If I'm Being Honest...

“What do you want out of life?”

“Everything,” he responded.

“Everything? Are you sure?”

He pondered for a moment. It’s true that ‘everything’ was a loaded request. Everything meant taking the negative with the positive. But then again, without feeling sad or alone, feeling happiness and the joy of true community would not mean as much. Without experiencing frustration and failures, the triumph of success and the inner quiet of feeling at peace would not resonate as deeply as they would otherwise. The warmth of the sun would not feel as good when its rays smiled down upon his face if there weren’t cloudy days. And seeing the path before his feet clearly would not feel as comforting and confirming if he didn’t spend some time stumbling around in the forest aimlessly, curious for what else might be out there and content to wander through uncharted territory.

He wanted adventure. He wanted heartache. He wanted love. He wanted to step outside of his comfort zone and push the limits of what he knew was possible for himself. He wanted to try, fall, get up, and then try again. He wanted to laugh and to cry through it all. But he was afraid of the unknown.

“I’m afraid,” he said as his heart beat harder within his chest.

“Of course you are. You would be fool not to feel fear, have insecurity, and be a bit skeptic. But to accept everything means you must be willing to embrace the hardships and walk through those feelings…”

He nodded.

“Even if they last for months on end. Do you understand? Will you bear it all?”

“I-I do. I w-will,” he stammered. “I want everything.”

“Very well,” said the Universe.

——————————

I often feel like the “he” in the above text. I want to make the most out of life and I have ideas of what that looks like for me, but sometimes (actually a lot of times) I get caught up in the vision of the destination and I don’t focus on the systems and processes required to action life into “moving the needle” and making true progress towards that vision. Now, I’m great at playing “visionary.” If you ever need someone to dream big for you, give me a call.

My current challenge for myself, though, is to break down the visions into “producible parts” and action them into my life. It’s frightening…and that’s where becoming comfortable with failure comes in. A part of my psyche that has been engrained in me from a young age has been to people please, not ruffle too many feathers, and to achieve (but to achieve based on what society and public education tells you “achievement” is.) Because of this, I have often been afraid to fail - so afraid that I fail to act at all. As I’ve grown into my own person, though, I am actively acknowledging that within myself and realizing the changes I have to make if I want to truly step into my potential. I’m starting to treat life a little more like an experiment. It’s frightening at times, for sure...and frustrating, too. But it’s also a lot of fun and I feel I am knowing myself better and better these days. Oh, and to be clear…I do want everything out of life. I’m greedy, I guess.

Do you have any tips on being your best self? Are you trying to live your best life, or are you just coasting? What does productivity look like to you, and do you feel that it is overrated in our culture? Give this post a like and leave a comment - I’d love to hear from you!

Exploring Sacredness and Profanity

I don’t know if you have heard of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, but as she describes it in the subtitle, The Artist’s Way is ‘A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.’ It’s laid out in a 12 week course and each week you, as the reader, deal with different aspects of yourself with regards to your blocks, inhibitions, and habits as they pertain to the overall health of your inner artist and your creativity. Of course, the exercises and the material deals with aspects of self that extend beyond creativity and into the psyche of the everyday, so whether you claim Artist as your profession or not has no true bearing on whether the course would benefit you or not. If you feel you are in a rut in your life and you want to shake things up, I recommend giving this book a visit!

I will warn you, there is work involved. And sometimes the work of being completely honest with yourself isn’t always the most pleasant thing, but I promise you that the rewards of following through with the Morning Pages (a stream-of-conscience style of journaling) that you begin each day with and exploring your more playful side with the weeks’ accompanying tasks and the weekly Artist Date are well worth the time commitment. With that being said, I’d like to just pontificate on some of the things that are circulating my mind recently, due to the copious amounts of self-exploration and self-reflection that I’ve been doing as of late.

Recently, in my Morning Pages, I’ve been tossing around the notions of what we would call ‘The Sacred,’ both with regards to art and as a general concept in the world. I guess the question began, “Are there things that are innately sacred, OR do things become sacred because we humans endow them with a sacredness?”

When I think of things that are possibly endowed by a sacredness from humans, I’m thinking of things like temples and churches that are human built for the purpose of worship, prayer, and / or reflection; the notion of water that is ‘holy’ in a catholic church; the Grotto with water that is supposed to be healing at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France. In the case of holy water, I would argue that it’s just plain water that was meditated on and spoken over with intent. It is because of the story of Christianity (and specifically Catholicism) that is widely held and agreed upon by hundreds and hundreds of millions of humans around the world, that collective’s agreement on the stories contained within the tradition, and their agreement that priests (rather than laypeople) have a special access to divinity through the nature of their profession and therefore have the power to give God’s blessing over the water, that the water becomes endowed with a sacred quality through the will of people. Not because the water is, in itself, sacred.

Similarly, with the grotto in Lourdes and the healing water that is supposed to be contained within, the sacredness comes not from some innate healing qualities within the mineral composition of the water, or even necessarily it’s location, and certainly not because it is found within a grotto, for there are plenty of grottos with water in them around the world. I can then only suppose that any sacred element to this specific grotto is because of the visions of Bernadette Soubirous that were confirmed and affirmed by the Catholic Church and the subsequent stories of the approximately 69 cures that have been verified as “inexplicable” or “miraculous” after thorough medical and scientific examinations failed to find any other explanation. The lore that is implanted in a collective’s consciousness (or subconsciousness) from miracle stories adds to the supernaturalness and supports the notion of the sacredness of a locale in this case.

Then I think about miracles in and of themselves. Are they innately sacred, coming from a naturally sacred energy or force or being? Is there some scientific explanation that we have yet to find for them? 

I also can’t help but think about Japan, the Native Americans, and Cambodia when I wonder about the possible innate sacredness of nature. Let me explain. In Japan, there is a sect of Buddhism called Shingon Buddhism and one of the most holy and sacred sites is a mountain called Mount Koya or Koya-san in Japanese. It is the central mountain in a collection of peaks in the area and the terrain is said to resemble a lotus flower. Was the notion that this place was already sacred as endowed by nature and an external sacred-making being and humans recognized that? Or was it picked just because the imagery, location, etc. aligned with other natural items that are deemed sacred or symbolic within a certain story or set of beliefs? I don’t know. I will tell you, I’ve been to Koya-san and there is a feeling of peace, serenity, and an almost otherworldly quality to it. It feels sacred. And I wonder, as someone who doesn’t subscribe to their religion, why would I feel awed by this place? Is there a power of sacredness that transcends religion and language and culture? Does the mere fact that I know it is sacred to a group of people make it feel sacred to me?

With the Native Americans, I think of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming, whose sacredness was proclaimed by the Lakota as well as the Northern Cheyenne and Omaha. I will confess, I don’t know a lot about HOW the Black Hills became sacred to them, but from what I have read, it seems as though the hills had places within them that were deemed sites of power where sacred rituals were held. According to sacredland.org, “an Oglala Lakota medicine man, explains: “All of our origin stories go back to this place. We have a spiritual connection to the Black Hills…” The Lakota know them as Paha Sapa, “The heart of everything that is.” That sounds to me as though they were felt to be sacred in and of themselves.

The memorial to honor all of the Cambodians killed and buried in the neighboring fields.

I mention Cambodia, as an example of a country containing a place that is perhaps the near-opposite of sacred - desecrated. [I will preface this by saying that Cambodia, as a whole, was a beautiful country with some of the kindest, smileyest people I have ever met, some beautiful sacred sites, and I very much enjoyed my time there.] When I was there in 2009, I visited the killing fields and learned about the horrible genocide by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge back in the ‘70s. The site is now a monument to those who senselessly lost their lives under his regime, To stand on that site...I can’t describe the feeling, but I defy anyone to visit it and not feel the heaviness and sorrow of those that lost their lives and whose bodies were dumped into mass graves there. The somberness and the injustice of all of those deaths is palpable in the air to this day.

So...which is it? Sacredness is thrust upon certain things by humans that are deemed to be of great importance to humans? Or sacredness is innate and humans just discover their sacred qualities? I’m inclined to say it’s a bit of both. There is no denying the power of the stories that we tell that become ingrained in our societies. But I would argue there are people and cultures that find there is innate sacred power within certain places in nature and then allow those places to shape their culture’s narratives and thus increase their sacred factor.

And as an aside, if you question the power of the stories we tell...let’s just talk about sex for a second. Sex, of some sort, is not only a natural desire of most animals (and definitely all mammals) as it is the only means for most species to reproduce and pass their genetics on to a future generation and thus continue the existence of their species as a whole, but humans have, through the ages via religion and belief, held it as a sacred union between two people. And yet, sex is also seen as profane in any other sense of enjoying it outside the descriptions held as sacred through belief. How can something be both venerated and demonized? Sacred AND profane? It’s all to do with intent and context within the stories we accept within society. We underestimate the power of stories...but they are powerful beyond measure. They are what make and identify the fabrics of society and culture. If enough people stopped believing something or doing what society told them they should be doing, it would cease to have meaning. For the record, the only kind of sex that I view as profane is sex of a non-consensual nature. Period. The rest of it all has the potential (read that word) to be sacred, even if you are having it for the first time with a stranger.

So that is what is intriguing me as of late. What makes something sacred? Why are some things that should be sacred viewed as profane? How is it that something can be both sacred and profane at the same time? Does something’s “sacred value” and “weight” change with a culture’s changing values? Are there things that society says are profane that, while not sacred, are actually not really profane? Or rather, are those profane things only profane because a majority of society says they are? If I strip society away from the equation and the stories that society tells about certain things, are there things in my human experience that would stand out as inherently sacred or profane? Or is our reality truly only the sum of our experiences, upbringing, and the stories that we are told through the filter of our society?

Maybe someone smarter than me has an answer...or can shed theoretical light on my questions?

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An image I captured a few days ago that I feel represents America’s (and especially New York’s) relationship with the “sacred.” We strive for beauty and greatness and we want nice things for ourselves, but we are surrounded by “profane” refuse that we, ourselves, have built up through our lives of excess, immediacy, and exceptionalism. This image, to me, is like trying to meditate in Times Square with a laptop in your lap, a phone in your hand, a homeless person shouting at you, tourists crowding you, 58 sirens going off, and you telling yourself everything is normal and fine.