Have you ever walked into a space or a place, whether that be in nature, a church, a temple, a house or ancient site and could just instantly feel the energy of the place rest upon your being and says - Welcome? The sense of its sacredness hits you, the centuries of devotional practice inhabits and lingers on in its ground, its stones and in its very air. I have had such a feeling repeatedly in The Anglican Shrine at Walsingham.
I've come to the conclusion that, though its been a Christian site of pilgrimage for several centuries, Walsingham's 'sacredness' is actually far far older than that. That the Christian faith is simply the latest religion to piggy back upon its ancient, perhaps multi-millennial mythic origins. Whenever I go to the Anglican Shrine I get the strongest sensation of this energy, that literally feels like a hand being gently placed upon my crown chakra.
So I have cause to ponder the human need for such sacred spaces. Places where we can find solitude and quiet, to commune and contemplate spiritually. More specifically my own need for that. Though I live in the countryside by the coast, and our house has a calm relaxed ambiance. Its also as full of all the various modern things one can be distracted by - Books, TV, Films, Mobile Phone, Laptop etc as any one else's house. These days I think you do have to completely leave your usual environs, in order to find such places. Because solitude and quiet, though requisite, are fleetingly rare commodities in our 24/7 world.
To mark the first anniversary of the HA!, I spent a day in Walsingham, walking between the various major shrines and chapels. I arrived at 9 am in time for the 9.30 am Mass at the Chapel of the Annunciation. I sat, along with a few other early birds, all of us men. Whilst I waited in the quiet of the chapel for the service to start, those usual sensations on the top of my head began manifesting. These stayed up until when the Mass actually began. At which point all sensations of the energy on the top of my head vanished like a popped bubble. It was my first ever experience of a Catholic Mass, which I must say felt quite spiritually deflating and sterile. I had exactly the same experience of a connection vanishing, later in the Anglican Chapel when Mass started being recited there. When I arrived at the Slipper Chapel the early morning Mass had already finished, so I could just sit in the quiet and commune with the space. In none of this sacred spaces was I completely alone at any time. Any greater depth of connection that can happen in solitude, did not occur.
This is simply a notable experience I've had. From which I can draw my own conclusions. It matters not, to anyone else, what I call the sense of a presence I've felt on those occasions. Whether I deify it, call it some spiritual essence in the universe, or concoct a neat Buddhist reference to describe it. To really thoroughly 'Other' it. One can often feel the need to label and catagorise such things into oblivion. And, maybe through misdiagnosing the nature of it, stifle its purpose. Sometimes in the no doubt good natured desire to claim it as proof, for a specific belief system. I did inevitably begin to wonder whether this was God and was I really after all a Christian ? After my recent dalliance with Mass in Walsingham, I am far less inclined to support such an assertion. I feel as though one particular recent cycle of spiritual exploration maybe coming to a close.
Now, what this is an experience of does need to be at least considered, even if that may ultimately prove inconclusive. These are just a few I've come up with to flesh out this paragraph - This experience may simply be a consequence of an increased openness and receptivity in myself. It could be that it is a quality of the universe, of 'something that is beyond me'. It maybe a combination of those two, of the individual and universal drawing closer. It maybe the crown chakra opening up like a light bulb being switched on. It maybe be the spiritual essence of a lost dead person. It maybe God. It maybe me getting altogether a little too spiritually carried away. I must also confess, I have recently written and been experimenting with reciting a prayer that asked for confirmation of the existence of 'something that is beyond me' . So that would make it confirmation bias - wouldn't it? Except this was happening long long before I even thought of trying that.
To me this intuitively feels like its suggestive of 'something that is beyond me', I've had similar experiences in Christian, Buddhist and Spiritualist contexts, and they'd certainly have their own particular interpretation of what such an experience might signify. But I think its best for me, to stop at 'something that is beyond me' to not get too imaginatively or spiritually speculative. Once you start that, its a somewhat slippery slope towards turning what was merely a suggestive experience into a incontrovertible fact. Worse still were your ego to attach some personal spiritual self aggrandisement onto it. Oh, boy is it best not to go there.
Dogen once said ;- 'Realisation is the state of ambiguity itself'. Whatever we consider to be indescribable or ineffable, will when experienced through the lens of mundane reality - be ambiguous - and the more we attempt to pin down that ambiguity, the more incorrect our firm assertions and certainties will become. So, though 'something that is beyond me' sounds distinctly vague, that in my view, is perfectly appropriate.
Religious buildings, can be sacred, because they are purpose built to uplift our hearts and our spiritual sensitivities, through awe and wonder. Often these spaces are exuberantly lofty, pierced with arrows of stained glass, decorated with elaborately patterned tiles or murals, with oodles of richness, bedecked in gold and jewels. Vaults reverberating with the sound of music, angelically swooping through the majesty of its caverns. They are evocations of something 'other' built in stone and glass and a bucketful of faith.
And yet, this feeling of being touched by 'something that is beyond me' has also be encountered when I'm quiet and alone in nature too. Most frequently by the sea. In nature and religious sacred places I can be connected with 'something that is beyond me'. Whatever this is then, isn't the exclusive purview belonging to any particular religious building, because it can also be found outside of all of those spaces. I'm even starting to sense it, when I do rituals before my shrine at home, my crown chakra coming fizzing into life. For on a most basic level, perhaps I'm just that little bit less inhibited, a tad more open, and a degree of too more receptive - to the sense for 'otherness' within my ordinary being.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
'It's not that someone like me appears
once in several thousand years;
I appear only once in eternity....
That everyone should believe
that they are a once-in-eternity being
that its the same as living out the buddhadharma.'
Uchiyama Roshi
Taken from The Roots Of Goodness
Published by Shambahala 2025
No comments:
Post a Comment