Tammy from the Enneagram School of Awakening has developed a practice for working with Essence called Sacred Nourishment. This is a practice that births our spiritual realizations and awakenings into life. It guides our essential ecstatic nature into a lived, embodied, and integrated being. It is a practice that shows us how to open and receive the sacred within our human expression, as our human expression.
Many spiritual practices are guides for transcendence - the sacred is experienced outside, prior to, and primary to the material world. Sacred Nourishment is a guide for immanence - the sacred is experienced outside the material world YET also permeating, within and as the material world. The material world in this case is all the appearances of life and our human sense of self - our body and senses, our heart and emotions, our mind and thoughts.
We've all had brief moments of perceiving the sacred - experiences of happiness. These experiences leave some imprint, they are profound, but they do not profoundly transform our live. These moments do not remain accessible in our being and awareness. This is because we do not know how to receive the sacred nourishment of these moments.
An awakening experience leaves more of an imprint than a brief sacred moment. But even a profound awakening is limited when it is perceived as a transcendence. Most initial awakenings are transcendent because we are so used to experiencing the material world as mundane and ordinary - outside of or disconnected from the sacred. Often, when the sacred begins to awaken, it initially seems to be outside of ordinary experience - outside the material world.
In profound awakenings, we recognize sacred truth and it seems as though our “normal” separate experience falls away or dies. This can seem more or less “permanent” - the sense of separation may seem to be gone forever or return to some extent. Often we believe and/or feel that any sense of separation is a barrier to knowing our infinite nature.
An awakening that transcends the mundane and seems to blow away separation can be VERY liberating and leave nothing to desire. Yet, in my experience, there is an ecstasy that is deeper and fuller than transcendence - a liberation that even makes transcendence feel limiting. This is an awakening of immanence - where our sense of distinction and differentiation (separation) is experienced within and simultaneous to our sense of oneness.
My initial awakenings were profoundly transcendent and extremely freeing - I couldn’t imagine anything more liberating. But when I began to really experience the appearances and movements of life as the sacred, I began to understand ecstasy. There is a love affair between separation and oneness that is the stuff worship and devotion are made of. This divine passion is missed when we only focus on transcendent kinds of awakenings.
From this ultimate love, the practice of Sacred Nourishment was born. Because this kind of spiritual awakening involves the material world, this practice involves our material being and our nervous system. It is a path to experience the sacred through and ultimately as our material being - our body.
Here are the steps for receiving essence as sacred nourishment:
Recognize when you are naturally orienting toward essence (orientation is covered in this post) and/or actively orient toward essence
Remember that essence is sacred - rooted in oneness
Remember that essence does not belong to circumstances - it is rooted beyond
Invite your heart to open and feel spacious while feeling the essence
Experience the essence in your nervous system
Experience the essence in every cell of your body at the same time
Experience the essence from the "base" of your perception
Gently notice how you feel during and after this practice
Gently be aware of any changes in your life patterns over time
Some of these steps may seem too abstract or out of your comfort or ability zone - such as steps 4-7. I invite you to work with each step from where-ever you’re at - even a visualization is a great place to begin - and it will deepen and become more tangible with practice.