I really don’t know how to do it. How to pay attention to life as it happens. How to find the sacred in the everyday and acknowledge it in the moment. I try and then I forget to try.

Because I am seriously clueless, I consulted my tarot cards. I asked how I can train myself to notice the sacred in the everyday. Two things stood out.

The first step in my training is to use my senses to engage with my world.

I do tend to spend rather a lot of time in my head, forgetting that there is more of me. And that hasn’t improved with age. Because of chronic low level pain/discomfort, I have learned to tune out a big chunk of the signals my body is sending me. Not noticing that tightness in my upper abdomen is easier when I just want to get stuff done.

Now, I’m being guided to listen again. To listen to that area of discomfort. To listen to other aches and pains all over my body. And perhaps to find out what they are trying to tell me, what feelings they bring up.

I do believe aches and pains like that – possibly quite a lot of the illness and discomfort humans have – is caused by emotions getting stuck and not being felt or expressed. And I am ace at hiding my feelings, even from myself. So they get stuck in my body. And generally that is where they stay.

According to the cards, the second step, and the essence of my training will be to gently undo those knots. To let go of emotions that have been stuck for many years, some probably for longer than I can remember.

For that letting go to happen, I must feel. I must feel into my body and touch the emotion. I must truly feel it and then let it drift away. I know this in theory. Actually practising it is another story.

Of course, I feel resistance. Of course I’d rather just keep hiding those feelings away. It’s because I never wanted to feel them that they ended up there in the first place. I have noticed that the first thing I feel when I tune into sore bits of my body is that very resistance. It is the very first thing I need to really feel and get to know.

Jennifer Louden, who has been a big influence on my spiritual journey one way and another, talks about loving the gap between where you want to go and where you are today. Where I want to be is in a deeply connected life where I am open to the subtle beauty of the everyday. Where I am his hidden behind a wall of old feelings, piled up in defence and resistance to what is here and now.

So I start by loving that resistance. I know I have said this before: fighting it will just make it worse. Gentle love stands a chance of softening what is hard. Of melting a hole in that wall, a window from where I can see the world.