Regardless of your personal feelings regarding the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the ritual of the period of mourning can’t have failed to capture your attention. The precision, detail and solemn ritual which is being witnessed by millions of people in the UK and many more millions around the world is really something to behold. There is a profound sense of significance to this, a sense of something we are somehow, a part of, while at the same time and in a literal sense, being separate to.
And it is this sense of the sacred, as something worthy of regard, of reverence or awe, that I feel we are increasingly overlooking in our busy lives, when we take so much of the world around us for granted. In a secular world and with a rational lens there is of course no logical sense to any of this ritual, it is unnecessary. But limiting ourselves to that is denying a huge component of the human experience and a significant part of ourselves. We might find ourselves in a shallower experience where there is nothing to buffer us from the inevitable tragedy of life.
If we can only give respect and find a sense of the sacred in our lives through our grief at death, then we really are leaving it too late.
You can bring a greater sense of the sacred into your experience simply by how you use your attention. Mindfully focus on even the simplest activities of daily living, such as preparing a meal, sharing company with others, the movement of the body, with the literally millions of objects and details you can find simply looking out of a window. Find something that resonates with you, that brings you closer to something worthy of regard, of reverence or awe.
Try this and see what happens to the felt sense of experience.
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