Every space you enter has its own, unique “spirit” or quality and a powerful way to enrich your experience of the sacred in urban settings (or anywhere, for that matter) is to develop your ability to attune to the spirit of a place. For this week’s exploration, I invite you to focus on your felt-sense of the spaces and places around you.
There are a couple reasons to develop this practice, if you haven’t already. First, being able to sense the spirit of a place increases your awareness of the “ocean” of energies and qualities that you swim in as you move through your daily life. Being able to sense the qualities around you allows you to have a deeper sense of whether you want to stay or move on. It also offers a way to have a more enlivened relationship with the subtle energies around you.
For this exploration, it’s possible to use many of the “languages of interpretation” that we have available to perceive subtle realities. You might have impressions that come as images, sounds, flickering sensations in your body, words—in any way that allows you to perceive what your body-mind senses about the spirit, the energies, the qualities of a place.
Most of us have had many experiences of entering a space or place and immediately feeling comfortable or immediately feeling uncomfortable. Taking the time to attune to the energies you’ve just entered offers an opportunity to deepen your awareness. And, as always, deepened awareness allows for more choice. Even if you can’t leave a space that makes you uncomfortable, you may have ways to “shield” yourself by focusing on your internal center of gravity, your inherent groundedness, or on the ways you center yourself when you are unsettled or uncomfortable.
When you discover that you feel increasingly comfortable in a space or place, being aware of this offers an opportunity to deepen your relationship with the spirit, the energy, of the place. An enhanced sense of belonging, of connection, is a powerful way to nourish a sense of well-being, even in busy urban contexts.
When you’ve had a chance to work with this week’s Exploration, please post your experiences so that we can all begin to share the process of discovering what enhances our sense of the sacred in our everyday lives.
Here’s an audio version of the written information above, if you prefer to listen to it.
As you listen, please press pause when you need additional time to do take in the practice.
And, please remember never to listen to these recordings when driving or using machinery.
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