In “Shine a Light,” Martin Scorsese’s documentary on the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards is asked how he feels when he emerges on stage and stands before hundreds of thousands of screaming fans.

He says, “I wake up.”

That’s why we’re here: to wake up.

All wisdom traditions agree, this is our primary mission and purpose: waking up. But, what does it mean to wake up?

Waking up is not mysterious.

There have been moments in your life—sacred, generous, simple moments—when the veils of conditioning dissolved, your eyes opened, and your heart opened…you woke up.

In those moments, you glimpse, taste, and feel what it means to embody truth.

You enter a world that is richer, more meaningful, more intimate, and more profound than the world you’re used to. Yet, it’s not “another” world. It’s this world—this moment—unveiled.

You wake up to your life unveiled, liberated from the patterns of personal and cultural conditioning. In these moments, you recognize—and feel—the vastness, depth, and sacred nature of the true world in which you live.

You wake up to sacred sanity.

Waking up is that simple: it’s sanity, sacred sanity. This is not a special state of consciousness reserved for the holy few. It’s the natural state of consciousness that is revealed when you see through the veils of conditioning—including spiritual conditioning.

Sacred sanity frees you from inherited ideas, concepts, and descriptions of waking up. Sacred sanity reveals that the commonplace—a glass of water, a stone, a glance, a word—is saturated with meaning.

The great American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, puts it like this: “There is a depth in those brief moments which constrain us to ascribe more reality to them than all other experiences.”

Yes, they do have more reality. Because sacred sanity reveals and embraces both the bliss and the anguish of life.
Sacred sanity is not a retreat from the details of current events, whether in your personal life or in the larger world.

Connecting to sacred sanity allows you to:

>> Experience the details of current events and the deeper current that is flowing within every moment.

>> Bring your gifts, strengths, and commitments alive in the world—without reactivity.

Sacred sanity is whole-hearted. As you reside more fully in sacred sanity, inspirations, insights, openings, and releases illuminate your mind, heal your heart, and call you more deeply into relationship with all of life.

However, most of our days are spent in the opposite of sacred sanity.

The opposite of sacred sanity is scatteredness. The scattered mind is superficial, reactive, and contracted. In this state, attention fragments, and we find ourselves bouncing along on the surface of life or swirling in the whirlpool of current events.

We’ve created a technological infrastructure that encourages (and reinforces) scatteredness. Notice your own direct experience. What happens to the mind, heart, and body when you’re fixated on the newsfeed and locked into a social media echo chamber?

Short answer: reactivity.

Reactivity cannot generate wise action. The scattered mind reacts and generates crisis-driven solutions, which perpetuate the conditions that give rise to crisis and suffering.

It’s time to stop. To shift gears—from scatteredness to sanity. To return to sacred sanity.

And there’s good news here: You’ve got it better than Keith.

Because, there are more than 100,000 people calling out to you.

There are millions of people around the world crying out—do you hear them?

They’re calling for you to wake up!

The world is calling out for you to wake up.

Just take a breath. Be still. Listen. Let go of the swirling thoughts, and return to sacred sanity.

It’s time.

Let’s rock the world—with sacred sanity.

Check out this free webinar, “Sacred Sanity for Crazy Times: Wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita,” here.

 

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Relephant:

How to Stay Sane in Crazy Times.

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Author: Eric Klein
Image: original illustration by author
Editor: Yoli Ramazzina
Copy editor: Callie Rushton
Social editor: Travis May