I’m amazed how simple it is. For so long, the sacred was something separate from what I typically encountered. Typically , the sacred was something set apart from the mundane.
There were sacred places, such as groves or churches, identified by their unique nature. There were sacred objects, like candles and chalices, identified by their special intended use. There were sacred realms, mostly considered other-worldly. Heaven was especially sacred because of all the luminescent clouds and rays. People able to go there or be in contact with them were in some ways sacred agents.
I don’t think any of that is true. The sacred nature of things is nothing separate but is totally bound up with their essence. The sacred is a characteristic of anything that exists. Sacred is nothing unique. What is unique is the agility to experience it.
This is not some kind of intellectual twist or conceptual jump that now puts a sacred label on all things. It is not something to be decided or be convinced of. There is no intellectual evidence or logic that suddenly makes everything sacred. It is simply a recognition that arises from experience. Once the nature of things is absorbed, made part of me, it becomes obvious that sacredness is simply a trait of all things.
There is no other, there are no special places or things that are uniquely sacred. There is no need to look further. It is all right here.
This has been a growing conviction of mine from a very early age. I remember bits and pieces of the world that I played in. I now recognize that I didn’t totally absorb the conventional understanding my culture taught me about the nature of reality. Perhaps it was my unconventional brain, but I never completely bought into the relative world of my peers.
Someone asked me recently why I entered the seminary at 13, and I commented that there was no other choice. For me, it was the obvious path of the sacred, identified as it was with the world of religion. That was the most sacred arena I was aware of at the time.
I have been curious about the world of the absolute for as long as I can remember. I have looked for the aspects of reality that allowed me to experience the absolute, whether it was poetry, plants, ritual or places. I, of course, never spoke of the absolute nature of things. But I have been attracted to those aspects of life that most clearly identified themselves as sacred. I absorbed all the easy experiences of sacred. I learned to become wholly present in places and times when I focused on the sacred nature of those places and times.
I think that this part of me has gone dormant for some time. Now it is coming alive again. I can see much more clearly how the sacred is simply an aspect of every one and every thing It is not something separate, not an icing on the cupcake. It is simply the nature of everything.
Nothing has changed to make it so except me. My world has not changed, but I have. I have begun to have small experiences of the absolute, and those experiences have awakened my sense of the absolute. I’m starting to see the sacred all around me.