"Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth."

—N. Scott Momaday, address to the United Nations, 1992

We may think the sacred is something we bring to a place—a ritual we perform, a meaning we assign. Momaday says it's the other way around. Some places just are sacred, on their own, whether or not anyone shows up to notice.

That's worth sitting with. It means the sacred isn't something the mind manufactures. It's already there, in the ground, in certain rivers and mountains and quiet corners of the earth, waiting the way it always has.

We're the same way, actually. There's a place in us that's sacred whether we've noticed it yet or not. It doesn't need our belief to be real. It's just there, solid, the way the mountain is there.

The whole practice is just showing up to what's already true. Standing in it. Letting it be as real as it's always been.