Episode 193 - Meet the Divine Through Delight

Step right up and pull up a pouf, because today is a very exciting, big reveal on Come to Your Senses. My new journal, Sensing the Sacred, is now available! 

Today I'm sharing the creative process behind the book, the deeper roots of sensory spirituality, and how to create a spiritual practice that feels both doable, and deeply nourishing. You’ll hear passages from the book, learn about returning to a spirituality that's not confined by rules or rigidity,  and discover how to awaken your senses, deepen your intuition, and bring more wonder into everyday life.

Whether you're seeking a more sumptuous mindfulness practices, embodiment tools, or a more meaningful, everyday approach to spiritual practice, this episode will meet you right where you are, with a basket of treasures.  Hit play, and let's begin the journal. 

Check out the new book: Sensing the Sacred, available in personalized, limited edition copies, through December 1st.

• Transcript. How to Meet the Divine Through Delight

  Episode 193

   Hello beautiful and welcome to the Come to Your Senses podcast. I'm your host award winning certified feminine embodiment coach, licensed esthetician, and enthusiastic foster dog mama to animals across the land. Mary Lofgren. Here we explore how to bring more richness, radiance, peace and pleasure to our lives, homes and hearts through the joy of beauty, the wisdom of the body, the warmth of connection, and the splendor of the senses. I'm so glad you're here. Pull up a pouf and let's dive in. Hello beautiful beings, and welcome to today's episode, which comes to you from my feet, planted firmly across the threshold of a creative project that has been in my heart for a very long time, and just today is making its debut into the world. And it's a new book called Sensing the Sacred a journal of sensory rituals and soulful prompts to connect with your body, to awaken to beauty, and to fill your days with wonder. And really, What it is is a collection of 20 of my most tried and true sensory rituals that have really transformed my life by transforming my day to day. You know, the rituals that you'll find in this journal aren't necessarily go out until the night of a full moon, and. Light a bonfire and take your top off and recite creationist poetry. What? I mean, it's not anything too ornate or complex. It's things like the altar of your kitchen table and the cauldron of your daily coffee cup. You know, these are all ways and places that the sacred dwells within us and around us all day long. So check it out at Mary Lofgren com. On December 1st it'll be available globally through third party sellers. But during the next ten days, I wanted to also make it possible for you to receive a more deluxe, more personalized version of the book. So over the next ten days, when you purchase on my website before December 1st, you'll receive a hand signed copy with a little treat, a little Prezi. Inside. It's very small, but I wanted to add something personal to these initial copies as they go out, and there are some really beautiful additional gifts included when you purchase before December 1st, like a custom playlist, a complimentary seat at an upcoming Candlelight Solstice Koya class that I'll be teaching, and so you can head to my website Mary lofgren.com to find all the juicy trimmings and details, and to pick up one of these limited edition personalized copies for yourself for your loved ones. It makes an extraordinary holiday gift, solstice gift, hostess gift, New Year's gift. And a little later, at the end of the episode, I'm going to read a little passage to you from the book, so stay tuned for that. But for now, let us dive into our gems on how to develop your own relationship and practice of daily ritual, to feel the sacred come alive through your senses and to meet the divine through delight. So part of why I wanted to record this episode is because if you've ever had a creative dream or creative project, you know that the process of getting it from this tiny seed of possibility in your heart, or in your belly, or in the back of your mind to something real and tangible that you can hold in your hands, is. I mean, there's a reason why they call it a birth, like staying up all night in labor. It's a real process. And this is a self-published book that I have hand designed, handwritten. It's all my hands all over it. And one of the things I want to share with you today is a little bit about my own creative process with this book, Because the spiritual process and the creative process are very closely related. In fact, I don't think it would be a stretch to say that they're direct mirrors of one another and whatever spiritual blueprint you came into this world with through the family you grew up in, the institutions you were a part of, the kind of schooling you received. All of this plays a part in the freedom that we feel to express these more tender, more unformed parts of our being. And particularly if you grew up with a blueprint that included some sort of Judeo-Christian conditioning, which whether you grew up with religion or not, in the States here where I live, and just in Western colonialist culture in general. That blueprint is the architecture in which all of our systems have been created is through patriarchal, colonialist systems that are rooted in this idea most pervasively of original sin, original brokenness, original need for redemption. And when I look back on my own upbringing and being a developing child, you know, carrying this seed of belief that I was born sinful and wrong. How could that not show up in the way that we express our confidence and in the way we express the vulnerability of our creativity? You know, for thousands of years we have been sold a story that if we want connection to spirit, we need to access it through a middleman, like an institution. When divinity is seen as something outside of us, so that we lose trust in our creative impulse and ideology can be helpful for organizing the chaos of the human experience. But it also robs us of our inheritance of original goodness and original blessing. And one of my great inspirations, just in life, but also in writing this book was Matthew Fox, who is a theologian, formerly a priest of the Dominican Order of priests, who was actually exiled from the order because of his radical beliefs of inherent wholeness and original blessedness. But he wrote a book called Original Blessing, which is essentially a counter to this concept of original sin, and it was very illuminating to me to learn that it wasn't until the fourth century after Christ that Saint Augustine really brought forth this idea of original sin as the cornerstone of Christianity, and that this mindset shifts the focus to a fall or redemption theology. Meaning we are sinners, we are fallen, we are in need of redemption. We are in need of atonement. And original blessing or original goodness, is a kind of spirituality that finds the divine in all things and sees the creative process as part of our interconnected web of life force, and where the key tenants include justice and ecological awareness and divine presence in nature and divine presence in one another, and that is rooted in a seed of goodness, original goodness. And so, if you can imagine for a moment, you know, receiving that kind of messaging and maybe you did, you know, there are many religions, faiths out there, spiritualists out there who have unraveled this garment, this tight garment of religious oppression and control. But when I imagine I'll just speak for myself, when I imagine little me in third grade with a pretty terrorizing nun. If she were to one day walk in and say, you know what, kiddos? We're gonna color today because you can't do any of this wrong. You know, and math. Yeah, it's important to make your way in the world, but it doesn't mean your soul is bad and inherently wrong. If you can't do a multiplication equation, you know? And I just feel so much compassion for my sweet little nervous system that was trying to doggy paddle and keep her head above water in these environments where this growing seed of self-doubt and self-hatred was being fertilized by constant reinforcement about original sin. And so, in starting to write this book, you know, where it started was I wanted to create a journal for members of my programs. And it originally started out as a book about sensual ism and the experience of living with more pleasure and more aliveness and more radiance and more centering of the body and of the senses and of beauty, which is essentially what the book is. But, you know, I want to just be vulnerable for a moment and say that sometimes in my industry, I feel pressure to. I don't know. Promote this idea. Like to survive in a capitalist culture of commerce and doing business, I have to create this idealized magnetic flow state that you will always be in if you just do these practices. And while writing this book, I got to really see, oh, that's that old paradigm of like, if you just go to the church or to this priest or whatever, you will be saved. And so over months and months and months of writing it, reshaping it, working it, you know, the book really worked me in the sense that I don't believe that shit. I don't think any real kind of goodness or positive change can come from a place of, there's something so wrong with me, I need to fix it, and I need just a three step process to figure it out. You know, I love whenever I catch myself using the phrase figure it out. If we really break that down, figure it out means to take whatever is in front of me and turn it into a mathematical equation that I can then make sense of and sort and. Proof and one of the lines in the introduction of the book, Sensing the Sacred, is more than any kind of life mastery. My hope is that this book helps return you to the mystery. And so in this conversation today about meeting the sacred through your senses, that's our first gem is rather than spirituality being this ladder to climb towards a higher self or a higher evolution. The senses offer us a portal to the richness and the perfection and the beauty of what is right here, right now. And one of the most ancient ways that we can access this portal is through the art of everyday ritual. And that's really what's at the core of this book, is that there's several chapters. But at the heart of the book are these four distinct chapters. One is called Enchanted Evenings. The next is called Tending Beauty. The next is soft mornings and the last is Awaken Your Senses. And these are all frameworks for when you might use these rituals, but really they can be done anytime. And each chapter contains five simple, everyday rituals that you can do to access more of this wholeness and presence and aliveness that comes from sensory spirituality. And some of the pages even have links, like a little QR code, where you can follow that and receive a guided audio meditation and be supported in your practice and guided through practice. So it is rich my friends. It is rich and robust between these covers book covers and I'm so excited to share it with you. But the reason I wanted to include this gem is because, you know, ritual is really at the heart of this book because a here I'd come to your senses. You know, almost everything that I talk about on this podcast has to do in some way with rituals and making sacred the everyday moments of our lives. And when I did a little research preparing for this episode about ritual, I fell in love with the etymology of ritual, which is the cosmic order. Ritual is the way things naturally want to flow, the way of doing things in harmony with the universe. Oh my God. I mean, couldn't you just relax back into a bathtub pillow of those words and let them swirl and steam around you? I mean, doing things in harmony with the universe? Oh, and you know, in the sanctuary, which is our global community of this kind of sensory presence and sensory spirituality, one of the things that we talk about so much is following the seasons as a template for living and the fact that for feminine beings in particular, we are cyclical in our nature and not just cyclical in our menstrual cycles and cycles of hormonal life, but cyclical in our emotions, cyclical in our ways of thinking and doing, cyclical in our energy levels, cyclical in our creativity. There are just really no limits to the way that the seasons reflected in the living world are a mirror to what happens for us in our inner world, whether you identify as feminine or not. And, you know, ritual is simply a way of anchoring the sacred in the everyday. And in writing about the book, one of the things I wrote down is, are you tired of spiritual and mindfulness practices that feel rigid and rule bound, and you crave a spirituality that includes beeswax candles and thrift store teacups and kitchen table flowers? And this is what ritual does, is it awakens an ancestral kind of imprint around the sacredness of all things, and takes that spiritual power back from institutions outside of us and makes your kitchen table into a living altar. Or your bathtub into a baptismal font. Or the perfect bite of pasta into communion with the divine itself. And ritual really invites in a kind of real world presence that I think is so longed for right now. You know, I know I don't have to tell you that there is just this tsunami of information and knowledge out there in the world right now, and anything that you ever wanted to know you can find at the tap, tap, tap of your fingers. But information can only take us so far because it is limited by the realm of the cognitive. Whereas the senses draw us down and to the stiller, deeper waters of the subconscious and of the energetic and the ancestral. You know, when I'm working with a woman at one of my retreats and we circle up and we do koi and movement together, and we make crafts and we eat together, it's like, yeah, we're all really grateful for the rest and the beauty and the pleasure. But what I notice happening for each woman is this recognition of being in harmony with the order of the universe, like it talked about in the etymology of ritual, that when we make a retreat, just one long ritual of laughter and of connection and of tears and release and of glitter, glue and scrap paper, the things that we may have been endlessly searching for answers on through information. Seem to just snuggle up right beside us at the farmhouse table bench. And, you know, I talked a little bit before about this idealized version of a magnetic woman that kind of makes me want to hurl inside my own psyche and consciousness because it feels unattainable. And it feels of that ilk of imagined perfection, just like institutions of religion and capitalism, you know, present us with this unnatural, unattainable goal, but call it reality. It's like an emperor's new clothes situation. But when I think about the farmhouse bench and the glitter glue and these answers and this wisdom sidling up beside us, that is a kind of magnetism I can get behind. And ritual paves the way by getting us out of our heads and out of that information realm and into the experiential. And that brings me to our final gem, where I want to share with you the introduction from the book. Because you might be hearing that and you're like, okay, yeah, ritual experiences. But like, how do I do that? Where do I start? And one place to start might be going to Mary Lofgren. Com and ordering Sensing the Sacred. But in this introduction, what my hope is that these words will awaken a knowing within yourself that while skill and information and knowledge is really helpful and useful in creating frameworks, this is something your body naturally knows how to do. So here we go. We start with a quote by me. The senses offer us a doorway back to the most essential, enchanting aspects of being alive. And I'm looking at a picture of a beautiful doorway in cornflower blue and lime verdant green. It's slightly blurred and it leads out to a garden. And I share that because I don't know if I mentioned this, but this book is fully illustrated. So on every page are colorful, gorgeous, dazzling visuals to just make the whole experience a delight for your senses and a way to awaken and engage your inner child. Anyway, couldn't couldn't let this episode pass without mentioning that detail. Okay, so let me read that quote again. Let's let's walk it back. The senses offer us a doorway back to the most essential and enchanting aspects of being alive. Welcome my friend. I am beyond thrilled that this blessed book is in your hands. Let us begin by inhaling and exhaling from the deeper lobes of your lungs. Allow the branches of nerve endings that spread across your shoulders to soften and hang heavy like ripe fruit. Bending a branch. Feel the flow of exquisite presence that moves through all things, including your own body and breath. Let us sweetly sacredly now come to our senses. Humans have connected with the sacred through our senses since a time older than words. There is a reason we choose incense. To carry our prayers up to the sky, chimes to begin and end, a meditation and flowers to express everything from our unending gratitude to our heart shattering grief. You were born a magnificent sensing, feeling creature as a baby. Your body found home through the touch of another skin. Tiny smell receptors guided your mouth towards milk before your eyes could even open. Your body intuitively knew how to move toward what felt warm and cozy and quiet, and to move away from what felt cold and jarring and uncomfortable. I'd wager that it still does. When we think of the senses, we often begin with the classic five taste, touch, sound, smell, and sight. But beneath the outer senses there is a deeper sense. Some call it the soul, the higher self, or intuition. Some call it qi or prana, others ruach, atman or ruh. Some call it the Holy Spirit and some call it God by any of its thousands of names. The one thing we all seem to agree upon is that this force that animates our bodies, beats our hearts, breathes our lungs, and carries us in each moment is deeply sacred. This book is a handcrafted menu of delights to help you deepen your relationship with the sacred as it dances within and around you through the wisdom of your body, the beauty of ritual, and the poetry of your senses. In the world of self-development and spirituality, categories under which this book may fall, there is much emphasis on becoming one's ideal self and fulfilling an infinite sense of boundless potential. Please know this book is not that. This book is actually a chance to step out of the endless pressure to become and into a present moment experience of simply being more than any kind of mastery. My hope is that this book helps return you to the mystery, to the place within yourself that doesn't need to strive any more than it needs to hide. Where the imaginary divide between your humanity and your divinity dissolves to the place where you fall so deep in love with presence that you lose all interest and perfection. As you meander through these pages. May you feel permission to play, rejoice, and sing through every cell of your sacred body. This great keeper of wonder. This temple of the miraculous. Okay my friends, there is so much more goodness to follow. Oh my God, every time I open this, I just. It's like seeing it for the first time. I'm flipping through as I'm speaking. Oh, I just want to tell you about this one last thing. On page 21, there is a choose your own Adventure index. So if you want a slow, romantic morning, turn to page 34. If you want a small dose of daily magic, turn to page 59. If you want to wake up your energy, turn to page 72. If you want to be enveloped in a spell of scent, turn to page 48. There is so many treasures. It's just like a giant treasure box of gems. I am so excited for you to hold this in your hands, and for it to make its way out into the world, into your life, into your heart, into your body. And you can go to Mary Lofgren. Com to order your personalized deluxe Hand assembled edition. With that, my friends, thank you for listening. Thank you for being on this journey with me and I will see you in our next episode. Ciao.