How often do you experience a sense of the sacred in your life? And what does “sacred” even mean?

Most people associate the word sacred with spiritual practice—feeling the presence of God, dissolving your identity, or feeling one with the whole universe. But the sacred is not a secret compartment of consciousness accessible only to the mystics. There are many paths to touching the sacred.

Think of a masterful dancer unexpectedly pushing his craft to another level. He has rehearsed this piece a thousand times, pushed through pain and doubt, sacrificed sleep and comfort for this moment. His whole being vibrates with a single desire: to become a perfect conduit to the emotional energy that animates that piece.

Then, in an unexpected moment of inspiration, all known boundaries fall apart. His mind stops, his world stops, the audience disappears—and he feels as if he is being danced. His performance carries that unmistakable quality: something transcendental—like magic.

It can happen in any area of life.

• a mother seeing the face of her newborn for the first time
• witnessing an act of profound sacrifice or courage from someone you love
• suddenly grasping the truth of a matter that you contemplated deeply—and it’s much bigger than you thought
• an athlete achieving a performance that feels transcendental or “impossible”
• an encounter with a stranger that suddenly bursts your bubble and shifts your paradigm
• a musician losing his separate identity and feeling himself to be an instrument of music

What do all these experiences, so seemingly different on the surface, have in common?

A touch of the sacred.

The Footprints of the Sacred

How do we identify the sacred? How are these experiences fundamentally different from our day-to-day lives?

An encounter with the sacred shakes you beyond your little world. It effaces—even for a moment—all your self-concerns, filling you with a deep reverence for something much bigger than yourself. These moments feel serious, deep, and full of awe.

When you are touching the sacred, you are invaded by a sense stillness. Your breathing stops for some moments—and so does your mind. The walls that have so far imprisoned your consciousness to its old reality suddenly fall off. You are fully present, empty, and expanded beyond your previous identity.

If you are able to stay in this experience without trying to put it in a box—without trying to explain it, understand it, or repeat it—then you’ll make more space for the sacred in your life.

When you experience the sacred, there is a sense of completeness in your existence. At that point, you have no questions about the meaning of life. You have no suffering, no separation, no problem. There is nothing lacking. The sacred heals you, and fulfills you.

Connecting with the sacred in this way sounds awe-some—and it is. But the sacred is not cheap. Being available to the sacred is, in itself, a discipline.  It requires your presence—and most of us are distracted with trivialities. It requires your devotion—and most of us are too scattered, too shallow, and too focused on the short term to be selflessly devoted to anything.

It’s not your fault. Modern life and culture are naturally pulling you in the opposite direction.

The Dopamine Casino: How We Lost the Sacred

Perceiving and honoring the sacred requires a completely different mode of being than what the modern internet culture cultivates.

The sacred requires depth; modern culture promotes surface. That’s why most people favor posts over books, shorts over thought-provoking films, chats over deep conversations, and quick wins over dedication to a long-term cause.

The sacred requires stillness; modern culture promotes constant stimulation. You won’t find the sacred in the insatiable pursuit of the new and latest; nor in the noise of news, social media, and advertisement-led content.

The sacred requires devotion over time; modern culture promotes instant gratification. By dedicating yourself to a cause, art, craft, relationship, or practice over years, patiently and steadily, you will experience the sacred. Any activity that primes your brain to value what is easy and immediate takes you in the opposite direction.

The sacred requires the sacrifice of self; modern culture promotes endless ways to affirm, entertain, and please the self. 

Modern culture is, in a way, like a dopamine casino. Everything around you is deliberately engineered to capture your attention, invoke your desire, and get you to act quickly here and now, to experience an irresistible and easy win. And without a clear awareness and well-trained willpower (higher mind), you will succumb repeatedly, and be carried away by the currents of instant gratification.

You are not going to find the sacred in your dopamine casino—whatever that is. The dopamine casino creates the opposite state of being than what is needed for purpose, fulfillment, and the sacred.

The sacred requires depth; modern culture sells surface. The sacred requires focus; modern culture drowns us in noise.

Constantly context-switching between notifications, short-form media, and small tasks shatters your focus, leaving you too scattered to tackle what matters. 

Constant exposure to superficial content and trivial tasks numbs you mentally, morally, and spiritually. Your emotions become less deep—and less lasting. It is harder to feel deeply motivated about anything when you have trained yourself to only respond to 30-second increments of overstimulation. The sacred cannot be touched in 30-second increments.

You think you are getting things done, having fun, and relaxing while you are consuming media. The truth is that the dopamine casino is consuming you. If you have thus lost hold of yourself—your mind, your emotions, your attention—how can you hope to touch the sacred? What will you offer, so that it comes?

If you spend all your money in the casino, hooked by empty promises of quick return, then you’ll have no money left to actually invest in something meaningful. That is what we are doing with our attention, our minds, and our hearts.

When we are unconsciously led by a desire to be stimulated, we are no longer present. We are no longer available for something deeper to happen. When everything becomes content to be consumed, nothing retains its sacredness. The profound becomes just another scroll—and the first 15 seconds of it are not very interesting, so you might just miss it.

Swim Upstream

When the sacred knocks at your door, will it find you busy, or eagerly waiting?

The “death of the sacred” is essentially the cultural dominance of the lower-mind mode of existence. So please ignore the well-meaning but often empty new age advice of “just go with the flow”. Going with the flow, here, is submitting yourself to all the ails of modern life.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

Instead, go against the flow—swim upstream. Discover what are your deepest life aspirations. They are the voice of the sacred in you—a whisper from the passenger to the charioteer. Then shape your life around them. That is the true meaning of self-discipline.

Everything I believe in, and work to promote, is a direct resistance against the lower-mind mode of being:

• cultivating awareness instead of distraction
• prioritizing purpose over pleasure
• being a creator not a consumer
• living inside out not outside in

Human beings need a sense of the sacred in order to live well and thrive. Without it, your mind becomes a fertile ground for all sorts of suffering; there is a crisis of meaning. It’s an emptiness that you can nowadays continuously distract yourself from, but never fully overcome. 

So instead of using distraction to distract yourself away from emptiness, see the emptiness of distractions, and face life head on. Look away from the shiny objects, and make a vow to dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to what is most meaningful in your heart of hearts. 

When you do that, you are moving toward the sacred—and the sacred will be moving toward you. As Rumi puts it, “What you are seeking is seeking you”.