Tapping into the Numinous at the Heart of Reality
Welcoming the Mystery and cultivating Light in dark times
Greetings, friends.
I have been thinking lately about what it means to say that we are living in a “numinous” time.
Ubiquity University founder Jim Garrison proclaimed this at the close of the weeklong Humanity Rising Writing to Right the World summit that I hosted earlier this month, and the word “numinous” has been reverberating in my mind ever since.
The term was coined, or at least popularized, by the early 20th century German philosopher and comparative religionist Rudolf Otto. In his influential 1917 book The Idea of the Holy, he describes the numinous as Mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the fearful and fascinating mystery at the heart of reality.
For my whole lifetime, the dominant western culture has been working overtime to tame and harness this mystery—to explain it with science, and to banish or ignore what could not be suitably brought to heel and explained.
But the Mystery just keeps roaring back, even appearing in the august halls of academic and commercial science, where physics continues to reveal the extent of everything we don’t know and can’t explain.
For example:
> What does it mean to say that 98% of the universe is “dark matter” and “dark energy”?
> What does it mean to recognize the power of physical vibration and non-physical intention in shaping reality?
> What do concepts like entanglement and non-linear time do to the nice neat timelines and fact sheets we have created to explain how reality works?
> What happens when we recognize our cellular, material and energetic kinship with every other aspect of our planet, from rock and soil to microbe, plant and animal?
> What happens when we release the fiction of separation and hierarchy that has dominated western religions and cultures for the last few millennia, and return to older human insights into the fundamental unity at the heart of all things?
What happens, I think, is that human hubris is suddenly revealed as the root cause of all our problems. The hubris of the scientific/technological/rational side of humanity, which is also our Masculine side, has cut us off from our deeper, older, wiser roots.
It may appear, as our planet wheels inexorably into 2025, that the tech-bros are ascendant. But that is only on the surface.
At the deeper level, which each of us slips into every night in our dreams, the Mystery is stirring.
Dramatic changes are afoot as more of us recognize that our current way of life is untenable…that if we continue on the present path of separation, domination and hierarchy, we will lose the best of human civilization, and regress into our darkest, ugliest propensities.
It is undeniable that the Earth herself is in a period of rapid change, brought on by human industrialization and overpopulation that has sent the natural systems spinning into imbalance, and disrupted the intricate web of life by decimating so many species, from microbes to megafauna and plants.
This genie of change will not be put back in the bottle. Our planet is rapidly warming; the poles are melting; the seas are acidifying; storms and droughts, famines and wildfires of biblical proportions are now upon us.
We who are alive to witness this period of dramatic transformation need to cultivate our inner resources so that we can maintain, strengthen and share the best qualities of the human spirit, which are under such assault today.
We need to tap into the numinosity at the core of our own psyches, that soul force which animates and outlives our transient bodies, the “dark energy” that connects us to the anima mundi, the soul of the world of which each of us is a tiny but vital emanation.
In this season of northern hemisphere darkness, as our planet wheels slowly back towards the Light, we are being called to strengthen our own inner Light, to become that numinous channel between Heaven and Earth, Cosmos and Gaia, able to shape the Mystery at the heart of reality into that which we desire.
This is a time to lean into our dreams and visions for the reality we want to co-create. As the fable of the Sun and the Wind teaches us, reality can be changed more powerfully by positive energy than by aggression. Kindness wins over bluster every time.
Writing is a potent tool for capturing and sharing our visions of the better world that could be. This is the Thrutopian path: to dream into a better world and create fictional roadmaps for how we could get there, as Manda Scott did in her memorable novel Any Human Power.
For me, an important feature of a brighter future is a return to reverence for the numinous, and humility in the face of how much we humans do not, and perhaps cannot, know.
In facing that “fearful and fascinating mystery” at the heart of reality, we will find the courage and the trust to relax into the awareness that yes, although there will be loss, grieving and suffering as the changes unleashed by human activity in the last few centuries come home to roost in our time, in the bigger picture of deep time and “dark energy/matter,” all will be well.
Our Earth has been through cataclysmic changes before and always regenerates over time. New species emerge, perfectly attuned to the conditions that give rise to them. Through all the material changes, the numinous anima mundi provides a steady stream of nourishment at the energetic level.
The more we can tap into and become a transmitter for that Source, the brighter the energetic matrix of our planet will shine, creating the protective Indra’s Net or more-than-human noosphere that will help all life on Earth weather the storms of this century.
In our time, “Be the change” becomes “Be the Light.”
Now is your time to shine!
Yours in the Mystery,
Jennifer
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Riding & Writing in Iceland!
June 2 - 8, 2025
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Friends, it’s my pleasure and my passion to support you as we stretch towards living our lives creatively and to the fullest.
The motto of my author consulting business is “Writing to Right the World,” and the motto of my book publishing business, Green Fire Press, is “Books that Make the World Better.”
If these intentions resonate with you and you are working on a book, or have one in mind, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Supporting creative people bring their work more strongly out into the world is one way I try to make the world better.
How timely that I moved this morning from working on my novel--which is about the unseen and the tension between ways of knowing and perceiving--to reading this beautiful exploration of the numinous.