Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Swallowing the sun

Have you ever swallowed the sun? We all share the same concerns about our mortal frailties and the fear that others will discover them. But on rare occasions, a fleeting burst of brilliance will overtake us, then vanish, leaving us to wonder what just happened--did we experience an alien encounter?

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love(no, I have not read the book, and evidently am in the minority on that) in a TEDTalk* describes the difficulty of creative process(when frail humanity meets fleeting genius) as "swallowing the sun". It's a wonderful metaphor for transcendence, and transcendence is more common to the human experience than most of us will admit.

Teilhard de Chardin
wrote, “You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.” We feel most real, most alive, when we touch the spiritual.

If you want to view Gilbert's talk for yourself, just click on the title above.

*"TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. . .TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts."