Awe as a gateway to spiritual experience. Expansive.

divide it into mico essays and see what response I get and all.

“Awe is a positive emotion triggered by awareness of something vastly larger than the self and not immediately understandable — such as nature, art, music or being caught up in a collective act such as a ceremony, concert or a political march.” Dacher Keltner, Psychologist)

Whenever I read the story of the origin of life tracing back to the Big Bang or of humanities, I'm filled with awe. wanted to share it. Whenever I read it in poetic prose of Carl Sagan or Cosmos, or Origin Story by David.

Use points from Carl Sagan. And time milestones.

Big Bang. o galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep, impenetrable darkness was everywhere, hydrogen atoms in the void.

X years ago. Starts started forming. The first generation of stars was born, flooding the Cosmos with light. There were in those times not yet any planets to receive the light, no living creatures to admire the radiance of the heavens

Heavier elements. Deep in the stellar furnaces, the alchemy of nuclear fusion created heavy elements, the ashes of hydrogen burning, the atomic building materials of future planets and lifeforms.

Our son. X years ago.

5 billion years ago. Planets. And th eart. Massive stars soon exhausted their stores of nuclear fuel. Rocked by colossal explosions, they returned most of their substance back into the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the stars, new raindrops made of many elements were forming, later generations of stars being born. Nearby, smaller raindrops grew, bodies far too little to ignite the nuclear fire, droplets in the interstellar mist on their way to form the planets. Among them was a small world of stone and iron, the early Earth.

Events on earth.

Initially.

Methane. Earth released the methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen gases that had been trapped within, forming the primitive atmosphere and the first oceans. Starlight from the Sun bathed and warmed the primeval Earth, drove storms, generated lightning and thunder. Volcanoes overflowed with lava. These processes disrupted molecules of the primitive atmosphere; the fragments fell back together again into more and more complex forms, which dissolved in the early oceans.

Self replicating molecues evolved.

Molecules were organized, and complex chemical reactions driven, on the surface of clays. And one day a molecule arose that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in the broth. As time passed, more elaborate and more accurate self-replicating molecules arose. Those combinations best suited to further replication were favored by the sieve of natural selection. Those that copied better produced more copies. And the primitive oceanic broth gradually grew thin as it was consumed by and transformed into complex condensations of self-replicating organic molecules. Gradually, imperceptibly, life had begun.

Single cell plants.

Multicellular.

Big life.

three billion years to get from Luca to the first specimens of big life—the first multicellular animals, or metazoans.

Big Life Takes Off: The Ediacaran and Cambrian Periods

Eyes and ears evolved, and now the Cosmos could see and hear. Plants and animals discovered that the land could support life. Organisms buzzed, crawled, scuttled, lumbered, glided, flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming jungles

Asteroid. Mammals.

K/T event

hominins.

We survive.

Farming.

Agrarian civilisations.

USe Kurzgesagt video on thsi, Sapiens video.

Scientifi revolution.

Industralian evolution in europe.

nd then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.