go? Is it lost forever? Or, can it return when it is missed, desired, and sought after? Let's start at the beginning, when we were children.

Like any child, my ability to tap into the great mystery of life was akin to breathing, a natural and nearly unconscious act. I did not know much about our world, our universe, it was mostly an enigma to me. In that frame of mind the universe was extraordinarily fathomless and my overriding experience of it was contained within a deep sense of awe. For example, I could not comprehend or explain why there were some many stars in the sky, I could just observe these billions and billions of distant suns as tiny, brilliant points of light (as Carl Sagan might have describe them) in sheer wonderment. And, my heart would rise and sing as I took in their limitless beauty. I experienced my world from within a pervasive sense of wonder, a kind of "I don't know" state of grace. I felt tiny and insignificant because of the sheer magnitude of how much of my world was incomprehensible to me. This precious state of  "I don't know" mind is known by the Zen Buddhists as  “Beginner’s mind”  and is also used in the title of the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki. This idea is better known in the global culture and society of today as mindfulness, a state of non-judgmental awareness. And, is a state of being that may become accessible to anyone with good instruction and practice in the numerous techniques of meditation.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few - Shunryu Suzuki

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