Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Sanctuary

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; (Matthew 6:6)

Amid the ever-changing flux of life, we need a place of rest and recuperation, a safe zone of no fear and no concern, a place to regenerate body, mind, emotion, and spirit. The first candidate is our nightly period of sleep. For most, bodily sleep serves as a refuge and does regenerate us. Our home also can be a refuge, a place we can relax and just be our unguarded self.

A sanctuary, though, is different; it breathes the air of the sacred, as the place where the higher and the lower, the Creator and the created, meet. In this sense, the house of worship serves as the paradigm of sanctuary. Effective ones produce in us a state of awe and reverence, by their architecture, by the tenor of their worship community, or by both. Those with access to such a place count themselves among the fortunate.

Many of us, however, do not have such a suitable, readily accessible, and awe-inspiring sanctuary for our worship. And even those who do find their sojourns there limited. We need an inner sanctuary, one that stays with us. The sacredness of our purpose creates the pillars of our inner temple of meditation and prayer. Crossing its cleansing threshold, we begin our truest work. Outside our sanctuary, life draws us to be other than ourselves. Within, we can only be our truest self. The sanctuary enables us to orient our whole being and will toward what matters most.

Entering that inward sacred space, we relax and let go. Drawn by our purpose, we leave behind all our worries and obligations, our grudges and material ambitions. Patiently, we let our very patterns of thought, emotion, and action subside. This leaves us in empty awareness, pure consciousness. Waiting there, we establish our true inner sanctuary, our base camp for the ascent. In this place we find a sweetness and a simple freedom. Then gazing toward the higher, we reach beyond consciousness itself, toward the sacred light and, finally, toward the awesome, benevolent will of the Divine.

This inner abode serves not only as a sanctuary for us, but also as a sanctuary for the higher. Through our inner sanctuary the sacred finds a place in this world and can live in us. Not that we share the space with the sacred, for ultimately we are one with it. To provide that sanctuary is an essential part of our role and our opportunity. Through our spiritual practice we become a sanctuary for the higher, as it is a sanctuary for us.

And each time we leave our sanctuary and return to life, we may find our life slightly more transformed. Until the day when the walls of our inner sanctuary fall away and the whole of life becomes a sacred space.

To practice this, enter your own sanctuary, shore up its pillars by turning your face toward why you are there, and accept that you are worthy of that place. Established there, do your work of inviting the sacred to enter.


     

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