What Is Sacred?
EXPLORING SACREDNESS & HUMILITY
Q: What is sacred?
A: Have you ever heard the definition of Shamanism as that of making the everyday sacred? Having explored rituals, ceremonies, underworlds, inner worlds, and outer worlds for at minimum the last 25 years I am yearning to pull this definition apart. I don’t actually believe that anything becomes sacred just because I believe it to be, that simply does not feel like my seat to sit in. I truly feel that every day is sacred regardless of me and it is my job, and my privilege to remember this.
In fact, I would prefer to take a back seat and observe, enjoy, and relish in the magic of every day. The pure bliss that exudes from true presence, the embodied soul in action as an art form, as an offering to my creator. The less I am involved the better, and the more spacious my mind, and the more expanded my heart becomes. I am not speaking of being passive but rather participating from my Being rather than unconscious factors of motivation. When I pay attention to the raw authority of truth in the very moment of now, I am once again humbled in reverence to all that is. My act of honoring is active, not idle or lethargic by any means. In my experience, humility is a great strength, perhaps the most energized of all virtues in the mirror of the relationship I have with all of Beingness. As my dear friend Matthew has always reminded me, “Being “right” is the heroine of humanity.”
SHAMANS TODAY
In my opinion, (and maybe as an added question for another journal, and another time “Are there too many shamans these days?” ) too many “shamans” today are empowered by the egoic satisfaction that comes with the inner testament of magic. But not all magic is equal and just because you can will something to occur doesn’t mean that your will is aligned with the most high. In the same way, just because you make the everyday sacred by your word or action doesn’t mean that the source of that sacredness is you…or is it?
Could this be one of those possibly impossible philosophical and spiritual paradoxes of reality where we seek solace by reverting to the Koan of “if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?” Honestly, I never really got that Koan as both my rational and intuitive, even mystical mind, offers an enthusiastic “yes”. Ok, enough going in circles, my thoughts are these: I evoked the paradox with the question of potentially being the source of sacredness because objectively, I can imagine my heart as a spark of God’s fire and that through my heart, the light of God has chance to breathe and even surge with flames of transformation and cycles of both death and birth. In that way, if my will is aligned with His word then perhaps those words or actions are a source of sacredness or what I regard as communion. And communion is the experience of sacredness.
THE SACRED RELATIONSHIP TO GOD
However, generally speaking, the sacredness of something is not a demand or something that can be willed. To me, something is sacred by virtue of its existence in relationship to that which is sacred. A religious relic for example…sacred? Perhaps. I would ask what is the relationship that it has with God? What does it symbolize or what prayers are infused within it? What is true about the relic and to whom is it true? Now we enter the subjective realms and begin to see that the sacred also lives in the eye of the beholder. That what might be sacred to one person is not necessarily sacred to another. But again, objectively does one person's opinion of what is sacred actually matter to the inherent sacredness of said relic as an example?
A lot of questions. No wonder religion and the spiritual quest have been sources of such intense debate for thousands of years. I can’t even write about one definition of the word sacred without juxtaposing paradox and questioning the questioner, myself, and why wouldn’t I? Anything worth writing about is worth debating, to get to see every edge of what makes it so, or not. And…I love this inquiry, it has verve. I can feel it sizzling in my inner mind, ignited by something that is alive while new perspectives are forming to contend with and eventually integrate with it as they settle in texture and tonality.
So is the real question, is every day sacred? Maybe we can just leave that there, open-ended, an invitation, beckoning for your heart to answer. What do you think? What do you feel? What kind of everyday are you living? I have so many more questions bubbling up that I wish to propose…but instead, I will sit here with you, in this inquiry, and marinate upon the possibilities, observing the power in these words and exploring what they truly mean to me.
Ps…Shamanism. Such a deep, dark, powerful, corrupted, mystical, pillaged, magical, potent, and highly revered while also mistreated and disrespected art form from the beginning of humankind. It lives upon the brink of this reality and other dimensions, a threshold of gatekeeping and mystery. All said, not everyone who claims to be a shaman actually deserves that self-proclamation. And there are many who have never uttered the word who truly embody all skillful means and the presence of power that lives within the word itself. Let’s return to this exploration sometime soon…
All my best to you and please receive the piece of my heart that lives inside these words.
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We cannot change the world until we accept we are the world. This is the new conversation.