When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the idea that there was another world. This other world contained the secrets of our world which were invisible to us even as we felt their presence.

Maybe this world lived alongside our world, so close up and even flush with ours that it was impossible to perceive. Or it was within our world, hidden beneath the surface of books and trashcans and trees and breakfast cereal. Or it was inside us, like a sunken city of Atlantis at the bottom of each of our hearts. It didn’t matter so much whether we could reach it by a new way of seeing, or a careful investigation, or a descent. What mattered was that it existed—that it was real, and it was near. Trusting in its reality became a potent act of imagination.

It took me a long time to understand that this early intuition was about my experience of the sacred. What do I mean by the sacred? For me, the sacred is the feeling that there is a hidden order to experience, an organizing energy pulsing through life as it unfolds, and that it is possible to live in alignment with that order. When I do, the potency of life flows through me—I’m enlivened and revitalized. New channels of energy open which form new circuits between what is inside and what is outside. The soul becomes activated and engages in the material of ordinary life. Or, to put it another way, what does the sacred feel like? It feels like an expansive, spacious joy in my heart, an electric aliveness in my limbs, a quicksilver lightness in my mind. It is a mixture of curiosity, awe and wonder, with a vein of terror and a shiver of possibility.

Since those early intuitions, I sought out experiences of the sacred again and again. I freestyled my way into mindfulness meditation, then found teachers and sat silent retreats. I danced 5Rhythms and ecstatic dance, went on inner journeys guided by shamans, and stared at foliage while on mind-altering drugs. You know, all the things modern-day seekers do. Later, I joined 12-step recovery communities and the pragmatic necessity of prayer led me back to the Jewish tradition I was born into. Lately, prayer feels like the great inner adventure to me and I am exploring a newfound deep engagement with the siddur or prayerbook that has guided Jews in their conversations with God for thousands of years.

Every offering I make as a teacher is an expression of this taste of the sacred. Every class arises from an intention to hold space for others to encounter it, to rediscover it and be healed in it. The soul is what it’s all about for me, and that means longing. No amount of practice can make this longing go away or “solve” it. But it can be tended to and nourished and cultivated and listened to. It can become our greatest teacher.