11/28/11—Seeing the Sacred in All Things

Today's Draw: Sky Dancer "Morning Star" from Waking the Wild Spirit. Do you look at any part of your life as being sacred? Do you feel as though you have power over the experience of your life? Are you ready to start looking at life in a different light?

The Sky Dancer card equates to The Sun card in most tarot decks. The Sun card is always life affirming and happy. But the way this card is presented, it's about lapping up every possible drop of life you can. It's about seeing light everywhere. 

The book for this deck talks about finding the sacred in everything. The light you get stuck at in the morning is sacred. The coffee transaction you make at Starbucks is sacred. And the laugh of a child is sacred. From the "negative" to the mundane to the joyful, there is sacredness in every moment of life, if you choose to see it that way. 

I imagine there are people out there right now that are thinking "I wish I could be more that way...enjoy life more and find the positive in everything. But I'm just not." And I'm here to say "bullshit". The way we see the world we walk through is entirely a matter of choice. It has little to nothing to do with the circumstances occurring in your life. There will probably always be things that test you and take you down a notch or two for a time, but whether or not you allow them to change your outlook on life is your choice. 

The reason I can say this is because a) I wasn't always the positive, uplifting little gem of sunshine you know me as today....haha, and b) it's not like my life has been without challenge and sorrow. Gaining a positive outlook on life and developing the habit of seeing the good in bad things has taken conscious effort, practice and work on my part. And it's not 100%. Just a couple of weeks ago I was a bundle of anxiety about a family gathering I was attending, if you recall. 

Developing the habit of seeing the sacredness in all things is, no doubt, the same way. It's takes conscious effort. You have to stop your fears in mid-thought and rephrase them. You have to break the habit of negative thinking and replace it with a positive thought. For example, sometimes when I'm stuck at a light and starting to get impatient, I tell myself that this light might be saving my life from some accident that could occur down the road. That's how you make it positive. 

I can't tell you how to make everything sacred, because I don't do that for myself. Yet. I can see the positive of moments and have gratitude for them, but seeing the sacredness is another level beyond what I currently do. One thing I know, however, is that every person I've been around that didn't feel they had enough time here on the earth would choose to sit at a stoplight over and over again if it gave them more time here. It's not the stoplight itself that's sacred. It's the vast experience of life that we get to live—the amazing all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of it all.

I'm sure we've all had horrible experiences in our lives that, say, 10 or 20 years down the line we see as having been critical to who we've become. In the moment we can't always see how sacred that experience is. But we can have the wisdom to know it will one day be considered sacred. We can stop ourselves in the moment of anger or fear and open our minds to the possibility that this moment was meant to be, just like every other moment of our lives. We can remind ourselves that spirit had a hand in creating the moment. And we can believe every moment here on earth is part of the story we came here to live. In that sense, everything *is* sacred.

Just imagine how living that way could change our lives! It would forge us more inextricably with our spirit selves. It would show us how powerful the gift of choice is. It would completely shift our outlook on life and, with it, increase the healing potential of our chemical makeup. And, perhaps, when the final days came, we would be less frightened or regretful. 

I think many of us walk through life oblivious to a) the fears that consume our daily life and b) the gifts that are always ours to claim. Instead we ride ups and downs as if they are ups and downs and never entertain the thought that everything can be an up if we allow it to be. And everything can be sacred communion if we want it to be. So, if you like, noodle on this a little today. See that stoplight through the eyes of a soul who couldn't wait to experience this lifetime on this earth and, in the billions of years of earth's history, got to be here during the 100 years stop lights existed. 

Life—even its darker parts—is pretty cool. And The Sun card shines down to illuminate those darker parts for us so we can learn to appreciate them.