Sacred and Profane…

A couple years ago scandal swirled around Miley Cyrus. In one moment she was our image of the pure, sweet American girl and in the next…well you remember the hype that bordered obsession as she pushed everyone’s buttons. She shined a light and became a living symbol of our American dilemma around sex, and what is so called, ‘appropriate.’ There are many trains of thought to be mined here. Today, I want to take a stab at the ideas of sacred and profane.

Throughout centuries women have been esteemed and heralded as the ones who protect the sacred mystery of the transcendent, and bear this into the world, biologically testified because women have a womb, nurture a child that is a creation, and bring forward that child into the world. All activities focused upon something bigger than the individual self, in this case the woman, and focused upon the ‘other,’ in this case the child. So the lower region of a woman’s body and how she acts in relation to it seem to be tightly tied to these bigger points of purpose. This has been the description at times of what is ‘sacred’ about a woman, and hence a clear representation of a larger concept we call today the ‘goddess,’ or the ‘Divine Feminine.’ Rites, rituals, myths, religions, cults and more have been organized and inspired by these perspectives.

There is juiciness here that resonates and draws us onward to choices that are life giving, literally, amidst these notions. It seems, though, that human beings, yes that’s you and me, tend to like clear black and white lines when it comes to unclear topics such as these. Many ancient and even modern texts take this even further with a short-sighted line of reasoning, if THAT is sacred, then the defined opposite is profane. Take it further, the defined opposite, profane, would be for a woman to ‘expose’ that part of her body, and perhaps even worse, allow personal ‘pleasure’ to be part of the focus of that part of the body. It is the age old notion, to be sacred is to pour oneself out for another, to be profane is to be selfish, narrowly defined as anything that puts you at the center of your attention, even for a moment.

The logic breaks down at every line, creating shame and guilt if pleasure is chosen over denial.

What if we were courageous enough to ask deeper questions? What if sacred is the whole of the human experience and profane is the denial of the human experience? What if I needed to explore aspects of myself in a way that I notice personally what gives life, and THAT is the gauge…. softening the line of giving and receiving until we come to a grand possibility, even noted in Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, ‘giving and receiving are part of the same dance of the universe.’ It requires a mature navigation of knowing the self, and acting authentically, and thus independently of notions that fall short of our ever growing consciousness of physical life as an energy exchange.

Is it true, or possible, for a person to extol the embodiment of a mystery, bearing life to an independent being such as a baby, and extol the embodiment of the mystery of her or himself?

It is time to challenge our comfortable assumptions.

In the inquiry with you,

Kimberly