One of the most subtle yet powerful spiritual movements we can make is to shift what occupies the foreground of our awareness.
For many of us these days, anxiety takes center stage. It’s loud and urgent—demanding our attention, obscuring our decisions, coloring our days. It is fueled by the pace of life, the unpredictability of the world, and the weight of all we feel responsible for. Over time, anxiety can start to seem like the most “real” part of our lives.
But what if it isn’t?
What if anxiety belongs in the background—and something deeper, truer, more enduring is meant to take its place in the foreground?
What if the sacred— and your sacred life—is what wants to lead and live in the foreground?
Reversing the Lens
Here’s a practice to try: Imagine your life as a photograph. In the current image, perhaps your anxious mind is in sharp focus: the worries, the tasks, the inner critic, the “what-ifs.” The sacred may still be there, but it’s a blurred, hard to see, part of the background.
Now, reverse the lens. Bring the sacred into focus. Let your connection to the Divine, or your wise inner compass, become the sharpest part of the picture. Let the anxious shift into the background—not gone, not denied, but no longer in charge.
This powerful shift of perception is a conscious re-centering of what is most real, trustworthy, and enduring. Your sacred life—your inspired and truest self, your deepest grounding—is not a luxury. It’s your anchor.
This is the deeper invitation: to trust that your sacred life is not an escape from reality, but a truer reality in which all things are held. Your anxious life may still be there, but it no longer gets the final word.
What are you letting lead?
As you move through your day, check in with yourself and notice what’s in the foreground of your awareness.
When we bring the sacred into the foreground, it changes the way we see, speak, decide, and rest. And this changed perspective may not fully relieve you of difficult circumstances, but it can change you—and that changes everything.