The sublime feeling

When you take a hike and you feel a sense of awe at everything that you're seeing, you're experiencing the sublime. In most of life, this sense of “smallness” is experienced as a humiliation. But the sense of smallness in the presence of the sublime has an oddly uplifting effect.

I love the idea of coming face to face with our cosmic insignificance ... See more

We notice in the world today a global plague of restlessness-a search for meaning, for something to believe in. We are all increasingly self-absorbed and made miserable by this, but we don't understand why or how to get out of this trap. The Sublime is an experience that lifts us out of ourselves, that confronts us with ultimate mysteries (like dea... See more

In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublīmis ) is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.

But even an enormous space can be intimate, insular, confined in its infinitude.

I love the bigness of the world. My most profoundly peaceful and interesting place is up on top of a mountain where I can see really far. And that’s not just because I happen to love mountains, although I do. I am soothed and intrigued by the experience of the longest possible view. I’m profoundly drawn to questions of scale.

We human beings have a ... See more