DW GREEN
GUIDE TO PRESENT MOMENT AWARENESS, EXPLORER OF DIVINE CONNECTION, AWAKENER OF SACRED RECOGNITION
Like many people, I spent years sensing there was something more to life than what meets the eye, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what that "something" was. The breakthrough came when I discovered that the answer wasn't hidden in some distant spiritual realm—it was right here, available in every moment through simple present moment awareness.
This realization transformed everything. I began to see that awareness itself is the bridge connecting us to the divine, to each other, and to all existence—past, present, and future. What started as personal curiosity became a profound understanding: we don't need special credentials or extraordinary circumstances to experience divine connection. It's our birthright, accessible to anyone willing to truly be present.
My journey has been enriched by learning from remarkable teachers like Amba Gale and Hal Isen (both of whom have essays on this website), who helped me understand how awareness dissolves the illusion of separation between ourselves and the sacred. Through workshops, personal practice, and countless moments of simple presence, I've discovered that the divine doesn't hide from us—we simply need to show up fully to recognize what's already here.
I'm not a guru or spiritual teacher—just a regular guy, (a business owner)—who stumbled upon something extraordinary hiding in plain sight. When we bring complete awareness to this moment, we discover we're not separate observers of God's creation. We're expressions of the same divine consciousness recognizing itself everywhere we look.
My hope is that sharing this perspective helps others discover their own capacity for this recognition. The "face of God" isn't somewhere else—it's reflected in every moment of beauty, every breath of awareness, every instant we're fully present to "what is."
The Mirror of Recognition
DW Green
We stand before a sunset and feel something stir within us—not mere appreciation, but recognition. The colors bleeding across the sky call to something deep in our core, as if we're seeing a familiar face in a crowd. This moment reveals a profound truth that neuroscience is now confirming: beauty isn't decoration scattered throughout creation for our enjoyment. It's the divine signature written into existence, and our ability to perceive it is proof of our own divine origin.
Consider this extraordinary fact: when we encounter beauty—whether a face, a painting, or music—specific brain regions light up automatically. The medial orbitofrontal cortex, associated with reward and pleasure, activates. The anterior insula, which monitors our internal state and connects us to our deepest sense of self, responds consistently across all aesthetic experiences. This isn't learned behavior—it's hardwired recognition. (1)
But here's what makes this response remarkable: these brain regions that respond to beauty are identical pathways our ancestors used to identify life-sustaining resources—nutritious foods, suitable mates, safe shelter. If beauty were merely cultural decoration, why would it commandeer our most fundamental survival circuits?
Among all creatures on Earth, only humans pause before beauty with reverence. A hawk doesn't stop mid-flight to admire the sunset. A wolf doesn't sit contemplating the elegance of falling snow. Yet we do—consistently, universally, across every culture and era. Brain imaging reveals that people from vastly different backgrounds show remarkably similar neural responses to beauty,(2) suggesting something deeper than learned preferences.
The answer lies in recognition. When we perceive beauty, we're not observing something foreign to us. We're recognizing the same creative force that formed us reflected back through creation. The intricate spiral of a nautilus shell resonates with us because the same divine mathematics that shaped it courses through our being. The perfect balance in a Bach composition moves us because we carry within us the same harmonious principles that orchestrated the music of the spheres.(3)
This explains why beauty recognition hijacks our survival systems—because it's a survival mechanism, but not for physical survival. It's how the divine within us recognizes its source. I believe God evolved these pathways first to identify what sustains life, and now they serve a higher purpose: identifying what sustains the soul. The fact that beauty triggers our deepest reward circuits isn't coincidence—it's confirmation that recognizing our divine origin is essential to our survival as spiritual beings.
We're not separate observers admiring God's handiwork from the outside. We are expressions of the same creative force, temporarily housed in flesh, recognizing our own divine nature reflected throughout existence. Every moment of beauty we perceive is actually a moment of self- recognition—the divine within us responding to the divine around us, using neural pathways that God carefully preserved because this recognition is fundamental to who we are.
That's why beauty feels like coming home. Our brains are literally wired to recognize the "face of God"—and neuroscience proves we've been carrying that recognition system within us all along.
Footnotes:
1. Brown, S., Gao, X., Tisdelle, L., Eickhoff, S. B., & Liotti, M. (2011). "Naturalizing aesthetics: brain areas for aesthetic appraisal across sensory modalities." NeuroImage, 58(1), 250-258. Meta-analysis of 93 neuroimaging studies showing that encountering beauty consistently activates the anterior insula and orbitofrontal cortex across vision, hearing, taste and smell, suggesting hardwired rather than learned responses.
2. Che, J., Sun, X., Gallardo, V., & Nadal, M. (2018). "Cross-cultural empirical aesthetics." Progress in Brain Research, 237, 77-103. Research demonstrates that people from different cultures show remarkably similar neural responses to beauty, basing aesthetic preferences on common formal features including symmetry, complexity, and proportion that transcend learned cultural preferences.
3. Iosa, M., Morone, G., & Paolucci, S. (2018). "The golden ratio as an ecological affordance leading to aesthetic attractiveness." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Studies show that mathematical principles underlying natural beauty (golden ratio found in shells, flowers, human proportions) correspond to harmonic ratios in pleasing music, suggesting fundamental mathematical order that resonates across sensory modalities.