How do we intentionally bring about spiritual experiences

Summarize the last three posts

First I shared the different ways we named our idea of the sacred – some said the universe, some said God, some said “me”. Many of us had different and similar ways that we named the sacred.

Then I asked with the question: What is the sacred?
To call something sacred is to declare: This matters.
It is worthy of reverence, of stillness, of our full presence and attention.

When we bring that kind of awareness to a moment — whether it’s this meditation, the quiet on a trail, or a tender exchange in a relationship — we awaken to the truth that the sacred isn’t separate from life. It is life, met with awareness.

In the next post I talked about once we’ve felt that recognition of the sacred, felt the spark of the universe what then? What is our responsibility if any to that experience?

4 things I talked about:

Maybe our first responsibility is simply to remember.

Our second responsibility might be to respond with care. We Listen, we protect.

Our third responsibility is to embody it — to let the experience of the sacred or the universe, shape how we move through the world. To allow it to soften our edges, deepen our compassion

And when we are ready, perhaps the fourth responsibility is to share it. Not to explain it away or make it someone else’s or convince someone of it but to let our reverence be visible.

So when we ask, what is our responsibility to the experience of the sacred?
Perhaps it is this:
To remember it.
To respond with care.
To embody it.
And to share it — gently, freely, as an act of love and wonder and gratitude for the experience we’ve been given

Finally, in the previous post I talked about how we bring the sacred into our lives – decision making, how we respond to things.

At Church That’s Not Church, people shared that for them this had to do with faith and grace, and many conversations about seeing the power of the universe through synchronicities or how the universe worked things out in ways that almost seemed magical for our greater good. Who we are, our very design — our personalities, our joys, our sensitivities, our intuition, our desires and dreams — can be part of how the universe moves and creates through us. We are in collaboration with the sacred in how things unfold.

Today, I want to invite us to look at how we intentionally bring about spiritual experiences — of any kind — into our lives. How we open up the possibility of creating them.

What does being intentional look like?

To be intentional means to live with purpose — to make conscious choices about where we place our time, our attention, our energy, and our heart.

It means we stop waiting for the sacred to find us by accident, and instead, we prepare the ground for the sacred to take root in us.

Being intentional doesn’t mean forcing a spiritual experience to happen — that can’t be done.
It means opening the door, creating the space, softening the ground of our awareness so that when the sacred moves, we are ready to notice.

When we live intentionally, we shift from drifting through our days to moving through them with meaning.
We say, I want to live awake.
We live as though the sacred could appear at any moment — because it can.

When we do that, we are calling on the sacred — not to control or demand it, but to welcome it.
We are saying, in the language of our actions:
“Come, meet me here.”

That’s what makes spiritual practice powerful: it’s not about the form, what could I do — or stop doing - but about the being intentional about the orientation of the heart.