Leaking Visibly: How a Meditation Practice Became a Temple
[Level 1: Transitional] What happens when you can't keep it casual anymore
Originally this was going to be a serious post about the tension of being a mystic in a partnership, but I think I need to save that one for another night. The ideas are still percolating from a LONG 7 hour discussion last night where I finally stopped beating around the bush about what I’ve been going through. More on that in likely the next post.
What started as a hairline fracture with the purchase of a simple zafu at the end of 2022 has been widening, especially over the past year and a half as I began to put together my “sacred space”. I bought a standard yoga mat to begin incorporating asanas mid-2024 as well as some cute meditating cat figures. Quirky, but nothing to raise an eyebrow at.
Then came the incense and holder exactly a year ago. It was about the “vibe”.
This was also when I joined the local yoga studio after some trepidation and began practicing daily there, having been already doing a couple simple sequences at home for a month. Around this time, tension started to form in my partnership. I was leaking visibly now. It was now changing my routine. Dietary changes in winter only exacerbated this as I was trying to eat healthier to support my meditation practice.
Then the so-called “woo-woo” started really showing early this year when I finally went to a rock shop and brought back several rocks and a pack of tarot cards (though to be fair, my partner brought me there on request and even egged me on to get more than the one peach moonstone I was drawn to). Now it was starting to get interesting:
A few more small items were introduced here and there over the months: some stones from a trip, a ceramic elephant from a yard sale, a 3D-printed gift from a friend, and a wrist mala from a small shop. Now my space was starting to fill out, especially with the bolster and blocks.
But then in September, something shifted. I could no longer stand having the space be open, contiguous with my office. People casually walking over to it felt... uncomfortable. At this point I did a major re-haul, unable to keep it casual as a “self-care routine” or “hobby” any longer. I needed a veil, a demarcation that beyond this point was sacred. I needed a temple.
Up went a macrame curtain, down came the black shelving left over by the previous owners. Instead, a reclaimed wood bench took over as the new altar. The mat found its new home at the yoga studio, replaced by two natural tree cork and rubber mats side-by-side, a Tibetan yak wool shawl layered over that, and a sheepskin rug like I’d seen used by a kundalini yoga instructor, a solid foundation for any yin poses. The space was finally complete.
Bringing us to the present day:
While the aesthetics don’t truly matter during meditation, I often look over from my desk and am reminded that there’s more to life than just work, which I suppose was the whole reason I got into this in the first place back in early 2022 when I was just meditating in my office chair. I’m truly grateful I’m able to enjoy this space at any point during my day (okay maybe not during meetings, but still).
I know it’s antithetical to need a separate space, that the entire room, house, world, and Universe is a temple. But I’m still working towards that lived understanding rather than an intellectually known one one day at a time. One day (hopefully), the veil will lift, the curtain will dissolve. In the meantime, this is what training wheels look like… just with some cool rhinestones on them.