Right now I am on the bus heading to Jerusalem, the Holy City. And the word holy has been popping up more often in recent days. Because what is holy anyway? In Nazareth we walked into a church and there was a sign saying: silence please, this is a holy place. I understand.
Of course I am silent out of respect and I also enjoy the "holy silence" that is present there. The silence makes the energy much purer to experience, but still I ask myself the question why here and not in other places?
Isn't holiness something that is found in everything around us? Isn't life itself holy?
For me, life is sacred everywhere, life is Divine. Not only in a church, a temple or a monastery. Of course, it may be that those places have a more “special energy” that can be experienced, but I don’t think it is “holier”, right?
As with everything, “holiness” is something we experience within. As within, so without. And that same “holiness” is in everything we experience. In the trees and in the leaves of the trees. And it is also in those same leaves that fall from the tree during the fall and reunite with the ground of the earth. Holiness is also in eating a croissant and drinking your daily cup of coffee.
And perhaps even more difficult to understand, for the head and not for the heart, is the holiness that lies in anger, in rage, in sorrow. Life itself is sacred and perfectly organized. Even the unholy is holy, because there is no such thing as unholy. It is only the duality of man that can label something as “holy” and “unholy.”
When we can experience the holiness and therefore also the beauty in the less pleasant emotions, without judging them, then suffering disappears more and more. Suffering is created by the stamps we put on experiences, but honestly… It’s just an experience. And that experience happens in the field that connects everything. Call it God, call it Spirit, call it Universe. And that field is love, eternal expansion, sacred.
When we start to remember that on deeper levels, we can get more into flow with life. And let life happen for us, as it should happen. Not that we can't be in flow, but we can experience it more deeply.
Just look around you now and set the intention to experience the sacredness in everything, feel what is happening in you and if you are already able to enter the serenity. It is possible. It is simply a shift of consciousness and focus. Change from within how you look at life and life changes with it. Not that it really changes, life is still life, but I said it already… Your shift in experiencing consciousness.
So we can choose to see certain parts as holy or unholy. We can choose to experience anger, sadness and joy and then put a label on it “nice” or “not nice”. Or like in church “silence please, this is a holy place”. But we can also choose to leave the label in the cupboard and just experience life as it is, holy. Not only in church, in a temple or in a monastery, but everywhere you are.
And from there… calmer waters emerge.