The Energy of Things
I don’t know if I have ever lived in a place with more opposing energies.
On the one hand in Tokyo, someone is always running. Yes, there are actual runners everywhere I go (young and old alike), but it could just as easily be a businessman in black pants and a white shirt loping down the sidewalk. Or a middle-aged woman in a blue silk dress and pearls. It’s often a middle schooler in a uniform. Or even kids as young as five dashing to the subway station alone, their flopping backpacks almost bigger than they are.
Mix in the cars and scooters and motorcycles and sirens and bikes loaded down with groceries and children and their ting-a-ling bells and the 35 million other bodies sharing the Tokyo metropolitan area with me, and you have all kinds of rushing, striving, strong, and active energy here.
At the same time, one of my new sayings is “Walk a block. Find a shrine.” Or temple, or cemetery, or park. They. Are. Everywhere.
As soon as you enter one of these spaces, the jangling din drops away. The air changes. Deepens. You suddenly feel the ancient and silent spirit of the place rise up and envelope you. You forget you are in one of the most populated places in the world, and suddenly, all that matters is the quiet. The spaciousness. The opening Here.
Which is why I am so delighted to have learned a new word here: numen. It’s Latin, and originally meant “a nod of the head.”
Much like Shinto, the ancient Romans saw divine power and energy in the objects and phenomena around them, and before long, they began to use the word numen to describe it. Numen was the unnameable force that shimmered in and at the edges of things. It created awe and could be found in stone, storm, forest, pond.
I have long responded to the energies of places and objects. I remember walking into a secondhand store once and whispering, “This is where things go to die.” I could feel the energy being sucked out of my body.
Or there was the energy of the tea bowl I recently bought here. As soon as I picked it up, I knew I could not let its radiant life force go.
A couple of days ago, numen was made especially clear to me as I stepped into a park, and immediately whispered, “Oh my god.” I couldn’t move. I was too overwhelmed with goodness and light.
On this particular morning, I felt like an electric fence—buzzing, ready to zap anyone and anything at the slightest provocation. I had literally woken up that way. I had no idea why. More importantly, I didn’t know what to do about it.
Now as I look back on it, I wonder if that park wasn’t laughing at me. “You silly creature. Look at you, all hackled up, like a chihuahua taking on an elephant.”
Five steps in, everything in me slowed. Settled. Cleared out. I stood before still pond.
I saw egret roosting on top of ancient pine.
I crossed one bridge covered in moss. Then another that was two flat stones balancing perfectly on one rooted rock.
Painters sat here and there with their watercolors. Lovers held hands. An old man with a cane watched a young man with handheld shears as he trimmed a tree.
Bit by bit by bit.
The result was a living thing, now full of more space and light.
These wild altars hide everywhere, waiting for us to stop. Still. Center.
To feel the good energy and let it pour throughout our entire being.
To find them, we simply have to be aware and be brave, getting out there into the big, wild world of ours, and seeing what we run into that helps us live light and shine.