The Aura

The sacred isn't a feeling but the foundation of all experience

“Shiv - you often speak about seeing the sacred in the mundane. But if I am to be honest, I can’t always perceive this sacredness. I find it easier to see it during meditation or attending a spiritual retreat, or even when I am in nature. This has naturally created an internal bias in me in which some things are sacred and others are not. But if I am understanding you correctly, this sacredness is independent of form. Then how does one find that sacredness even within the mundane - and especially the undesirable?

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Paradoxically, by not looking for it.

The experience of ‘sacredness’ you are speaking about - and which most seekers are familiar with - is not what I mean by the sacred. That is what I call the aura of sacredness. It is that solemn, reverential, even holy vibe that shrouds certain environments. Walking into an old church. Listening to Tibetan monks chanting. Sitting in a silent room with others in meditation. Going on a great pilgrimage.

The aura of sacredness has a distinct flavor to it. It feels expansive, heartwarming, awe-inspiring, deepening. It evokes a feeling of reverence, adoration, and seems to humble the ego and its petty concerns. The scope of our attention appears to expand beyond the boundaries of our personal interests and contemplates something vaster, something mysterious, something hidden. Some secret knowledge, some unseen force, some great universal essence on the other side of an invisible veil.

The aura of sacredness represents all that is of true good, of true virtue, of true value in reality. It is an aura that also asks to be treasured and protected like a fragile flame. Which is why we build monasteries in the mountains or remote cabins in the woods - away from the superficiality and psychological onslaught of material society - to keep that flame safe. It is why we gather in spiritual circles, in retreats, in sweat lodges, in ashrams to amplify that flame with our collective attention. It is why we sit in meditation at home, to keep that flame burning within us.

I too went in search of the aura of sacredness once. I attempted to cultivate it in my busy life by creating an oasis of silence. I sought it in my travels in the many temples, ashrams and monasteries I visited - in Japan, India, and Europe. I meditated for hours. I had profound awakening experiences. That aura became my only ambition. I sought it everywhere, in everything, in every person I met. Often while sitting on the subway, my eyes would meet the gaze of a random stranger and, for a moment, the hope of some divine recognition would rise up within my chest - only to leave me disappointed when the person awkwardly looked away.

Every moment felt like a portal to some profound realm of existence - a portal whose key seemed just out of reach. I became convinced that with greater focus and attention that key would be revealed. I gazed at sunsets, I spoke to trees. I listened to hours of monks chanting in meditation and I chanted with them. I attempted to cultivate compassion in all my interactions and a deep reverence for all beings.

And yet, that aura of sacredness would not stay. It eluded me. For there were so many experiences in my day-to-day that simply did not live up to that standard. My jerk of a boss who seemed to lack any sense of ethics. Long days spent in meetings pointlessly incorporating solutions that I knew would be replaced the moment a restructuring occurred. Hours spent in traffic. My frustration with the government and its policies. Exceedingly unaffordable housing costs. Endless petty arguments at home.

None of this felt even remotely like entering an old church or hearing Tibetan monks chant. My life felt like a battle - between the sacred aspects of my life and the mundane. And my purpose, it seemed to me, was to slowly, diligently, painstakingly, shift that needle towards an increasing experience of sacredness.

And so I tried. My wife and I quit our jobs and moved to a remote part of Japan. We attempted to break the fetters of social expectation in the hopes that, in the wake of that liberation, a deeper more sacred way of living would be revealed. And for a time it seemed to work. Life began to carry that expansive, reverential vibe once again. We met like-minded travellers, we engaged with spiritually-oriented people. Yet after a few years, and unexpectedly to me, a sense of the mundane began creeping into even this life. A greyness, a familiarity, a dryness - began to seep into the very moments that had at first seemed so liberating.

And for the first time, I began to fear that this may in fact be the nature of all things, once their novelty has worn off.

This phase of my life was followed by a phase of great disillusionment. For up until that time, I had never questioned the aura of sacredness. I had simply assumed that it was some failure on my own part that prevented it from being my permanent experience. I had believed it was the narrowness of my mind, the self-centeredness of my ego, the unhealed trauma within me - that blocked me from experiencing every moment as sacred. But for the first time, I began to wonder if that aura of sacredness was the real thing.

After all, if the sacred were truly universal shouldn’t it be universally experienced? Shouldn’t it be sacred even when it didn’t feel sacred? I realized I had spent my whole life chasing a feeling instead of the real thing. I had been moving towards the mirage of an oasis in the desert of my experience.

And when I looked at other seekers, I saw how the whole culture of spirituality was oriented in this way. Towards the aura of sacredness rather than the sacred itself. Religions, ashrams, monasteries, sects, teachers, gurus - all were oriented towards showing others how to cultivate that aura of sacredness within their own lives. Silence, compassion, acceptance, non-judgment, vulnerability, humility, love, oneness - these became markers that the aura of sacredness was present.

And what about those moments of noise, unkindness, resistance, judgment, defensiveness, pride, fear and isolation? These acted as indicators that the aura had been lost and had to be regained by intensifying practice through meditation, setting intention, visualization and compassion practices.

As I entered that period of great disillusionment, this dichotomy became abhorrent to me. I saw it as a great hypocrisy. I could clearly see how what humanity considered ‘holy’ was simply its own virtue projection. The aura of sacredness was just a whole different brand of egotism - a way for us human beings to stoke our own self-importance by believing ourselves to be profound, deep, and an expression of something grander.

Yet, I simultaneously feared the loss of the aura in my own life. It was the only thing that had made living life worthwhile. What if it all just became mundane? What if there was no hope to buffer against the sheer onslaught of the humdrum? What if there was no depth to move towards and this shallow, superficial existence was all that was left? What if nothing mattered anymore?

As I slaughtered my sacred cows I was terrified of drowning in the river of blood I had left behind…

What if it all becomes mundane…?

That thought continued to rattle around in my head for weeks. Something gnawing, niggling at me as it did.

What if it all becomes mundane…?

This word ‘mundane’ - what did it mean? Familiar, ordinary, unremarkable, barely noticeable. I wondered - what if the sacred was not something holy, awe-inspiring or exceptional. What if it was ordinary, familiar, unremarkable - barely noticeable?

What if the sacred was mundane?

What if it was always hiding in plain sight? Appearing in and as exactly what was happening right now? Even if the thing that was happening right now was the most vile or vapid?

For the sacred to be universal it would have to be free of all conditions, interpretations, feelings, or form. It would have to be present at all times. It would have to be present even when the aura of sacredness was not.

I realized that I had to reorient my perception. I had to break my conditioned habit of pursuing certain feelings, states of mind, virtues, environments, and practices. And instead, to become willing to open up to my life unfolding in exactly the way it was happening. Even if that looked like suffering, boredom, fear, pettiness, anger, or judgment - rather than succumbing to the temptation of replacing the experience with an aura of sacredness.

That aura, I came to realize, was the ultimate obstacle to the sacred. The gate so few ever pass through - precisely because it is so seductive in nature. It promises deliverance, salvation from the vicissitudes of life - and in that promise … lies the trap.

For many years afterward, I continued to struggle with the old habitual conditioning of wanting to see life through the lens of that rose-colored aura, that would frequently hijack me. Yet over time, the urge lessened and, as it did, a certain ease began to emerge. A natural willingness to let things be as they appeared. To let those moments of pettiness, unkindness, anger, and fear exist just as freely as those of expansion, compassion, gentleness, and love.

Anger, which had been an issue for me and whose resolution I had turned into a lifelong project - now became free to arise and subside without interest or intervention. Freed up from the need to manage it, my awareness became oriented to it in a different way. I began to witness anger for the first time for what it was - this unique and impersonal energetic form - that had great power and personality. And the more I witnessed it, the more I could see how, when it arose, it was just as worthy of being as the cloud in the sky, or a bird sitting on a branch.

The same was true of fear, envy, complaint, doubt - all those various forms of resistance I had once upon a time worked so hard to sanitize from my experience in hopes of reinstating the aura of sacredness - I now began to perceive with great fascination and curiosity. I saw how, in the moment they arose, they each carried that unique signature of being - that great privilege by which, out of the infinite events that could be happening, this was the one thing that was happening.

And the more my perception oriented away from my own preferences and prejudices towards the simple fact of each moment’s happening - the more I began to have a simple yet profound realization. What I had been calling the ‘mundane’ was in fact, the greatest miracle of all.

That anything could exist…that experience was even possible…that out of countless possibilities a single actuality emerges…from moment to moment - this became an increasingly bizarre and profound prospect.

This is. I am. In each and every moment. It never stops. Moment after moment. Over and over. No why. No how. It all just is.

This just-isness of everything - universally true. All the time. Everywhere.

India. Japan. Monastery. Brothel. Love. Anger. Peace. War. Meditating. Quarrelling. Liberating. Suffering.

Always this. Always being - showing up as the experience of a here and a now.

How? Why? Who? What? When? Where?

Even the questions were just meaningless sounds showing up as another version of this. Always another version of this.

The aura of sacredness too, became just another version of the same thing. Just another aura - like the aura of conflict, the aura of humor, the aura of despair. No more sacred than any other. No less either.

For the first time in my life, I could sit in traffic without wishing I were sitting on a meditation cushion. I could feel angry without feeling like I had failed to be peaceful. I could simply be bored without feeling like I had to use this opportunity to ‘deepen in silence’.

Life happening, just as it is, became a singular expression of the sacred.

Humanity clings to the aura of sacredness as an antidote to the aura of despair. Life contains much suffering and it is easy to succumb to that suffering. Offering the hope of something beyond impermanence, pain, and loss - has sustained many souls throughout history. Yet, that very hope can become a self-fulfilling prophecy that inadvertently generates its own kind of suffering, its own kind of loss, its own kind of despair.

And when one has suffered it all - even hope - then one is left with nowhere left to turn to but here. One is left with no better outcome to reach for than now.

The same here and now one has always had to face, endure, suffer through.

One is face to face with the sacred.

And it feels just like it has always felt.

Like just another ordinary moment.