Sacred "Ows"

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again. - Joseph Campbell

Why is incense smoke sacred but cigarette smoke profane? - Zen question

OK, I’m just going to put this out there:

Discovering the?sacred dimension of your life?is the ultimate fulfillment.

What is sacred is that which allows you access to your deeper nature, the deeper truth of your being. It’s where you “find yourself again and again.” That’s your true self, not your idea of your self or your partner’s idea or society’s idea of you. Only you can know your true self.

Many people balk at the word “sacred,” thinking it refers to an “otherworldy” — even woo-woo — sensibility, or that it is an exclusive designation that only applies to certain things and not others.

In Zen we don’t understand the sacred as something special or esoteric. No person or thing is intrinsically more or less sacred than any other.

Things that are often labelled sacred — such as nature, certain images, sounds, and places — are only called that because they are especially?accessible?portals to deeper levels of being. The Labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral, shown in the photo above, is sacred because it has the effect of centering consciousness for anyone who walks it.

Candles, the sound of a bell, silence, the image of a person in meditation, mandalas, places on the earth that align the energies of the stars….. we call them “sacred” simply because from a practical perspective these things serve well to connect us to the totality. They help us drop the mental constructions that tend to separate us. And they help usher in a?felt sense?of unity?with all beings.

It’s quite simple, really.

And because this unity with all beings is our fundamental nature, truly?anything?can be a portal to us waking up. Stubbing our toe on a rock, hearing the cry of a baby, the sound of a bird in the morning, even the honk of a car horn on the street — all of it is sacred as it serves to open our heart-minds, expanding our consciousness of our true nature.

As we learn to?see?the world this way, we begin to?experience?it as such. It’s one thing to believe something, and another to know it.

Then, as our experience deepens, we might ask how we go about living a life that is in accord with this experience of totality. Many of our entrenched ways of life, including our habits, relationships, jobs and ways of life, are initially conditioned by the sense of ourselves that developed in our early years and evolved through our early adulthood, usually well into our twenties. As we re-familiarize ourselves with the sacred dimension, we ask how we can bring our life ways into accord with the expanded sense of ourselves. It is a profound and wonderful question, and the answer is utterly unique for each individual.

Living a sacred life is not reserved for priests and monks. In fact, there are many priests and monks who are alienated from the sacred. There are probably more cooks and parents, garbagemen and farmers who live each day in the sacred than there are priests.

Each one of us can live a life of sacredness no matter what we do in our livelihood. A modern Zen story tells of fellow who could only find work as a butcher, and he asked his Zen teacher whether that would be “right livelihood.” The Zen Master replied, “Oh sure …… chop chop chop.” When you fully throw yourself into your activity and drop your self-centered agenda, you enter into a natural place of service, which arises from the?felt sense of unity. All the customers picking up food for their families would appreciate the mindful preparation of their meats.

This may rankle your sensibilities. And in truth if you have an option, you may not choose to support this type of work. To live in high vow that way is absolutely your path to the sacred dimension of your life. But it may not be another person’s way.

You may regularly find the felt sense of unity cooking or gardening or teaching or coding or leading projects or writing ad copy.

When do you get out of your own way and throw yourself into the aliveness of the universe as it courses through you?

So, how do we go about re-discovering and re-inhabiting this sacred dimension? How do we discern whether our lives are in alignment? Should we consider changing our ways, our jobs, our relationships?

The initial difficulty in pursuing (even recognizing) these questions is that our conditioning is very strong: the conditioning that tells us we are?not?sacred, or even that nothing is sacred. This deep belief is especially powerful in very materialistic cultures.

The good news is that your sacred dimension is always present, and at some level it is always?knocking on the door of your heart-mind. The knock can take a number of forms:

• A feeling of dissatisfaction and unfulfillment with a job or relationship.
• A “setback” or “failure” that causes you to question your path. (Being laid off, losing out on a project, losing money on an investment.)
• The loss of a loved one or a major illness.
• A period of self-doubt or depression or malaise.
• A feeling that what used to work is no longer quite working.
• A yearning for deeper meaning in your life.

I call these “knocks” the “sacred ows.” (Sorry.) They can run the spectrum from vague unease to deep pain. They are not experiences that we wish on ourselves, because we want to be happy and content, without “problems,” but they are our best chance for discovering our own sacredness.

How many people have lived their lives divorced from their own sacredness by attempting to avoid these knocks and resisting them when they inevitably arrive?

The answer to the first question “how do we go about re-discovering and re-inhabiting this sacred dimension?” is to pay attention to your “ows,” to honor them and explore them. Merely?being in grief?over a breakup or the loss of a loved one brings you there. Other “ows” are more, say, avoidable. We can cover over them, try to change them, to feel better, be in denial or not listen to them.

Listening to our “ows” starts us on the path of answering the next questions: how do we discern whether our lives are in alignment? Should we consider changing our ways, our jobs, our relationships?

Helping you do this is the core of my coaching work. (Sign up for a?free Discovery session ?if you would like to explore.)

I want to conclude this newsletter with an anecdote from a recent coaching client, who is exploring the next season of his professional life. This person has a successful high-level career in IT at a major international clothing firm, which followed an equally successful entrepreneurial career building a training business. He came to me recently with a vague sense of wanting to do something entrepreneurial again, and ideally something more in line with his “recreational” interests, which include photography and paddleboarding.

This vague sense of dissatisfaction was his sacred “ow.”

Two weeks ago, as we discussed his upcoming vacation in Tahiti, he almost casually mentioned that Tahiti was one home of the ancient Polynesian Wayfinders, a culture whose ability to read ocean currents — born of their sacred connection to the waters — is credited with allowing humanity to expand across the Pacific. (As an aside, this subject is beautifully explored in Wade Davis’s 2009 book,?The Wayfinders , which I highly recommend.)

When I pointed out what he had just said, and reflected that this was a great sign that he was on a deep path of exploring his own sacredness, he had a big “Aha!” moment. He had thought paddleboarding was “just a hobby” and he was only looking for a more interesting job. But he realized that his professional malaise was a call to connect with a deeper level of his own soul, one that feels a special affinity with the ancient wayfinders.

Where he takes this is his next great question, and entirely up to him. He might build a business providing services to the paddleboarding community, including drone photography, his other passion. Or he might remain in his corporate position and continue to pursue his recreational interests.

The important thing is that he is locating his own sacred space and prioritizing it in his life. This is the ultimate fulfillment.

If this has been of interest to you, please forward and promote on social media. And of course, I would love to?explore helping you find a path of fulfillment , your sacred path, even if it you don’t call it that or believe that’s what you are looking for.

• Paul