This week, I'm musing about shrines.

I'd venture a guess that most of us are building one, in some capacity, every single day. The word shrine comes from the Latin scrinium, meaning "case or chest for books or papers" and the Old French escrin, meaning "box or case." If a brain is a container for what's revered and obsessed over, read and dogeared, boxed-up and stored, thought and felt, loved and hated, experienced and processed, esteemed and damned—if a brain is all that, it could be considered a kind of shrine, couldn't it? If a shrine is a shrine because of an energetic commitment, a full-on recognition of and devotion to something, then our brains—yours and mine, too—are absolutely our portable shrines.

T H E  I N S P I R A T I O N
The energy experiments in Pam Grout's book, E-Cubed, have me thinking about things a little differently. Specifically, her third experiment, The Simon Cowell Corollary (Or Why You're Not Capable of Judging Anything), in which I found this gem:

Of course, you must deal with problems if they arise. But it's unnecessary to let them become your whole identity. No matter how it may look, you are still whole and complete and intact. To focus on the problem is to subconsciously cling to it, never allowing for the possibility of release. There is a difference between dealing with what you have to deal with and building a shrine to it.

T H E  Q U E S T I O N
Do we know what we're worshipping...or even that we're worshipping something?

T H E  M E T H O D
Let's measure the number and quality of offerings we make at the altar of our most prominent and predominant thoughts. How? While there are many excellent resources for tracking minutes spent on various tasks and websites online (8aWeek, MeeTimer, Rescue Time, etc.), I'd like to disturb the shrine more dramatically than that. First, by identifying those thoughts that, depending on our energetic commitment to them, might veer into worshipping territory:

Maybe Shrine #1
"I can't stand the idea of [fill in the blank] becoming president of the United States."

Maybe Shrine #2
"This illness/dis-ease is my reality. I am a sick/unwell person."

Maybe Shrine #3
"I am dreadfully unhappy because [fill in the blank]."

Okay, now, let's crash around the temple and throw things, flip a table or two, desecrate the crap out of the place. What does this look like? Finding the inverse of your maybe-shrine and saying it out loud:

Disruption #1
"I can stand the idea of [fill in the blank] becoming president of the United States."

Disruption #2
"This illness/dis-ease is not my reality. I am not a sick/unwell person."

Disruption #3
"I am not dreadfully unhappy because [fill in the blank]."

T H E  C O N C L U S I O N
This isn't about positive thinking. It isn't even about manifesting, really. It's more about testing some of our thoughts (and those things we claim as our realities) for signs that they've become our beliefs. If voicing a disruption causes you discomfort, you might want to consider what (or whom) it is you're inadvertently venerating...because, make no mistake, you're building a shrine to something when you're committing copious energy to thoughts, good or bad, about it (and I for one refuse to build a shrine to Donald Trump).

Hit 'reply' and share with me one of your trickiest maybe-shrines. Let's bust it up, together. (I love flipping tables. Proverbially, of course.)

'Til soon,
Helen

Notes from the week of July 17

DISCOVERED

+ Flower Report (& an essay on Flower Report)

ADMIRED

+ waiting in the rain for udon
+ weeding rice paddies by the ocean

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "You can see how easy it is to believe in magical things, watching him work to figure it out: beautiful colors that only appear on certain days, that move sometimes, that can touch you but is never felt"

EXPERIENCED

+ Sooner Mall in Norman, OK

COLLECTED

+ surfing tips, though I'm going to learn to skateboard first

BEFRIENDED

+ many shoe salespeople (one told us we should do a standup act as a couple)