A Sacred Temple
We are a sacred temple. What we bring into our lives affects our experience of reality and our connection to the Divine. When we allow the fear of the world, the violence, chaos, distortion, and distraction to enter and crowd our minds, it causes turmoil within and without. But when we are conscientious of our choices and live with intention and sensitivity, we honor the sanctity within us.
Our minds are the gateway to our soul. And we are the gatekeepers. We are responsible for what comes in and for its impact on our emotional, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing. The metaphor can be explored further if we consider the many references to both the creation and organization of the temple, noted throughout the Tanakh, as well as in Jesus’s references to the temple as a symbol for one’s body, mentioned in the New Testament. In the Tanakh, it was dictated to King Solomon that the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem should be built in a very particular way, with rituals and rites marking the passages from outside the temple to the inner sanctum, The Holy of Holies, visited by the High Priest once per year during the High Holidays.
Let us consider that the temple outlined here also refers to the temple that is our bodies, which houses our soul, as Jesus spoke of it. In this light, we may think of what is outside the temple as the things of our life—the people and communities we engage with, our work environment, our internet and social media use, the news we follow, the food we eat, our daily habits and routines. All of these can have a profound impact on our mental state and well being, as well as our beliefs and expectations. During the time of the First Temple, it was mandated that visitors were to cleanse themselves before entering. This ritual could be translated as a cleansing that must occur before we enter into the first chamber of our inner temple, moving from the realm of our physical lives and mental clutter to our emotional life. Ritual helps us to turn inward to connect more deeply to ourselves, and this level of experience is distinctly different and more intimate than the level of external awareness.
The inner sanctum visited once per year by the High Priest was for the renewal of the Jewish community, a process whereby the “sins” of the people were exonerated. We may think of this as an even deeper level of inner work, where we go from the level of emotion to the level of spirit. The High Priest is within us, our spiritual guide (i.e., the Holy Spirit), who helps us navigate and process what is within us, clearing the way for a deeper connection to ourselves and the Divine. In this place, we come to the sacred altar and are made anew. And unlike the days of old, this is a process we can undertake as often as we like. It relieves us of “sin”, of acting in disconnection from ourselves and God, because we return to ourselves and God. Here, our choices are made in connection to what is loving and wholesome.
And so this metaphor is a perfect way to understand our path to wholeness. We choose every moment, and what we choose creates our experience. The awareness of this can feel like a lot of responsibility, but with it comes true freedom. Our inner temple can always be cleansed and made new again (like in the story of Hanukkah), but it requires that we recognize what defiles it—what exacerbates our anxiety and depression, disconnects us from our life energy, perpetuates addictive behaviors, and closes us off from intimacy with ourselves, others, and God. When we experience the freedom and wholeness that comes from living a more intentional life, we are motivated to keep the outside and inside of our temples clean, and are more inclined to enter regularly.
