Self-Love Opened My Inner Temple
One of the key spiritual teachings that I have always clung to, even when doubting the existence of the Source, is that we have no need for sacred temples because within each one of us there is the most sacred temple. Think about it, we each have stardust in our DNA. I am not even being philosophical, it is actual science. We literally have a sacred spark of the universe within us. Hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, and even are all formed within stars. These elements are then combined with each other and other elements like phosphorous to form the molecules with are the nucleotides of our DNA adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine. Our DNA is literally made of stardust. We have the Source right inside our bodies, imagine a temple more easily accessible than your own body…impossible! I don’t want to give a lecture on science, chemistry is one of the hardest to understand disciplines for me. Mathematics and I struggle to understand one another, but I am best friends with its sibling named Statistics. Go figure.
My point, somehow, is that we are more important to our spiritual life than we give ourselves credit. We ARE Divinity/God/Source/Eck/Brahma/Whatever Name You Choose. This was an important and recent realization. I “knew” this was the case most of my life. However, self-hatred robbed me of that experience. I never saw the Divinity in me despite talking about being made of stardust incessantly. I have even considered getting the Carl Sagan quote as a tattoo, surrounding it with something like the Milky Way or maybe Sagittarius since that’s my sign. You see the depth of this quote for me, but I never understood it as me BEING a temple with the Source inside it. Now, I am starting to see it and experience it in ways that are nothing less than a Divine dance each time.
For clarity, Source/God/Eck is not a being, rather, It is an experience. There are no words that adequately or accurately describe the reality of Source, or to define It. I believe there is one Supreme Creator or Source that is neither male nor female. Source is experienced through Divine Love, this can be an experience using light and sound, or both! Sure, you can symbolically describe God as THE Ocean of Love and Mercy. Or maybe It is Light without shadows. I know it as the Source of all unconditional love, consciousness, and existence. It is, as many spiritual traditions explain It, both formed and unformed at the same time. So, when I say I experienced God/Source, it’s not some “woo” or delusion, rather it is me fully experiencing a moment in the Divine Love, Mercy, and Consciousness, just my Existence and the experience of Existence can occur in a moment of mindfulness and result in Divine Intoxication.
Divine Ecstasy, or Intoxication, happens when I realize in a moment of mindfulness that I AM, I exist and that is amazing, and that God is Me and more than Me. It is We, and all. Whatever Truth you are to experience during that moment of Bliss becomes intoxicating, and you keep wanting to experience that Truth, to Live in it, and to be it. Instead of becoming an obsession, it becomes a practice just like meditation. For me, it is found within meditation or mindful moments where I slow down and experience the here and now. Your experience will be different if you haven’t already had one. However, you will know it is happening. You also get to decide what to do with that experience.
I want to begin chanting because I know from experience how powerful a chant that speaks to your soul can be. So, I am going to attempt a few different chants that I know about and that do not require some weird initiation to be able to do it. One is going to be chanting Hare Krishna with Krishna Das, another is going to be Hu from Eckankar. Finally, I am also going to chant some mantras for the chakras. Yes, I believe we have energy centers. No, I don’t care that there is no or little scientific proof for them. For some reason I have always just believed they existed in some form.
My goal with chanting is to find and build a spiritual practice. I do not, in any way, want to appropriate another culture. So, if I land on a sacred Vedic chant or mantra I will learn about it and find out if it is acceptable that I use it without being a direct part of the religious or spiritual heritage. Currently, I meditate for a spiritual practice, but I am focused on mindfulness and loving-kindness for meditation right now. I want to add another tool to my spiritual toolbox, and I am really hoping chanting is going to be one of those new tools. I am open to suggestions, and of course polite disagreement. The goal with these practices is to use them while I am accessing my own Inner Temple, the incredibly sacred site that I always have access to. As I move forward, I will keep y’all informed as to where I am with these practices and how I am working with my Inner Temple.
Quickly, the Inner Temple Soul is, in my belief, where the eternal Soul resides. Since our Souls are on a journey of Self-Realization and God-Realization, then it only makes sense that we go inward during meditation or contemplation to access the Temple. We use this space to sanctify our spiritual experiences as we move toward spiritual liberation. We are always “Holy,” we just need to accept that this is the case if we want to experience it.
