Seeking the Sacred

These are turbulent times.

That is not breaking news, I know. But it is where we start these days in general and for this week’s ABG, too, specifically. I look around our community and I see the turbulence. The change. The churn more than the flow. The disruption – of forms, expectations, roles, geographies, even lifestyles.

We are in the thick of it, my friends, in a fairly extreme way. The pendulum has swung far in one direction.

Which is why I’d like to suggest we think about countering the turbulence, with an eye toward navigating the discomfort – the upheaval, the extremes, the profane – of the changes churning around us.

The best way I’ve found to do that – to stabilize as best I can within the turbulence – is to seek the sacred. To recognize when it’s there, actually, and to name it and hover over it and dwell in the joy and the beauty of it.

Do that, and the turbulence has a way of passing. It’s like finding the still point, the way your childhood dance teacher to taught you to “spot” a single unmoving point to center you while your body rotates and spins.

But even if the sacred is always there (and I believe it is), and even if we’re actively seeking and wanting to find that still point, it can be hard to locate sometimes within the very stormy skies and muddy waters around us.

That is when we can shift the intention, and actually create the sacred.

Create the sacred.

Trippy, right?

A little. And it’s also a very interesting exercise.

What if we went into every interaction – every meeting and conversation, and even every email or post we write – what if we started from the assumption that the other person themself is sacred? What if we assumed the interaction, too, is sacred?

How would that look?

How would you prepare?

How would you sit?

How do we listen, and talk, from a place of the sacred?

Here’s how that’s looked for me recently, at work and at home:

• Writing work emails and messages: Pausing to remember a sacred intention before I even start to write is what shifts the tone – from reactionary to offering benefit-of-the-doubt, from procrastinating to proactive, from bothersome to helpful.

• Preparing for meetings: A few minutes before a meeting starts, I create a “self-huddle.” If it’s an online meeting, that means taking my hands off the keyboard, thinking through the history and context of the meeting, and articulating the best possible outcome. If it’s an in-person meeting, a “self-huddle” means stepping into a quiet place, closing my eyes with hand on heart, and noticing my breath. Only then do I feel ready for the meeting.

• Before the day starts: Lately I’ve gotten into the practice, before I even get out of bed in the morning, to frame the day through the lens of sacred, and through the lens of happy. They are intertwined. Some framing is easy, like walking the dogs in the cooler mornings, listening to birds, with the early sun on my face. Some framing is harder, like calibrating a challenging conversation so that the still point holds, regardless.

The common denominator, in every case, is beginning with the intention of sacred. To seek it, to find it, to create it. I think creating sacred space, and the generosity of it, is about BEING the still point for the other person. I think it’s about being present and respectful proactively, so that we’re already in that place by default, and ready as needed.

Bonus: The persistent reminder, that the sacred is already there. “There” outside of us in the world and in nature, and “there” inside of us too.

I see the sacred in you, and in this community.

Namaste,
Cathy