Psychology of Sacred Place

I recently took a Seminar with the Walkers (Jamie & George, daughter & father) called Psychology of Sacred Place.

After taking this seminar, I believe that almost anything or any place can be sacred. It’s amazing how many different things are considered sacred by people. From nature to man-made things to sports to whatever, there is no limit to what people consider sacred.

Mana is a very interesting film about this topic. You can find out more about Mana in this I View Films blogpost.

Sometimes people need to travel to a what they believe to be a Sacred Place. This type of travel has come to be called a pilgrimage. This type of travel seems to have become popular again. Martin Sheen made a film about going on a pilgrimage called The Way. I also wrote a blogpost on The Way.

But as I said earlier, I believe almost any place can be sacred. In my home, I think my guest bathroom or powder room is somewhat sacred.

Here's a little video I made to show it to you.

Here are a few photos of the items that I believe help make it sacred.

Why is a bathroom sacred?

It's a place to:

• get refreshed
• get cleaned up
• contemplate
• reflect
• be inspired (in mine you can also be entertained!)
• take time for one's self
• express or release emotions

Bathrooms/restrooms are places where people often take space to themselves to release or express emotions. I have often witnessed women being sad (in tears!) or angry in public restrooms.

Below are a few photos to show you some of the items in this room.
 

 

 

 

In keeping with the theme of water, most of the above items are somewhat related to water. The top image is a photo of Mono Lake which I think is a very sacred place. There are various pictures and items decorating the room and a small library which includes humorous books by Gary Larson and some inspirational books too. I've included images of some of the inspirational/humorous books that are part of this small library.

I can usually tell when people are being entertained as I can hear them laughing and when they're very quiet, they are being inspired, contemplating or reflecting.

For those who don't know who Gary Larson is check out this video:

Which brings me to the thought that humor and laughter are sacred!


I feel quite blessed  and privileged that I have this little sacred place in my home that leads people to laugh or be inspired.

 

"If I want to be alone, some place I can write, I can read, I can pray, I can cry, I can do whatever I want - I go to the bathroom."--Alicia Keyes quote

 

Communication de Corazon--Communication from the Heart

Sometimes I think we all just overanalyze.
Wouldn't it be great if our hearts could just talk directly to each other?
What would they say?
I love you. I'm sorry. I know I disappointed or hurt you.
I'm sorry. I was wrong. I forgot how much I loved you.
I'm a soul making human mistakes.
Can't we just love each other and get past all the bullshit?

Sometimes I let my head rule over my heart.
But it's because my heart was hurt and my head is just trying to protect my heart.
From more hurt and disappointment.

But as Blaise Pascal once said, "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing."

So it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, isn't it?

I once watched this great Spanish language film. In it the hero was playing games with words.
He wrote done 'temo' which means 'I fear.'

Later he changed it by adding the letter 'a' to create the phrase "te amo" which means "I love you."

Fear & Love are both 4-letter words that are both used and abused. As Bishop Gene Robinson said in the documentary Love Free or Die, "The opposite of Love is Fear." BTW, I just reviewed that documentary film in I View Films.

FEAR is also an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real.

LOVE could be an acronym for many different things as I found out when I did a search online and found this long list of love acronyms at this link.

BTW, the Spanish film with the word-gameplaying hero is El Secreto en Sus Ojos and you can find out more about this film in my blog I View Films.

Moments of Beauty and Inspiration

Tonight I'm sitting outside in the warm night and I realized that even in difficult times there can be moments of real beauty and inspiration.

As I sit here writing, I hear the sound of singing frogs in the distance. I hear the sound of a river not of water, but of cars. Still beautiful nevertheless. Above me in the clear dark sky I see the shadows of evergreen trees and the silver twinkling of faraway stars.

There's a difference between being lonely and being alone. Enjoying one's company and solitude in the beauty of such moments is a precious gift.


It's clear to me that the rejection by one is not the end of the world because the world is full of people. There is no excuse to be lonely. People put up barricades of judgement, fear and other excuses to keep people at bay.

As Helen Keller once said: "When one door of happiness closes, another one opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."

Yes, even in challenging times, there are also true moments of  beauty and of happiness. Being able to share such moments with people who truly want to share with us is a special gift. I feel blessed to count in my life people who truly love and appreciate and want to share moments of happiness with me. Recently a friend of mine shared with me this beautiful view as we took a sunset drive together.

But in this moment as I sit alone writing on my computer, I share my insights and this view with whoever happens to visit my blog in the big, wide wonderful world of the web...

Humble Pie & Pale Blue Dot

I’m eating some “humble pie” in my post today.  There’s a man I’ve known as an acquaintance for a while. Although I was friendly with him, I had made certain assumptions about him because of his cultural background.

Yesterday when I spoke to him, he shared with me how he’s encouraged his wife to go back to school. He had even arranged his work schedule so that he could look after their young daughter while his wife went to her classes.

After he shared that, I realized how wrong my assumptions about him had been.  I told him how great it was that he encouraged and supported his wife in going back to school.  A little later on, I shed a few tears because I felt so ashamed that I had made those very wrong assumptions about him.

  

How many people make assumptions about other people because of their cultural background or what they look like or how they act? If more people took the time to actually recheck their perceptions or the assumptions they made, what a different world we’d live in. Mightn’t it be possible that we’d be kinder to each other? Could it even be possible that instead of being angry or hating or fearing each other, we might even care about each other more and be friends?

Earlier in the day, someone shared this poem with me and it relates directly to what I just wrote. If you don't want to read this poem called Pale Blue Dot by famous astronomer Carl Sagan, you can simply watch this video and hear him say it.

Here's the actual poem if you want to read it:

Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” 
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Call me corny and sentimental if you want to, but I love this poem and it gets me all teary-eyed! It's really great to hear Carl Sagan saying it on the video embedded here. Though he's no longer alive on this planet, his spirit lives on! Enjoy and be inspired!