“The old man looks out to the island. He says this place is endless thin. There’s no real distance here to mention. We might all fall in, all fall in. No distance to the spirits of the living. No distance to the spirits of the dead…” Scottish Folk Singer Dougie Maclean, (https://www.dougiemaclean.com/index.php/f/41-feel-so-near) in “I Feel So Near.”
The Celts have long said that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but it’s even closer in thin places. According to Beliefnet.com, (http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Christian-Inspiration/Pressing-into-Thin-Places.aspx?p=3) it’s where we sense God’s presence, a place where the spiritual and natural worlds intersect.
“There are moments when we do feel the divine breaking through into our world. We feel unified and connected with God. It is not an intellectual knowing, it is felt in the spirit. It can be a sudden momentary awareness or profound unexplainable experience,” wrote the author of the article “Pressing into Thin Places” on Beliefnet.com.
National Public Radio Correspondent Eric Weiner wrote in The New York Times, (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/travel/thin-places-where-we-are-jolted-out-of-old-ways-of-seeing-the-world.html?_r=0) “Thin places relax us, yes, but they also transform us — or, more accurately, unmask us. In thin places, we become our more essential selves.”
Even Princeton University acknowledges these hallowed places. The institution’s Global Consciousness Project (http://noosphere.princeton.edu/thinplace.html) posted that in these areas, “connections are made and amazing flows occur.”
Callanish Standing Stones, Isle of Lewis, Scotland. Photo by Kathleen Berry.
I’ve visited two places that, at least for me, fit the descriptions above: Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland and the coastal Redwoods of Northern California. Callanish (in Gaelic, Calanais,) Standing Stones (http://www.callanishvisitorcentre.co.uk/index.php/features ) have existed for about 5,000 years and are believed to have been a center of religious activity for about 1,500 years. The massive redwoods around the Eureka, Calif. region, are primordial, lush forests.
5 ways to know if you are in a thin place.
These sacred locations are places that:
- Take us out of the ordinary and beyond our normal state of mind. We forget our everyday concerns, to-do lists and burdens.
- Speak to our heart, connecting us to the Most Divine, nature, humanity and spirits. We realize we’re part of something bigger and that we matter. It’s this shared commonality that helps us access our intuitive abilities.
- Create a sense of awe. This inspires us to work toward our potential.
- Seemingly stop time, yet all eras appear to exist simultaneously, just beyond arm’s reach. We can sense the presence of those who came before and the residual energies of past actions.
- Reverberate with a palpable energy, one that strengthens and rejuvenates us.
Have you been to a thin place? If so, please share where it was and what your experiences were.