Altars around us

As I was about to light an incense stick, I started to reflect on how my perspective of altars have changed through time. I remember how I loved to kneel in front of the beautiful Catholic gothic altars of the west — ornate stone prayers of carved statues reflecting rainbow lights from stain glass windows.

I started my personal altar with images of the Christ and the Madonna, angels even. Through time, looking to the east, my yoga journey introduced me to the fragrant holy smokes of incense sticks, flowers, lamps and symbolic objects. My love for natural crystals soon had them always a fixture, not only in my personal altar but all around my home. Sometimes, photos of loved ones who have passed on find their way there, too, as offerings of remembrances. In shamanic and sacred plant medicine circles, my altar expanded to a collective one, shared with many as we faced crucible pots where fire and smoke where encircled by fruits, flowers and even more crystals.

The physical altar we choose to sit, kneel or lie prostrate before is symbolic of our attempt to ground Spirit and Light, or anything we consider sacred in our religious faith or belief system. This is the still point where the sacred meets the senses, where intention, prayers and ancestors all come together. It is also the mirror of our inner world and consciousness --- a space we return to again and again, lighting flame or laying flower, so that our days are touched by the divine. It is a place we create not to worship from afar, but to come closer — to sit with the invisible, to listen and to soften.

A new perspective of the altar came to me when I got deep into my spiritual practice like yoga, chigong and free movement dance meditations decades back. These, most especially Yoga, showed me that what we call our body is more than just the physical form we see. Just as real are the koshas or the subtler bodies: astral, emotional, mental and spiritual. Everyone who tunes into their body movements (in any practice or even exercise) will slowly but surely know this truth. This body — our own — was our very first altar. Before we learned the language of ritual or religion… our pulse and breath were our first quiet prayers. Each breath we take, if we put awareness into it, is like an offering of gratitude for being alive.

When we care for our physical bodies, are we mindful about what we put in? Do we know where our food comes from? Do we even know what they are made of? Do we care about the things we slather on our faces and skin? Or push as vaccines into our bloodstream? With all the fake food and chemicals being bombarded out to the consumer, are we making any clear choices about how we can live healthier and cleaner?

When we stretch and move in exercise, when we bathe and cleanse,we offer devotion to this altar, too. When we dance or tremble or cry, we cleanse the altar with truth. This is why today, we see a rise of healing circles of movement, dance, drumming to cleanse the subtler body. We cleanse the inner channels, shifting frequencies to connect to higher and deeper levels. By doing this, we transform the physical body into a sacred vessel that recognizes we have a soul that holds memory and, yes, is a channel for Light. When we are fully present in it, we become not just the keeper of spirit, but its embodiment. The altar lives and moves through us.

My understanding of altar expanded even more with a call from the sacred mountain Banahaw in Quezon. There, I saw the Earth as an altar. This connection to the mountain opened my eyes to the truly unique syncretic Filipino-animist belief practices. Here, the whole mountain was like an open church, a rainforest cathedral. Each rock or stone designated as sacred, became altars. Pilgrims carved them out through presence of candles, or a small Christian image left there in offering.

When we step back, the whole planet, this Earth, becomes an altar. Once you immerse in the spirit of Mother Earth, Gaia as she is called as a living being, you will hear forest hums with green-lit hymns. Or oceans chant. And clouds dance on the sky’s stage. The mountains stand as stone sentinels of time, their silence louder than any sermon. I have stared at trees like prayers rising and watched both sunsets and sunrises like anointing times. For all of you who has gasped at the sublime beauty of Nature, you would understand this grace that descends on you.

Daily, as I go through images of the world on my gadgets, I see how we, the whole humanity, have lost our balance, now trampling, desecrating, destroying altars. When we see how we have raped and polluted our planet, constantly feed our bodies and minds with rubbish, create products that destroy life, clutter our hearts and minds with confusion and illusions of the material world — we destroy the sacred.

But always, we each have a choice. To live upon this living altar of the planet is to be both guest and steward. We are asked to walk lightly, to offer gratitude with our footprints, to restore the balance with our choices. It is a choice for reverence — when felt, when practiced, it awakens us to this truth that everything in us and around us is an altar that holds the sacred.