The Sacred in Everything

4 Comments | January 30, 2010 at 10:28 am by mahud
Filed under secular-culture, magic, Jung, mythology, Paganism, Sprituality

Reading Ali’s post Meadowsweet and Myrrh: Aesthetics and the Sacred, made me think some more about the sacred. Originally it was going to just be a short comment response on how I viewed the sacred in everything (and a newly planted idea in my mind about the nature of things that I think is best described as a kind of animism), but then, as these things often do, spiraled out of control and ’seemingly’ took on a life of its own.

I’d like to approach the sacred from two vantage points. The sacred that is aware of itself, awake, the conscious sacred, and the sacred that is unaware, sleeping, the unconscious sacred.

The conscious sacred is experienced in the world. Crashing tides, drifts of snow, wind-blasts and ripples on the surface of a pond. The living breathing heartbeat of manifest reality can be either slow and steady or fast and erratic. The conscious sacred, at its most wild and dangerous is like a wheel of fire, throwing off sparks of itself. This is the sacred that doesn’t need to be drawn out. As a child of chaos it is forcefully born of itself, like the tail devouring serpent, imprinting itself onto the picture, the story or the song, It’s impression as indelible as its desire. This is the conscious sacred that is often defined and surrounded by a boundary, lest the fire of its heart reduce all else to ashes, or drown everything in the dark depths of the other unconscious sacred.

The introvert conscious is content to just be, aware more of itself than its surroundings, yet ‘comes to life’ when it chances upon another like-minded spirit, just as dust particles will dance upon a current of air, illuminated by beam of sunlight in a darkened room. Conscious beings of this kind thrive in the sunlight. They are calm and gentle, more approachable yet easily frightened and like birds they tend to fly away. To connect with these sacred spirits, you must participate on their level and learn how to drink from the same stream. These are the sacred beings more acceptable in our current spiritual climate, yet often our thirst so often stays unquenched and we give up and shrink back into the secular realm for less spiritual beverages.

Regarding the unconscious sacred, it resides within the world yet remains without form. It is the sacred that will neither be seen or experienced in its shapeless state. It sleeps in its own perfection. When it awakes it shifts into a conscious state and the dream is immediately forgotten. It is motionless. A silent song. Timeless and forever forbidden. It is the one door that should not and cannot be opened. And it cannot be opened without being closed. The doorway of the unconscious sacred is reached—by both the extroverted sacred conscious in active confidence, as well as more passive timidity of the introverted sacred conscious—but never penetrated. What it exactly is is what everything in the waking world is not. This paradoxical state of being can only be achieved by the sacred itself. Whether conscious or unconscious, sacredness retains its essence.